Anda di halaman 1dari 29

Forgetting Foucault: Acts, Identities, and the History of Sexuality Author(s): David M.

Halperin Reviewed work(s): Source: Representations, No. 63 (Summer, 1998), pp. 93-120 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2902919 . Accessed: 24/12/2012 10:46
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Representations.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

DAVID

M. HALPERIN

ForgettingFoucault: Acts, Identities, and the Historyof Sexuality


WHEN JEAN

BAUDRILLARD

PUBLISHED

HIS

INFAMOUS

in March 1977,"Foucault's Forget Foucault, intellectual power," as Baudrillard recalledtenyears later, "was enormous." After ofLa volonte' desavoir, all,thereviews thefirst volumeof MichelFoucault's Historj ofSexuality (published theprevious Atthat November), hadonlyjust started toappear. toBaudrillard's time, according in Cool belatedattempt Memories to redeemhis gaffe and tojustify himself by hisearlier on Foucault portraying attack as having beeninspired, improbably, by sentiments offriendship and generosity-Foucault was being"persecuted," allegin suchcircumstances, ofdisciples and ... sycophants"; Bauedly, by"thousands drillard himwas todo hima service; him "toforget to adulate virtuously insisted, was to do hima disservice."Just howfarBaudrillard waswilling to go in order to render thissort ofunsolicited service to Foucault emerges from another remark of hisinthesamepassage: inhisowngenius.... "Foucault's death. Lossofconfidence is no morethan Leavingthesexualaspects aside,thelossoftheimmune system thebiological oftheother Foucault wasalready washed transcription process."' up and AIDS was merely and visible theoutward bythetimehe died,in other words, moral and intellectual, signofhisinward, decay. Leavingthesexualaspects aside, ofcourse. voiceselsewhere whathe carefully hereabout (Baudrillard freely suppresses "the sexualaspects"ofAIDS: theepidemic, "a he suggests, be considered might form ofviralcatharsis" and "a remedy totalsexualliberation, whichis against sometimes more thanan epidemic, becausethelatter ends.Thus dangerous always AIDS could be understood as a counterforce thetotal elimination ofstructure against and thetotalunfolding of sexuality." Some suchNew Age moralism obviously in CoolMemories thesubtext ofBaudrillard's remarks on thedeath provides vengeful ofFoucault.) at thetime Baudrillard's to forget which was premature injunction Foucault, itwasissued, has since becomesuperfluous. Notthat Foucault is neglected; notthat his workis ignored. in fact.) Foucault's (Quite the contrary, Rather, continuing andthealmost ritualistic invocation ofhisnamebyacademic prestige, practitioners
63 * Summer 1998 C) THE UNIVERSITY

pamphlet,

REPRESENTATIONS

OF CHICAGO.

All rights reserved.

93

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

has had the effect ofreducingtheoperativerange ofhis thought ofculturaltheory, to a small set of receivedideas, slogans,and bits ofjargon thathave now become withFouso commonplace and so familiaras to make a more directengagement we are so farfrom Foucault'stextsentirely dispensable.As a result, remembering cault thatthereis little thepossibility offorgetting him. point in entertaining Take, forexample,thetitleofa recentconference on "Bodies and Pleasuresin Pre- and Early Modernity," held from3 to 5 November 1995 at the University of California,Santa Cruz. "Bodies and pleasures,"as thatfamousphrase occurs in theconcludingparagraphsofFoucault'sHistorj Volume ofSexuality, I, does not in fact of the elementsin questionin the hisdescribe"Foucault's zero-degreedefinition as the posterforthe conferenceconfidently announces. To be toryof sexuality," Volume sure, the penultimatesentenceof The History ofSexualiy, I, findsFoucault when "a different looking forwardto the day,some time in the future, economy [uneautre economie] of bodies and pleasures" will have replaced the apparatus of it will become difficult to understand"how the sexualityand when, accordingly, ruses of sexuality... were able to subject us to that austeremonarchyof sex."3 An incautiousreader mighttake thatphrase, "a different economyof bodies and pleasures,"to denotea mererearrangement ofotherwise unchangedand unchangin theformal ing "bodies and pleasures,"a minormodification designofthesexual in a revisedorganizationofitsperennial "elements" "economy" alone, consisting (as the conferenceposter termsthem). But such an interpretation of Foucault's meaning,thoughsuperficially plausible,is mistaken and in factit runs counter to the entirethrust of his largerargument.The change of which Foucault speaks in the nextto last sentenceof TheHistory ofSexualiy, Volume I, and which he seems fondlyto anticipate,involvesnothingless than the displacementof the current an economythatwillfeature sexual economybya different "bodies economy altogether, and pleasures" insteadof,or at least in additionto, such familiarand overworked entitiesas "sexuality"and "desire." Foucaultmakes it veryclear thatbodies and pleasures,in his conception, are notthe eternalbuildingblocksofsexual subjectivor natural"elements"that ityor sexual experience;theyare not basic, irreducible, human societiesrearrangein different over time and thatour different patterns own societyhas elaborated into the cultural edifice now known as "sexuality" thatmodernsexual discourse Rather,"bodies" and "pleasures"refer to twoentities and practice include but largelyignore,underplay, or pass quicklyover,and that uninvestedby the normalizing accordinglyare relatively undercoded,relatively apparatus of sexuality, especiallyin comparisonto more thoroughly policed and more easilypathologizeditemssuch as "sexual desire."(Or so at least it seemed to in thewake ofthe sexual liberation Foucaultat the timehe was writing, movement ofthelate 1960s and early1970s,whichhad exhorted us to liberateour "sexuality" and to un-repress or desublimateour "desire.") For thatreason, bodies and pleasuresrepresented to Foucaultan opportunity foreffecting, as he saysearlierin the

