The Rise of Gay Rights and the Fall of the British Empire: Liberal Resistance and the Bloomsbury Group

ISBN-13: 9781107037953 / Angielski / Twarda / 2013 / 280 str.

David AJ Richards

Opis

This book argues that there is an important connection between ethical resistance to British imperialism and the ethical discovery of gay rights. By closely examining the roots of liberal resistance in Britain and resistance to patriarchy in the United States, this book shows that fighting the demands of patriarchal manhood and womanhood plays an important role in countering imperialism. Advocates of feminism and gay rights (in particular, the Bloomsbury Group in Britain) play an important public function in the criticism of imperialism because they resist the gender binary's role in rationalizing sexism and homophobia in both public and private life. The connection between the rise of gay rights and the fall of empire illuminates larger questions of the meaning of democracy and of universal human rights as shared human values that have appeared since World War II. The book also casts doubt on the thesis that arguments for gay rights must be extrinsic to democracy, and that they must reflect Western, as opposed to African or Asian, values. To the contrary, gay rights arise from within liberal democracy, and its critics polemically use such opposition to cover and rationalize their own failures of democracy."

Recenzje

'In tracing an idea from the earliest times to the twenty-first century, Richards is pushing back against the scholarship on both imperialism and the history of sexuality that argues that causal connections over such a long period can be superficial … It is a strength of Richards' work that he weaves together insights from a range of disciplines, cultures, and historic periods in a way relevant to contemporary political struggles. This is an important argument that deserves widespread consideration.' Charles Upchurch, Law and History Review

Spis treści

1. Patriarchy and democracy; 2. Imperialism and patriarchy; 3. The rise of gay rights; 4. The fall of empire; 5. Gay rights in former British colonies: legacy of empire?; 6. Gay rights as universal human rights.