Graduate Seminar: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800

Critical Survey, 2003

1990

Gayle S, Rubin is a feminist anthropologist who has written on a wide range of subjects, including anthropological theory, s/m sex, and modern lesbian literature. In this essay, first published in 1984, Rubin argues that in the West, the 1880s, the 1950s, and the contemporary era have been periods of sex panic, periods in which the state, the institutions of medicine, and the popular media have mobilized to attack and oppress all whose sexual tastes differ from those allowed by the currently dominative model of sexual correctness. She also suggests that during the contemporary era the worst brunt of the oppression has been borne by those who practice s/m or cross-generational sex. Rubin maintains that if we are to devise a theory to account for the outbreak and direction of sexual panics, we shall need to base the theory on more than just feminist thinking. Although feminist thinking explains gender injustices, it does not and cannot provide by itself a full explanation for the oppression of sexual minorities, Gayle S. Rubin is presently at work on a collection of her essays -including her well-known work of theory, "The Traffic in Women"~--and on a historical and ethnographic account of the gay male leather community of San Francisco.

2012

Mottier, V. 2012. The invention of sexuality. In Chic, chèque, choc. Transactions autour des corps et stratégies amoureuses contemporaines. 23-38. Actes des colloques genre et développement. Berne : DDC-Commission suisse pour l'UNESCO ; Genève : IHEID.

Neuropsychopharmacologia Hungarica : a Magyar Pszichofarmakológiai Egyesület lapja = official journal of the Hungarian Association of Psychopharmacology, 2007

About 50 years of demolition work, it's time now for a return to the grand syntheses. Two of the great syntheses of the 19th century have now been shattered. Marxism lies in fragments. And psychoanalysis has largely drifted outside of psychiatry to find a new and doubtless temporary home in departments of literary studies. To be sure, the third of the great syntheses, Darwin's theory of evolution, remains intact. But otherwise, as far as the eye can see, there is rubble. The time for new attempts at synthesis is now nigh. After decades of pioneering work in the neurosciences, the fundamental importance of brain biology in the human condition has now become evident. Surely one of the new syntheses will draw upon neurochemistry and neurophysiology, and it is to the great credit of the Hungarian neurosciences that pharmacologist Joseph Knoll has now ventured a first attempt. This attempt will be widely discussed and will form the platform for other work that may end up building...

The SAGE Handbook of Historical Theory, 2013

Survey of the field through 2009, from antiquity to the present, worldwide. Historicizes the study of the history of sexuality as a byproduct of the secularization of the academy starting in the late nineteenth century.

Routledge, 2020

One of the oldest examples of sexuality's political potential appears in Aristophanes's comedy Lysistrata, in which the women of Greece are tired of the ongoing war between their cities. Under the unifying leadership of Lysistrata, they declare that they will refuse to have sex with their husbands until the war is over, and miraculously enough, a peace treaty is signed much sooner than expected. The different peoples reconcile with each other, and so do the different sexes. Indeed, sexuality expresses much more than an intimate interaction between two bodies. It also involves various elements such as power, dominance, control, pleasure, and pain-elements that are inherent parts of any human interaction, from relationships between two people to complex social structures. These elements, however, are not static and take diverse shapes and forms according to the time and the place of their emergence. Sexuality changes accordingly in both its praxis and its discourse, interacting with different norms and codes that define what 'legitimate' sexuality is. The interesting question for our purposes, however, is not so much how sexuality is shaped by history-a question that has been studied extensively-but rather how sexuality may in turn shape history. What is the political potential of sexuality, and how can we realize it? In this respect, psychoanalysis may serve as a powerful tool of investigation. Indeed, sexual-ity has occupied a central place in psychoanalysis from the outset, and this place, moreover, has been the focal point of many criticisms and attacks against psychoanalysis. It is as if the way that psychoanalysis conceived of sexuality profoundly disturbed and threatened to reveal something hidden in society. The introduction of infantile sexuality, for instance, provoked outrage and disgust among conservative circles, which accused psychoanalysis of decadence and nihilism and of seeking to destabilize family and sexual norms. Later on, however, a contrary type of criticism was raised, one that considers psychoanalysis to be too conservative and oppressive. Psychoanalysis is actually both revolutionary and conservative, not because of Freud's own personality or other external factors but because of the very nature of what psychoanalysis investigates. On the one hand, it introduces blind forces, which are the drives: Libido (or Eros, the life drive) and Thanatos (the death drive). On the other hand, it focuses on the ways these forces are restricted by social norms and the various symptoms that are caused by these restrictions. Neither wishing to undo these norms nor aspiring to conserve them, psychoanalysis is content with describing the norms. Its aim is to find a cure for the symptoms within existing restrictions rather than to create a society with no symptoms at all.

Radical History Review, 1979

Sexuality-the subject matter seems so obvious that it hardly appears to need comment. An immense and ever-increasing number of "discourses" has been devoted to its exploration and control during the last few centuries, and their very production has, as Foucault points out, been a major characteristic of bourgeois society. Yet, ironically, as soon as we attempt to apply the concept to history, apparently insurmountable problems confront us.