94

REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

same passage, "a tacticalreversal ofthevariousmechanismsofsexuality," a means ofresistance to the apparatusofsexuality4 In particular, the strategy thatFoucault favorsconsistsin asserting, "against the [various] holds of power,the claims of bodies,pleasures,and knowledges in theirmultiplicity and their possibility ofresistance."' The verypossibility ofpursuingsuch a body-and pleasure-centered strategy of resistanceto the apparatus of sexualitydisappears, of course, as soon as "bodies" and "pleasures" cease to be understood as handyweapons against merely current technologies ofnormalization and attaininsteadto thestatus oftranshistorical componentsof some natural phenomenon or materialsubstrateunderlying "the history of sexuality"itselfSuch a notion of "bodies and pleasures,"so very familiarand uncontroversial and positivistic has it now become, is indeed nothing ifnot eminently forgettable. In what followsI propose to explore anotheraspect of the oblivion that has engulfed Foucault'sthinking about sexuality sincehis death,one particular"forgetting" thathas had important consequences forthe practiceof both the history of and lesbian/gay sexuality studies.I refer to the receptionand deployment of Foucault's distinction betweenthe sodomiteand the homosexual a distinction often takento be synonymous withthedistinction betweensexual acts and sexual identities.The passage in TheHistorjofSexuality, Volume I, in which Foucaultmakes this fateful distinction is so well knownthatit mightseem unnecessaryto quote it,but what that really means, I am contending,is that the passage is in fact so well thatnothingbut directquotationfromit will do. Foucaultwrites, forgotten As defined civil orcanonical wasa category offorbidden bytheancient codes, sodomy acts; their author wasnothing morethanthe juridical ofthem. The nineteenth-century subject homosexual becamea personage a past,a case history and a childhood, a character, a form withan indiscreet of life;also a morphology, and possibly a mysterious anatomy inhistotal hissexuality. in himitispresent: physiology. Nothing beingescapes Everywhere all his actions, and indefinitely becauseit is their insidious underlying activeprinciple; inscribed on hisfaceand on his body, thatalways becauseit is a secret shamelessly gives itself It is consubstantial with lessas a habitual sinthanas a singular away. nature.... him, as one oftheforms ofsexuality whenitwas transposed from the Homosexuality appeared ofsodomy ontoa kindofinterior a hermaphroditism ofthesoul.The practice androgyny, sodomite was a temporary is nowa species. thehomosexual aberration; droits civilou canonique etait un type d'actes [La sodomie celledesanciens interdits; leurauteurn'en 6tait L'homosexuel du XIXe siecleestdevenu un que le sujet juridique. un passe,une histoire et une enfance, de vie; une un caractere, une forme personnage: indiscrete avecune anatomie etpeut-dtre unephysiologic morphologie aussi, mysterieuse. Riende ce qu'il estau total Partout en lui,elleestpr6sente: sousa sa sexualit6. n'6chappe sesconduites insidieux etind6finiment jacentea toutes parcequ'elleen estle principe actif; inscrite sanspudeur sursonvisageetsursoncorps parcequ'elleestun secret qui se trahit Elle lui estconsubstantielle, comme toujours. moins un p6ch6 d'habitude une que comme

