Perversity

From Madonna's "Sex" to Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman in "Batman Returns", the rubber and leather paraphernalia of sexual fetishism have become mainstream fashion items. This text looks at this change and asks what it means for our definition of the term.

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"New Formations" is a journal of cultural debate, history and theory. It brings new and challenging perspectives to bear on the categories that frame cultural analysis and political action. The journal has covered issues ranging from the seduction of perversity to questions of nationalism and post-colonialism. Contributors open up new zones of enquiry whilst drawing new charts of understanding to explain new formations in contemporary life. "New Formations" brings together in one volume both established and new writers from many walks of critical life. Past contributors have included: Parveen Adams, Nomi Bhabha, Slavoj Zizek, Susan Buck-Morss, Gillian Rose, Jacqueline Rose, Zygmunt Bauman and Christopher Norris. From Madonna's "Sex" to Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman in "Batman Returns", the rubber and leather paraphernalia of sexual fetishism have become mainstream fashion items. Amid the current rash of vampire films perverse pleasures are coming out of the shadows. Where there was repression and fear, there is now a new fascination with perversity. This text looks at this change, and asks what it means for our definition of the term.
Is it still subversive and was it ever radical in any political sense? If we are all, in some sense, perverse, what does this mean for the sexual subcultures themselves? At the cutting edge of the new sexual politics, perversity whips through the issues and ties them all up, neatly.