An original, compellingly written investigation into Bentham?s various assaults on the prejudices that animate Western political thought and a remarkably eye-opening argument for rescuing Bentham for contemporary queer and radical critique.
Paul Kelleher, Emory University, author of Making Love: Sentiment and Sexuality in Eighteenth-Century British Literature
Carrie Shanafelt has written an elegant, original contribution to "New Bentham Studies," steeped in primary research in both the published and unpublished Bentham archives. Shanafelt brilliantly locates Bentham's advocacy for what he called "sexual nonconformity" in the context of his discourse on rights, and in doing so, offers new readings of both Bentham and of liberalism's human rights discourse
Kathryn D. Temple, Georgetown University, author of Loving Justice: Legal Emotions in William Blackstone’s England
A lively and committed introduction to Bentham?s writings on sexuality and their central place in his oeuvre, and the figure 'Bentham' emerges from it in a surprisingly modern and sympathetic form.
Eighteenth-Century Studies
Rectifies misgivings and misreadings of Jeremy Bentham by providing a comprehensive overview of Bentham?s writings, especially the posthumously published work that interrogated sexual nonconformity... The book?s title responds to Shanafelt?s (and Bentham?s shared) critique of 'common sense,' or a type of 'virtue ethics in which we deny our empirical experience, desire, and judgment in favor of some imagined consensus of people who lack the "bias" of our experiences of oppression' (16). Uncommon sense, at least the type mobilized by Bentham, can become a rallying call that upholds Benthamite radical politics in ways that might be commensurate ?at the very least legible?with conceptions of identity, race, sexuality, and humanity today.
European Romantic Review
Few readers of Uncommon Sense are likely to finish the book without having their preconceptions about its subject fundamentally altered... Bentham emerges here as one of the most challenging and provocative thinkers of the long eighteenth century, particularly in his vision for sexual liberty and 'a kind of queer historiography that is deeply interested in alterity and historicity' (127)... Shanafelt's prose is clear, witty, engaging, and consistently pleasurable to read.
Eighteenth-Century Fiction