and theHistory Forgetting Foucault: Acts,Identities, ofSexuality

95

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

de la sexualite nature singuliere.... L'homosexualit6 estapparuecommeune desfigures surunesorte d'androgynie int6rieure, lorsqu'elle a Wt6 rabattue de la pratique de la sodomie un relaps, 1'homosexuel estmaintenant un hermaphrodisme de I'ame.Le sodomite ftait une espece.]6 Foucault'sformulation is routinely takento authorizethe doctrinethatbeforethe typically employed byEuropean nineteenth century thecategories or classifications among different kinds culturesto articulatesexual difference did not distinguish kinds of sexual acts. In the premodern of sexual actorsbut only among different a and earlymodern periods,so the claim goes, sexual behavior did not represent it did not indicate or expresssome sign or markerof a person's sexual identity; moregeneralizedor holistic feature oftheperson,such as thatperson'ssubjectivity, The patternis clearest, we are told,in the case ofdeviant disposition, or character. forexample,was a sinful act thatanyoneofsufficient depravity sexual acts.Sodomy, of a typeofpersonality. To perform the act mightcommit;it was not a symptom ofsodomywas not to manifest a deviantsexual identity, butmerely to be theauthor ofa morallyobjectionableact.7Whence theconclusionthatbeforethemodernera sexual deviance could be predicatedonlyof acts,not ofpersonsor identities. may There is a good deal of truthin thisreceivedview,and Foucaulthimself even have subscribedto a versionof it at the time he wrote TheHistory ofSexualiy, L8 AlthoughI am about to argue strenuously against it, I want to be very Volume clear thatmyaim is to reviseit,not to reverse it.I do notwant to return us to some or reactionary beliefin the universalvalidityand applicability of unreconstructed modern sexual conceptsor to promotean uncriticalacceptance of the categories of the basic realitiesof human and classifications of sexualityas true descriptors as unproblematic instruments forthehistorical analysis eroticlife and, therefore, to underofhuman culturein all timesand places. It is certainly not myintention mine the principlesand practicesof the new social history, let alone to recantmy of sexual identity previousargumentsforthe historicaland culturalconstitution as providingsupportforthe view I (which have sometimesbeen misinterpreted faithin the shall be criticizing here).Least of all do I wish to revivean essentialist societies personsin Western unqualifiedexistenceofhomosexualand heterosexual beforethe modern era. I take it as establishedthat a large-scaletransformation of social and personal life took place in Europe as part of the massive cultural froma traditional, hierarchical, reorganizationthat accompanied the transition mass societyduringthe period status-basedsocietyto a modern,individualistic, of industrialization and the rise of a capitalisteconomy.One symptomof that as a numberof researchers (both beforeand afterFoucault)have transformation, new happens to the variousrelationsamong sexual pointed out,is thatsomething sexual behaviors,and sexual identiroles,sexual object-choices, sexual categories, and thebegintiesin bourgeoisEurope betweentheend oftheseventeenth century and it ning of the twentieth.9 Sex takes on new social and individual functions, assumesa new importancein defining and normalizingthemodernself.The con96
REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

ceptionofthe sexual instinct as an autonomoushuman function an organ without appears forthe first time in the nineteenthcentury, and withoutit our heavily psychologized model ofsexual subjectivity whichknitsup desire,itsobjects,sexual behavior, genderidentity, reproductive function, mentalhealth,eroticsensibility,personal style,and degrees of normalityor deviance into an individuating, normativizingfeatureof the personalitycalled "sexuality" or "sexual orientation"-is inconceivable.10 Sexualityis indeed, as Foucaultclaimed, a distinctively modernproduction.Nonetheless, the canonical reading of the famouspassage in The HistorjofSexualiy, Volume I, and the conclusionconventionally based on itnamely,thatbeforethe modern era sexual deviance could be predicatedonly of acts, not of persons or identities-is, I shall contend,as inattentive to Foucault's textas it is heedlessof European history. Such a misreadingof Foucault can be constructed only by settingaside and the decisive qualifyingphrase with which his famouspronouncement forgetting opens: 'A4s ancient civil orcanonical codes," Foucaultbegins,"sodomywas defined bythe a categoryof forbiddenacts."" Foucault, in other words,is making a carefully limited point about the differing stylesof disqualificationapplied to male love by premodernlegal definitions of sodomyand by nineteenth-century psychiatric conceptualizations ofhomosexuality, The intendedeffect respectively. ofhis rhetorical extravagancein this passage is to highlight what in particularwas new and distinctive about the modern discursivepracticesthat produced the categoryof "the homosexual."As almostalwaysin TheHistorj ofSexuality, Foucaultis speaking about discursive and institutional practices, notabout whatpeople reallydid in bed or whattheythought about it.He is notattempting to describepopular attitudes or privateemotions,much less is he presumingto conveywhat actuallywent on in themindsofdifferent historical subjects whenthey had sex. He is makinga contrast betweenthe way something called "sodomy" was typically definedby the laws of variousEuropean states and municipalities and byChristian and canon penitentials called "homosexuality" was typically law,on theone hand, and theway something definedby the writings of nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century sexologists,on the other. A glance at the largercontextof the much-excerpted passage in TheHistory of Volume to make Foucault'smeaningclear.Foucaultintroduces I, is sufficient Sexuality, his account of "the nineteenth-century a more homosexual" in orderto illustrate generalclaim,whichhe advances in thesentenceimmediately preceding:the"new persecutionof the peripheralsexualities"that occurred in the modern era was and a new specification accomplishedin part through"an incorporation ofperversions of 1 individuals." 2(Earlier efforts to regulatesexualbehaviordid notfeature suchtactics, accordingto Foucault.)The whole discussionof thisdistinctively modernmethod of sexual controlis embedded, in turn,withina largerargumentabout a crucial shift in the nature as thoseprohibitions were constructed ofsexualprohibitions informal a shift discursive thatoccurredbetweenthepremodern practices, period and thenineFoucault: and theHistory Forgetting Acts,Identities, ofSexuality 97

