What is sexual history? / Jeffrey Weeks.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Weeks, Jeffrey, 1945- author.

Series:

What is history?

What is history? series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sex--History.

Sex.

History.

Sexual ethics--History.

Sexual ethics.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xi, 187 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA : Polity, 2016.

Summary:

Until the 1970s the history of sexuality was a marginalized practice. Today it is a flourishing field, increasingly integrated into the mainstream and producing innovative insights into the ways in which societies shape and are shaped by sexual values, norms, identities and desires. In this book, Jeffrey Weeks, one of the leading international scholars in the subject, sets out clearly and concisely how sexual history has developed, and its implications for our understanding of the ways we live today. The emergence of a new wave of feminism and lesbian and gay activism in the 1970s transformed the subject, heavily influenced by new trends in social and cultural history, radical sociological insights and the impact of Michel Foucault's work. The result was an increasing emphasis on the historical shaping of sexuality, and on the existence of many different sexual meanings and cultures on a global scale. With chapters on, amongst others, lesbian, gay and queer history, feminist sexual history, the mainstreaming of sexual history, and the globalization of sexual history, What is Sexual History? is an indispensable guide to these developments. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Framing Sexual History 11

Towards a Critical Sexual History 11

Theoretical Detours 13

Bodies 15

Subjectivities and Affect 17

Generations 19

Times Present, Times Past, Times Future 20

2 The Invention of Sexual History 23

The Magic of Words 23

The Natural History of Sexuality 26

The New History 31

The Emergence of Social Constructionism 33

3 Querying and Queering Same-Sex History 38

What is Homosexual History? 38

Recovering the Lesbian and Gay Past and Historic Present 40

Deconstructing and Reconstructing the Homosexual 43

The Queer Challenge 48

Beyond the Binary 50

Making Connections 54

4 Gender, Sexuality and Power 57

Dangers and Pleasures 57

Sexual Violence and Sexual History 58

Historicizing Female Sexuality 61

Sexuality and the Theory Wars 64

Rethinking Power 66

Intersections 68

On Manliness, Masculinity and Men 72

5 Mainstreaming Sexual History 75

Into the Mainstream 75

The Birth of Modern Sexuality? 77

The Normalization of Heterosexuality 81

The Great Transition 84

AIDS and the Burdens of History 88

Same-Sex Marriage and New Patterns of Intimacy 91

6 The Globalization of Sexual History 96

Globalizing Sexual History 96

Historians and Transnational Sexual History 98

Patterns of Sexual History 101

The Colonial Legacy and the Postcolonial Critique 104

Sexual Regimes, Sexual Lives 107

History and Human Sexual Rights 112

7 Memory, Community, Voice 116

Unofficial Knowledges and Counter-History 116

Memory and Community 119

The Sexual Archive 120

Voice 125

Living Sexual History 129.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780745680248

0745680240

9780745680255

0745680259

OCLC:

922836241