Private Affairs Critical Ventures in the Culture of Social Relations [Paperback]

InPrivate Affairs, Phillip Brian Harper explores the social and cultural significance of the private, proposing that, far from a universal right, privacy is limited by one's racial-and sexual-minority status. Ranging across cinema, literature, sculpture, and lived encounters-from Rodin'sThe Kissto Jenny Livingston'sParis is Burning-Private Affairsdemonstrates how the very concept of privacy creates personal and sociopolitical hierarchies in contemporary America.

Full of valuable new insights, Private Affairs is a necessary addition to contemporary debates about citizenship and identity. Harper challenges our tendency to see racial identity as public and sexuality as private. Instead he argues that in both cases the public demands of civic duty collide with private knowledges, and that each is necessary to realize the other. What Phillip Brian Harper makes of his personal encounters-whether with a hustler, a homeless man, a panicky straight guy at the gym, or with the racism of Andrew Sullivan's forecast of the end of AIDS-is of utmost public significance. His Private Affairs teaches us how thoroughly complex is the negotiation of privacy and publicity when we attend to gender and sexuality, race and class.