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

teenthcentury. Comparing medieval moral and legal codifications of sexual relationswithnineteenth-century medical and forensic ones,Foucaultcontrasts various premodernstyles of sexual prohibition, whichtook the formof specifying rules of conduct,makingprescriptions and recommendations, and discriminating between the licitand the illicit,withmodern styles of sexual prohibition. These latter-day strategies tooktheform ofestablishing normsofself-regulation notbylegislating standards of behavior and punishing deviations fromthem but ratherby constructing new species of individuals,discoveringand "implanting"perversions, and thereby elaboratingmore subtle and insidiousmeans of social control.The ultimate purpose ofthecomparisonis to supportFoucault's"historico-theoretical" thatpoweris not onlynegativebut also positive, demonstration not onlyrepressive but also productive. Foucault is analyzingthe different modalitiesofpower at workin premodern and modern codifications of sexual prohibition, which is to say in two historical instancesofsexualdiscourseattachedto institutional He carefully isolates practices. the formaldiscursivesystems that he will proceed to discussfrompopular moral attitudes and behaviorsabout which he will have nothingto say and thathe dismisses fromconsideration with barely a parenthetical glance: "Up to the end of the eighteenth century, threemajor explicitcodes [codes] apartfrom regularities of andconstraints sexualpractices:canon law [droit custom of opinion-governed canonique], Christianpastoral,and civillaw."'3 Foucaultgoes on to expand thisobservation in a passage thatdirectly anticipates and laysthegroundwork forthe famousportrait he will later sketchof the differences between "the sodomy of the old civil and ofmodernpsychiatry, "the nineteenthcanonical codes" and thatnovelinvention centuryhomosexual." Describingthe termsin which premodernsexual prohibitionsdefinedthe scope of theiroperationand the natureof theirtarget, he writes, alikewas a general Whatwas takenintoaccountin theciviland religious jurisdictions Doubtless acts"contrary tonature" werestamped as especially unlawfulness. abominable, form ofacts"against thelaw";they, butthey were as an extreme perceived simply too,were which ofmarriage andwhich ofdecrees decrees were as those infringements justas sacred hadbeenestablished in order toruletheorder ofthings andtheplanofbeings. Prohibitions 14 on sexwerebasically ofa juridical nature bearing [denaturejuridique]. This passage preparesthereaderto gauge thedifferences betweenthese"juridical" to nature'" and thenineteenth-century prohibitions against"acts" " 'contrary prohibitions whichdid not simplycriminalizesexual relations againsthomosexuality, betweenmen as illegal but medicallydisqualifiedthemas pathologicaland not theperpetrator as a deviantformof content withpenalizingthe act constructed an anomalous species,thereby life,a perversepersonality, producinga new specififrom now on byreference cationofindividualswhose truenaturewouldbe defined of the subject, to theirabnormal "sexuality." The nineteenth-century disciplining thoughitpurportedto aim at theeradicationof "peripheral sexualities," paradoxi-

98

REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

cally requiredtheirconsolidationand "implantation" or "incorporation"in individuals,foronlyby thatmeans could the subject'sbody itself become so deeply, so minutely invaded and colonized by the agencies of normalization.The discursive construction ofthenew sexual perversions was therefore a ruse ofpower,no longer simply prohibiting behaviorbut now also controlling, regulating, and normalizing embodied subjects.As Foucaultsumsup his argument, "The implantation ofperis an instrument-effect: itis through versions theisolation, and conintensification, solidationof peripheralsexualitiesthatthe relationsof power to sex and pleasure branched out and multiplied, measured the body and penetratedmodes of conduct."'5 Want an example? Take the case of homosexuality. "The sodomyof the old civil and canonical codes was a categoryof forbidden acts; theirauthor was nothingmorethanthejuridical subjectofthem.The nineteenth-century homosexual became a personage." So that'show the overallargument works. Foucaultnarrowly his comparisonbetweensodomyand homosexuality frames with the purpose of this larger argumentin mind. The point-by-point contrast betweenlegal discourse(codes and droits) and psychiatric between discourse, juridical subjectsand sexual subjects,between laws and norms,between acts contraryto natureand embodied subjectsor speciesofindividualsis ruthlessly schematic: that schematicreductionis in keeping with the general design of the first volume of in an admittedly Foucault'sHistory, whichmerelyoutlines, preliminary and tentativefashion, theprinciples intendedto guide theremainingfiveunfinished studies thatFoucaultprojectedforhisHistory at thetime.His schematic opposition between a discursiveanalysis,not a social is first and foremost sodomyand homosexuality history, letalone an exhaustive an empirical one. It is not claim about the historical existence ornonexistence deviant individuals. It is a claim about the internallogic and ofsexually systematic functioning oftwodifferent discursive ofsexual disqualification styles it a and, ultimately, is heuristic device forforegrounding what is distinctive about moderntechniquesofsocial and sexual regulation. As such,itpointsto a historical developmentthatwill need to be properly exploredin its own right(as Foucault intendedto do in a separate volume) and it dramatizesthe largerthemesof Foucault's Historj:the historical of normalizationover law,the decentralizatriumph tionand dispersion ofthemechanisms ofregulation, thedisciplining ofthemodern subject,the traversal of sexuality by relationsof power,the productivity of power, and the displacement ofstatecoercionby the technicaland bureaucraticadminisoflife("biopower").By documenting tration the existenceofboth a discursive and a temporalgap betweentwo dissimilarstyles of defining, and disqualifying, male same-sexsexual expression, thehistorical Foucaulthighlights and politicalspecificboth as a culturalconceptand as a tacticaldevice,and so he contriityofsexuality, butes to the task of "introducing"the historyof sexualityas a possible fieldof and politicalproject.NothingFoucaultsaysabout study and as a radical scholarly the differences between those two historically distant,and operationallydistinct,

