In an article published in 1995 in a scholarly journal called Narrative Eric Savoy suggested that there is a “long tradition of the representational association of the rabbit with deviant or perverse sexuality”, and presented Bugs Bunny as “a queer cultural icon”. In an article published in the same year in a Marxist journal called Transformation Donald Morton argued that “Queer Theory” is now an “ideological arm of late capitalism”.
Tamsin Spargo comments on these articles towards the end of a chapter here on “Queer theories/cultures”. The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory 5 complements The Year’s Work in English Studies 76 in reviewing significant books and articles that appeared in 1995. It consists of 21 chapters, arranged under the two broad headings “Critical theory” and “Culture and communication”. This volume has new chapters on “Postmodernism”, “Science, technology and culture”, “Cultural policy”, “Law and culture”, and “Australian Pacific cultural theory”. In her preface the editor regrets the absence of regular chapters on “Intertextuality”, “art history and visual cultural studies”, and “Theories of reading and reception”. Details of books reviewed are given at the end of each chapter; journal numbers and pagination are given in the text.
Michael Ryan begins the chapter on “Postmodernism” with an attack on one of the advisory editors, Terry Eagleton, for writing The Illusions of Postmodernism. Scott Wilson begins “Historicism” by noting a history of flagellation called Thy Rod and Staff; and suggests that moves towards outlawing corporal punishment in Western societies have been accompanied by the elevation of “the style and paraphernalia of S/M practices” to “a transgressive aesthetic for the chic and the fashionable”. In The Philosophy of the Marquis de Sade Timo Airaksinen argued that Sade was not a pornographer because his writings “are not dedicated to pleasure of any kind”; Sade is a looking‐glass Kant who is “aware of the difference between right and wrong and chooses wrong as a matter of principle”.
Some cultural commentators have started to write about “the posthuman condition” (“Science, technology and culture”). In Country Music Culture: From Hard Times to Heaven Curtis Ellison argued that commercialised country music has used modem technology and marketing techniques to offer listeners an antidote to modern times; the appeal of country music has something in common with that of romantic fiction, and of religion (“Popular culture”). I think I have felt this while listening to Billie Jo Spears singing Blanket on the Ground.
