Published in 1993
267 pages
Marilouise Kroker is senior research scholar in the Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture at the University of Victoria. She is co-editor of the electronic peer-reviewed journal Ctheory.
Arthur Kroker is the director of the Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, and Canada Research Chair in Technology, Culture, and Theory at the University of Victoria.
What is this book about?
The Last Sex continues the exploration of gender politics in the 1990s, begun in The Hysterical Male and Body Invaders; with the addition of key articles on lesbian and gay sexuality, The Last Sex broadens its survey of issues to include a reflexive consideration of themes related to transgender and trans-sexuality. This provocative collection responds to a major shift taking place both in feminist theory as well as in the very style of feminist writing.
Arthur and Marilouise Kroker conclude their feminist-theory trilogy with 18 works grouped around the theme of the human body. Careening through leftist academic thought and street-tough life experience, it will appeal mainly to those whose White European Male gurus of choice are Marx, Derrida and Foucault and who believe that “cultural fascism” is the undisputed province of conservatives. Kathy Acker contemplates her experience of bodybuilding as an act that resists verbal language and yet constitutes a “language of the body.” Dianne Rothleder considers human reproduction as the fruit of capitalism, and finds that capital is like a virus: both “latch onto living beings, penetrate them, and colonize them.” Shannon Bell interviews a “cross-gendered performance” instructor, a transsexual whose goal is “deconstructing gender” and who blithely accepts inequality: “at the bottom of anyone’s transgender heap is the closet case who puts on his wife’s panties when she is away.” Carel Rowe offers an effective reading of Peter Greenaway’s films, concluding that although female characters are humiliated, they “learn more, develop more and, ultimately, prevail” over men.
