Chaste Value
Author | : Katherine Gillen |
Publisher | : Edinburgh University Press |
Total Pages | : 320 |
Release | : 2017-06-09 |
ISBN-10 | : 9781474417730 |
ISBN-13 | : 1474417736 |
Rating | : 4/5 (30 Downloads) |
Download or read book Chaste Value written by Katherine Gillen and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-09 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chaste Value reassesses chastity's significance in early modern drama, arguing that presentations of chastity inform the stage's production of early capitalist subjectivity and social difference. Plays invoke chastity-itself a quasi-commodity-to interrogate the relationship between personal and economic value. Through chastity discourse, the stage disrupts pre-capitalist ideas of intrinsic value while also reallocating such value according to emerging hierarchies of gender, race, class, and nationality. Chastity, therefore, emerges as a central category within early articulations of humanity, determining who possesses intrinsic value and, conversely, whose bodies and labor can be incorporated into market exchange.