Foucault: and theHistory ofSexuality Forgetting Acts,Identities,

99

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

discursive strategies forregulating and delegitimating forms ofmale same-sexsexual contacts prohibitsus frominquiring into the connections that premodern people may have made between specificsexual acts and the particularethos,or sexual style, ofthosewho performed them. or sexual subjectivity, A more explicitargumentto thiseffect was advanced nearlya decade ago by in oppositionless to Foucaultthanto thealreadycurrent JohnJ. Winkler, dogmatic and carelessreadingsof Foucault.Winkler, a classical scholar,was discussingthe a "scare-image" (or or cinaedus, ancient Greek and Roman figureof the kinaidos of a sexuallydeviant and gender-deviant phobic construction) male, whose most salientdistinguishing feature was a supposedly"feminine"love of being sexually "Scholars ofrecentsex-gender Winklerwrote penetrated by othermen.16 history," in his 1990 book, The Constraints ofDesire, "have assertedthatpre-modern systems classified not personsbut acts and that 'the' homosexual as a person-category is a recentinvention." He wenton to qualifythatassertionas follows: The kinaidos, to be sure, is nota "homosexual" butneither is hejustan ordinary guywho now and thendecidedto commit a kinaidicact. The conception of a kinaidos was of a in hisentire in behavior mansocially deviant being, principally observable that flagrantly thedominant To this violated orcontravened socialdefinition ofmasculinity. kinaidos extent, not 17 was a category ofperson, justofacts. Ancient Mediterranean societies,of course, did not exactlyhave "categoriesof person," types of blank individuals, in the modern sense, as Winkler himself Winklerexplained,depended pointed out. The ancientconceptionof the kinaidos, in which, It arose in thecontextofa beliefsystem on indigenousnotionsofgender. first of all, the two genders are conceived as opposite ends of a much-traveled is thought continuumand, second,masculinity to be a difficult accomplishmentakin to warfareagainst enemies one that is achieved only by a constantstruggle in orderto maintain. bothinternaland external and thusrequiresgreatfortitude In a situationwhere it is so hard, both personallyand culturally, to be a man, Winklerobserved,"the temptation to desertone's side is verygreat."The kinaidos succumbedto thattemptation. could be conceived by the ancients in both universalizingand The kinaidos terms as a potentialthreatto the masculine identity of everymale, minoritizing thatis, and as the disfiguring of a small class of deviantindividuals.'8 peculiarity Because ancientMediterraneandiscoursesof sex and genderfeaturedthe notion that"the twosexesare not simply which oppositebut standat poles ofa continuum can be traversed," as Winklerpointed out, " 'woman' is not onlythe oppositeof a 'internalemigre ofmasculineidentity."9 man; she is also a potentially threatening The prospectof losing one's masculine gender statusand being reduced to the a universalpossibility social ranksofwomen therefore forall men. In represented such a context,the figureof the kinaidos standsas a warningto men of what can to mastertheirdesiresand if happen to themiftheygive up the internalstruggle 100
REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

in womanlyfashion, theysurrender, to the lure ofpleasure. The clear implication of thiswarningis thatthe onlythingthatprevents men fromallowing othermen to use them as objects of sexual degradation,the only thingthat enables men to resistthe temptation to let othermen fuckthemlike whores,is not the nature of theirown desires, or theirown capacitiesforsexual enjoyment, buttheirhard-won masculine abilityto withstand the seductiveappeal ofpleasure-at-any-price. The on thisview,is not someone who has a different sexual orientation from kinaidos, othermen,or who belongsto some autonomoussexual species.Rather,he is someone who represents what everjman would be like if he were so shameless as to the sacrificehis dignityand masculine gender statusfor the sake of gratifying most odious and disgraceful, thoughno doubt voluptuous, bodily appetites.Such a worthless characteris so radical and so completea failureas a man thathe can be understood,at least by the ancients,as whollyreversing the internalgender hierarchy thatstructures and defines normative masculinity for men and thatmaintains it against manifoldtemptations to effeminacy. The catastrophicfailureof male self-fashioning thatthekinaidos represents is so complete,in otherwords,that it cannot be imagined as merelyconfinedwithinthe sphere of eroticlife or reto the occasional performance stricted of disreputablesexual acts: it definesand in its totality, determinesa man's social identity and it generatesa recognizable social ytpe namely, the "scare-image"and phobic stereotype ofthekinaidos, which Winklerso eloquently described. As themereexistence ofthestereotype implies, theancientswerequite capable ofconceptualizing thefigure ofthe kinaidos, when theyso desired,not onlyin anxiouslyuniversalizing termsbut also in comfortably minoritizing ones. Although some normal men mightacknowledgethatthe scandalous pleasures to whichthe kinaidos succumbed,and which normal men properlyavoided, were universally stillthe veryfactthatthe kinaidos did succumb pleasurable in and ofthemselves,20' to such pleasures,whereasnormalmen did not,contributed to defining his differfrom ence, and it also marked out the vast distance that separated the kinaidos normalmen.Just as somemodernsmaythink whereasanyonecangetaddicted that, to drugs, onlypeople who have something fundamentally wrongwiththemactually do,so some ancientsevidently thought that,althoughthepleasuresof sexual penein themselves be universally tration might pleasurable,anymale who actuallypurfroma specific sued themsuffered constitutional defect -namely, a constitutional lack ofthe masculinecapacityto withstand the appeal ofpleasure (especially pleasure deemed exceptionallydisgraceful or degrading) as well as a constitutional in relationswith feminineattitudeof surrender tendencyto adopt a specifically othermen. Hence, the desire to be sexuallypenetratedby othermen, whichwas themostdramaticand flagrant could signofthekinaidos's constitutional femininity, be interpreted termsas an indicationof a by the ancientsin sharplyminoritizing physiologicalanomaly in the kinaidos or as the symptomof a moral or mental "disease.""' Conceived in theseterms, thekinaidos did notrepresent thefrightening ofSexuality Forgetting Foucault: Acts,Identities, and theHistory 101

