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Living in the Past: Savage Nights, Bisexual Times

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International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies

Abstract

This paper argues that one cannot see bisexuality as present at all times and in all civilisations (as in the Freudian approach popularised in Marjorie Garber's recent book Vice Versa), but must see it as a socially specific conception of desire, composed of particular understandings of gender, sexuality, and selfhood. One such element of a contemporary bisexual identity is ‘fluidity’, a capacity to change one's sense of self over time, which plays an important part in contemporary bisexual discourse. In particular, the author looks at how such bisexual narratives use modernity's language of a relentless progress through time towards absolute self-realisation. The author then considers Cyril Collard's film Savage Nights as an example of this concern with the attainment of a stable identity, in order to show how a bisexual notion of fluidity may not be as radical as many contemporary bisexual writers hope.

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Eadie, J. Living in the Past: Savage Nights, Bisexual Times. International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies 2, 7–26 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026385031442

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026385031442

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