Performing the Penis

Book excerpt: This book will be the first collection that offers an overview and case studies around understandings and manifestations of penises and phalluses in the early twenty-first century. It examines how penises and phalluses are experienced and represented, drawing on examples from pornography, stripping, music video, film, surgery, and comedy. The penis—along with its twin the phallus—has been used to symbolise strength, fertility, and power but also bestiality, violence, and the ‘savage’. It has been worshipped, feared, and mocked. With contributing authors deploying conceptual frameworks based in philosophy, cultural studies, gender studies, affect theory, film theory, feminist theory, art theory, sociology, history, medical anthropology and media studies, this volume will appeal to a broad range of scholars and all who are interested in bodies, genitals, gender, and contemporary cultures.