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

possibility of a failureof nerve on the part of everyman, a collapse in the face of the ongoingstruggle thatall men necessarily waged to maintainand defendtheir masculinity; he was simplya peculiar,repugnant, and perplexingfreak, drivento in pursuitof a pleasure thatno one but a abandon his sexual and genderidentity woman could possiblyenjoy.(And therewere even some abominable practices, like fellatio, which a kinaidos mightrelishbut no decent woman would so much as contemplate.) The details in this minoritizing conceptionof the kinaidos have been filledin with great skill and documented at fascinating lengthby Maud Gleason, most in her 1995 book, Making Men. "The essentialidea here,"writesGleason, recently Winkler's and calling corroborating emphasison thegenderdevianceofthekinaidos the attention to whatshefittingly terms ancient"semiotics ofgender"thatproduced as a visiblydeviantkind ofbeing,"is thatthereexist [accordingto the the kinaidos axioms ofGreekand Roman social life]masculineand feminine 'types'thatdo not necessarily correspondto the anatomical sex ofthepersonin question."""Gleason froman unexpected and original scholarly approaches the figureof the kinaidos a close study angle namely, from oftheneglectedscientific writings oftheancient physiognomists, expertsin thelearned techniqueofdeciphering a person'scharacterfrom his or herappearance. Gleason's analysisofthe ancientcorpusofphysiognomic textsmakes clear thattheportrait theyconstruct ofthefigure ofthekinaidos featurescommonlyascribed by the ancientsto the agrees with the stereotypical or "effeminate" men. Like such men, the general appearance of gender-deviant or so the Greeksthought, kinaidos could be identified, by a varietyof physicalfeahead tiltedto the right, hands limply tures:weak eyes,knees thatknocktogether, upturned,and hips that eitherswing fromside to side or are held tightly rigid. Latin physiognomy agrees largelywiththe Greek traditionin its enumerationof 'A tiltedhead, a mincinggait,an enervated thecharacteristics ofthecinaedus: voice, in theshoulders, a lack ofstability and a feminine wayofmovingthebody."Gleason adds thata kinaidos could also be knownby certainspecific mannerisms: in sheep-like fashion when he speaks; tohis He shifts hiseyes around he touches hisfingers all traces ofspittle he mayfind his ownor anyone elobliterates nose;he compulsively it into the dustwithhis heel; he frequently se's by rubbing stopsto admirewhathe whiletalking; hisownbestfeature; he smiles he holdshisarmsturned considers furtively other he laughsoutloud; and he has an annoying habitofclasping outwards; peopleby thehand.23 in short,is considerably more than the juridical subject of deviant The kinaidos, at the very sexual acts. To recurto Foucault'sterminology, the kinaidos represents As Gleason observes,"Foucault'sdescription ofthe least a full-blown morphology.
nineteenth-century homosexual fitsthe cinaedus remarkably well.... The cinaedus

all to himself, all overhim in signs was a 'life-form' and his conditionwas written that could be decoded by those practiced in the art." Gleason hastens to add, that "what made [the cinaedus] different fromnormal folk. . . was not however, 102
REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

