{"product_id":"domestic-intimacies-incest-and-the-liberal-subject-in-nineteenth-century-america-9780812246216","title":"Domestic Intimacies: Incest and the Liberal Subject in Nineteenth-Century America","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAlthough it is commonly thought that incest has been taboo throughout history, nineteenth-century Americans evinced a great cultural anxiety that the prohibition was failing. \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTheologians debated the meaning and limits of biblical proscription, while jurists abandoned such injunctions and invented a new prohibition organized around the nuclear family. Novelists crafted fictional tales of accidental incest resulting from the severed ties between public and private life, while antislavery writers lamented the ramifications of breaking apart enslaved families. Phrenologists and physiologists established reproduction as the primary motivation of the incest prohibition while naturalizing the incestuous eroticism of sentimental family affection. Ethnographers imagined incest as the norm in so-called primitive societies in contrast to modern civilization. In the absence of clear biological or religious limitations, the young republic developed numerous, varied, and contradictory incest prohibitions.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ci\u003eDomestic Intimacies\u003c\/i\u003e offers a wide-ranging, critical history of incest and its various prohibitions as they were defined throughout the nineteenth century. Historian Brian Connolly argues that at the center of these convergent anxieties and debates lay the idea of the liberal subject: an autonomous individual who acted on his own desires yet was tempered by reason, who enjoyed a life in public yet was expected to find his greatest satisfaction in family and home. Always lurking was the need to exercise personal freedom with restraint; indeed, the valorization of the affectionate family was rooted in its capacity to act as a bulwark against licentiousness. However it was defined, incest was thus not only perceived as a threat to social stability; it also functioned to regulate social relations--within families and between classes as well as among women and men, slaves and free citizens, strangers and friends. \u003ci\u003eDomestic Intimacies\u003c\/i\u003e overturns conventional histories of American liberalism by placing the fear of incest at the heart of nineteenth-century conflicts over public life and privacy, kinship and individualism, social contracts and personal freedom.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Brian Connolly\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Pennsylvania Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 05\/21\/2014\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 304\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.35lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.10h x 6.20w x 1.30d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780812246216\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBrian Connolly teaches history at the University of South Florida.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Pennsylvania Press","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":40174244692083,"sku":"0812246217","price":77.95,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0555\/9255\/0515\/products\/img_1c4d108b-2c37-4583-acd6-4d30d4ad652c.jpg?v=1655299536","url":"https:\/\/bookstorenmore.com\/en-de\/products\/domestic-intimacies-incest-and-the-liberal-subject-in-nineteenth-century-america-9780812246216","provider":"Bookstore N More","version":"1.0","type":"link"}