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Through a series of close readings of most of Rousseau´s major writings, this book provides a new interpretation of the eighteenth-century philosopher´s sexual politics. The text argues that Rousseau´s writings provide a critique of not only normative gender identity, but also normative familial and kinship relations.

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Sexual/Political Inequality The Arts: From the Letter to d´Alembertt o the Reveries of a Solitary Walker Postoedipal Desire: Reading the Ménage à Trois Autobiography: Writing the Self, Writing Gender

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"Uncovering sides of Rousseau previously hidden in plain sight, Kennedy´s Rousseau in Drag is one of the most exciting books I have read in a very long time. It explodes reigning conceptions of Rousseau´s views on women and gender and will generate healthy debate for years to come." - Helena Rosenblatt, professor of History, The Graduate Center, CUNY

"A bravura close-reading. In place of the blinkered proponent of patriarchy depicted in most of the literature on Rousseau, Kennedy brings to life a paragon of perverse desire a paradoxical and self-contradicting author whose texts belie a deep sexual ambivalence, in passages that are sometime wildly evocative of fluid identities and intimate relations outside of the traditional nuclear family." - James Miller, professor of Political Science and Liberal Studies, New School for Social Research

"Rousseau in Drag delivers an exciting new perspective on the gender dynamics across Rousseau´s oeuvre. Probing the Confessions, Julie, Émile, and shorter essays, Kennedy´s reading both complements and disrupts earlier feminist work on Rousseau by taking seriously his ´perverse´ desires. Without reducing Rousseau´s writings to his biography or psycho-biography, Kennedy interprets Rousseau´s own sexual and performative proclivities as constituting a move beyond the gender binaries that he otherwise seems to reproduce at various points within his texts." - Lori Marso, author of (Un)Manly Citizens and Feminist Thinkers and the Demands of Femininity

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ROSEANNE KENNEDY Adjunct Professor at New York University, USA.

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