simplythefactthathis sexual partnersincludedpeople of the same sex as himself (that,after all, was nothingout oftheordinary), norwas itsome kind ofpsychosexual orientation a 'sexuality'in the nineteenth-century sense but ratheran inversionor reversal ofhis genderidentity: his abandonmentofa 'masculine' role in 24 favorof a 'feminine'one." Gleason's conclusionhas now been massively confirmed by Craig Williams,a specialistin ancientRoman literature, who has undertakenan exhaustivesurvey oftheextantLatin sources.Williams'scarefuldiscussionmakes clear thatthecategory of cinaedus does not map easily onto modern sexual taxonomies: "When a Roman called a man a cinaedus," Williams explains, "he was not ruling out the that the man mightplay sexual roles otherthan that of the receptive possibility partnerin anal intercourse." Hence, his thecinaedus was notthesamething as the"passive sinceitwas neither homosexual," ofsexualdesire for other thereceptive role expression malesnorhisproclivity for playing in anal intercourse thatgave him his identity or uniquely defined him as a cinaedus: he might engagein sexualpractices withwomenand stillbe a cinaedus, and a man did not automatically becomea cinaedus simplybybeingpenetrated (victims ofrape,for example, A cinaedus would notbe described as such). was,rather, a manwhofailed tobe fully mascuin suchsymptoms line,whoseeffeminacy showed itself as feminine clothing and mannerisms anda lascivious andover-sexed demeanor that waslikely todisplay itself in a proclivity thereceptive rolein anal intercourse. for in other a prominent Cinaedi playing were, words, oftheclassof"effeminate" subset tothat class.25 ... buthardly men(rnolles) identical whole Whateverits superficial resemblancesto various contemporary sexual life-forms, the ancient figureof the cinaedus or kinaidos properlybelongs in its own cultural an extinctcategoryof social, sexual, and genderdeviance. universe.It represents In fact,the kinaidos has not as yetbroughtus quite into the realm of deviant or minoritizing sexual subjectivity. For whetherhe was definedin universalizing the kinaidos was in any case definedmore in termsof genderthan in terms terms, of desire.Althoughhe was distinguished from normalmen in part by thepleasure in and his peculiar tastewas not sufficient, he took in being sexuallypenetrated, ofitself, to individuate him as a sexual subject.Rather, itwas a generic sign offeinininiy. with other Even the kinaidos's desireto play a receptiverole in sexual intercourse a distinctive as men whichwas about as close to manifesting sexual orientation a symptom ofthedeeper thekinaidos evergot represented to theancients"merely his gender deviance," as Williams emphasizes,and so did not implya disorder, kind of specifically At once a symptom and a consedifferent sexual subjectivity. the quence of the kinaidos's categoricalreversalof his masculine gender identity, thekinaidos as womanlyin bothhisgender desireto be sexually identified penetrated him as thebearer and his sexual desire;beyondthatit did not distinguish identity Neitherdid his lustforbodilypleasure,since far of a unique or distinct sexuality. frombeing considereda deviant desire,as we have seen, such lust was thought sexual common to all men. Nor was thereanything peculiar about the kinaidos's ofSexuality and theHistory Foucault: Forgetting Acts,Identities, 103

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

as Gleason mentions, object-choice: itwas quite possiblein theancientMediterranean world fora male to desire and to pursue sexual contactwith othermales as a or normative identity without impugningin theslightest his own masculinity man just so long as he played an insertive sexual role, observed all the proper phallocentricprotocolsin his relationswith the objects of his desire,and mainUnlike the modern tained a normatively masculine styleofpersonal deportment. was notdefined byhis sexual subjectivity. homosexual,then,thekinaidos principally betrayalofhis Even without a sexual subjectivity ofhis own,however, thekinaidos's him was so spectacularas to brand a deviant type of masculine gender identity all overhis face and body.To put itvery person and to inscribehis deviantidentity an instance of deviant sexual morphology the kinaidos schematically, represents without deviantsexual subjectivity. well receivedby (In an ongoingseriesof essays,much discussedand generally professional classicists in theUnited States,AmyRichlin has assailed thehistorical workofWinkler, myself, and our collaborators[suchas Gleason], all ofwhom she lumps together under the uncomplimentary, not to say phobic, titleof "Foucaulofthekinaidos from the tians.""6 She faults us in particular forapproachingthefigure a material standpointof ancientsexual discourses;she prefers to see in thatfigure whichsheregardsas a useful category foranalyzembodimentof"homosexuality," ing ancientsocieties althoughshe concedes that"therewas no ancientword for about 'homosexual.'"27 Much could be said about thegaps in Richlin'sargument, its simplistic treatment of the interpretative issues,or about its unappetizingbut positivism witha more evidently highly palatable combinationofan old-fashioned fashionableblend of political and professional The only point I opportunism.28 want to make here about Richlin'scritiqueis thatit is doublyignorantand misinformed wrong,thatis, both about Foucaultand about so-called Foucaultians.In the first that in the famouspassage fromThe place, Richlin claims, mistakenly, HistorjofSexuality, Volume ... betweenbehavior and I, "Foucault is distinguishing essence." In the second place, she maintainsthat accounts of sex in antiquity by "Foucaultians" such as Winklerand myself "startfromthisaxiom."29In fact,as I Foucaultwas notdistinguishing so metaphysihave triedto show, betweenanything cal as behaviorand essence but simplybetweentwo different discursivestrategies far fromadhering fordisqualifying male love. Winklerand Gleason, moreover, to theerroneous uncritically readingofFoucaultthatRichlinpropounds,explicitly themisapplication ofsucha pseudo-Foucauldian"axiom" to theinterprechallenged I made tationof thefigure And in OneHundred Years of the kinaidos. ofHomosexualitj a rigorousdistinction in the modern sense and the between a sexual orientation kinds of sexual identity I argued, currentin the ancient Greek world; the latter, tended to be determinedby a person'sgender and social statusratherthan by a I was carefulto emphasizein a numberofpassages personalpsychology. Moreover, thatitwas possibleforsexual acts to be linkedin variouswayswitha sexual disposiRichlin's"Foucaultionor sexual subjectivity well beforethenineteenth century.3' 104
REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

