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Private Reason(S) And Public Spheres: Sexuality And Enlightenment In Kant, Thomas Paul Bonfiglio

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

Pivoting on the essay on enlightenment as a central text and referring to other thematically relevant writings by Kant, this study qualifies the view that the Kantian concepts of enlightenment and the public sphere are represented solely in a neutral, disinterested manner as open and democratic forums for all men and women. By recovering unconscious inscriptions of gender, sexuality, and class in contradistinction to the dominant "democratic" reception of Kant, this essay shows how infrastructural sexual dynamics co-articulate the surface discourses of enlightenment, the public and private spheres, and the beautiful and the sublime. As non-cognitive structures, these discourses inscribe …