Sexuality: Another Useful Category of Analysis in European History

Sexuality: Another Useful Category of Analysis in European History Joanna Bourke. Dismembering the Male: Men's Bodies, Britain, and the Great War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.336 pp. ISBN 0-22606746 -7 (cl). Bernadette J. Brooten. Love between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. xxü + 412 pp. ISBN 0-226-075915 (cl). James R. Farr. Authority and Sexuality in Early Modern Burgundy (15501730 ). New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. viü + 252 pp. ISBN 0-19-408907-3 (cl). FeUcity A. Nussbaum. Torrid Zones: Maternity, Sexuality, and Empire in Eighteenth -Century English Narratives. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. χ + 264 pp. ISBN 0-8018-4075-4 (pb). Robert A. Nye. Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. ix + 316 pp. ISBN 0-19-404649-8 (cl). Victoria Thompson Pick up any catalogue issued by an academic press these days, and you wiU be sure to notice that more and more books on the history of sexuaUty are being pubUshed. Once associated primarily with gay and lesbian history, the study of sexuaUty, Uke the study of women, has moved from a history focused on discovering homosexuals in past societies to one that employs sexuaUty as a category of analysis much Uke that of gender.1 Ii this trend continues, it wiU become increasingly dUficult for historians to ignore this fundamental aspect of human experience when constructing their narratives of the past. The books chosen for this review span a wide time period in European history, and each approaches the topic of sexuality differently. Nonetheless , they do share certain characteristics. AU of the authors have been strongly influenced by women's history and consequently pay close attention to the relationships between sexuaUty and gender. In addition, all of the authors address the work of Michel Foucault. WhUe each of the authors is clearly interested in tracing the development of a "dominant" discourse on sexuality, they are also concerned with the ways in which © 1998 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 9 No. 4 (Winter) 212 Journal of Women's History Winter such discourses are contested or rejected, as weU as their relationship to actual sexual practice. The authors demonstrate a tendency to move away from the essentiatist /social-constructionist debate that has so marked gay and lesbian studies. Although most of the authors impUcitly address the question of whether sexuality is an intrinsic and timeless condition or is defined by sociaUy-constructed betiefs and practices, their primary focus is on the role of sexuaUty in creating social and political distinctions. As a result, these studies reveal how analyses of sexuaUty can shed tight on a variety of broader historical and cultural questions. SexuaUty is used as a category of analysis to examine not only sexual identity, but the poUtical and social identity of individuals and groups as weU. Together, these works raise interesting questions concerning how sexuaUty has been understood and experienced at different times, the role of sexuality in creating poUtical and social hierarchies, and the nature of the relationship between discourse and practice. Of the five works examined in this review, only Bernadette J. Brooten's Love between Women places ifseU explicitly within the context of gay and lesbian history. One of Brooten's goals in this thoroughly-researched and carefuUy-argued study is to draw attention to the existence and experience of women who had erotic relationships with women in the ancient Roman world. Brooten, hoping to correct what she sees as the lack of gender analysis in the work of John BosweU, argues that Romans during the early Christian era were aware of the existence of erotic relationships between women, and that they condemned these relationships as monstrous and unnatural.2 Brooten argues that by focusing on female, rather than male homoeroticism, one can perceive continuities between early Christian writers who elaborated a negative view of female homoeroticism and their non-Christian contemporaries. Brooten argues that early Christian writers adopted existing discourses concerning homoeroticism to recast the boundaries of the Christian community. By drawing on both Jewish and pagan writings concerning same-sex relationships, Paul of Tarsus blurred the difference between...