tians,"no lessthanherFoucault,are theproductand projection ofherown misreadings. Why her misreadingshave been so widely, and so uncritically, acclaimed is anotherquestion,an interesting one in its own right, but this is not the place to pursue it.) Let's move on, then,from matters ofsexual morphology and genderpresentation and take up at last questionsof sexual subjectivity. My chiefexhibitin this latterdepartmentwill be an ancient eroticfable told by Apuleius in the second centuryand retoldby Giovanni Boccaccio in the fourteenth. The two textshave been the subjectof a trenchant comparativestudybyJonathanWaltersin a 1993 issue of Gender andHistorj;I have taken his analysisas the basis of my own, and my interpretation closelyfollowshis, althoughI have a somewhatdifferent set of questionsto put to the two texts.3'Here, first of all, in bare outline,is the plot of the eroticfableunder scrutiny. A man diningout at the home of a friend findshis dinnerinterrupted whenhis hostdetectsan adulterous loverconcealed in thehouse by the host'swife,who had not expected her husband to arrivehome fordinner, muchlesswitha guestin tow;thedisappointedguestthenreturns to his own house fordinnerahead of schedule and tellsthe storyto his righteously indignantwife, onlyto discoverthatshe herself has hidden in his house a youngloverof her own. Instead of threatening to kill the youth,however, the husband fuckshim and lets him go. The end. This bare summary does little justice to theartistry and witwith whichthe storiesare toldby theirrespective authors,but thepoint I wish to make is a historical one, not a literary one. I trust itwill emergefrom thefollowing comparison.

Apuleius's tale of the baker's wife in book 9 of The Golden Ass begins with a ofher lover.He is a boy (puer), description Apuleius'snarratortellsus, stillnotable fortheshinysmoothness ofhis beardlesscheeks,and stilldelighting and attracting thesexual attention ofwaywardhusbands(adulteros).32 Accordingto theerotic postulates of ancient Mediterraneansocieties,then, therewill be nothing out of the him sexuallydesirable.So thefirst ordinaryabout a normal man finding thingto note is thatApuleius explains the sexual motivationof the wrongedhusband by reference to eroticqualities inherentin the sexual object, to any not by reference characteristics ofthesexualsubject not,in otherwords, distinguishing byreference to the husband's own eroticsubjectivity. The point of specifying the attractiveness oftheboy is to prepareforthe endingofthe story thehusband without portraying as different in his sexual tastesfrom normal men. In fact,as Waltersobserves,the husband "is not describedin any way thatmarks him out as unusual, let alone he is portrayed reprehensible: as blameless,'a good man in generaland extremely temperate'"; thisis in keepingwitha story designed,withinthe largercontextof to illustrate themischief caused to theirhusbandsby devious, Apuleius'snarrative, When the baker discoversthe boy,he locks up depraved,and adulterouswives.33 his wifeand takes the boy to bed himself, thereby (as Apuleius's narratorputs it) and theHistory ofSexuality Foucault: Forgetting Acts,Identities, 105

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

enjoying"the most gratifying revengeforhis ruined marriage."At daybreakhe summonstwoofhis slavesand has themhold theboy up whilehe flogs his buttocks witha rod,leavingtheboy "withhis whitebuttocks theworsefortheirtreatment" both by nightand by day. The baker then kicks his wife out of the house and preparesto divorceher (9.28). Boccaccio's tale of Pietrodi Vinciolo of Perugia,the Tenth Storyof the Fifth Day of the Decameron, is based directly on Apuleius; its departuresfromits model are therefore especiallytelling.34 Boccaccio's narrator begins further back in time, at the point when Pietro takes a wife "more to beguile othersand to abate the than generalsuspect[la generate oppinion] in whichhe was held by all the Perugians, forany desire [vaghezza] As Waltersremarks, of his own" (trans.Payne-Singleton). "Boccaccio ... is at pains to tell us fromthe beginningthatsomethingis wrong with the husband."35 What Boccaccio marksspecifically as deviantabout Pietro, This turns or so the foregoing quotation fromtheDecameron implies,is his desire.36 out to referto his sexual object-choice and to comprehend,in particular,two different the customaryobjects of his sexual desire are young aspects of it: first, men,nottheusual objectsofdesirefora man, and, second,Pietro(unlikethebaker in Apuleius) has no desire forthe usual objects of male desire namely, women. So he desiresthe wrong objects, and he doesn't desire the rightobjects. Both of theseeroticerrors are dramatizedbythenarrative. We are toldthathis wife'slover is "a youth[garzone], who was one ofthe goodliestand mostagreeable of all Perugia," and that when Pietro discovershim, he instantly recognizes him as "one whom he had long pursued forhis own lewd ends." Understandably, Pietro "no less rejoiced to have foundhim than his wifewas woeful";when he confronts her with the lad, "she saw thathe was all agog withjoy because he held so goodly a stripling bythehand." No wonderthatfarfrom punishinghis wifePietro [giovinetto] hastens to strikean obscene bargain with her to share the young man between them.As forPietro'ssexual indifference to women,we are told thathis lusty, redhaired, highlysexed youngwife,"who would lieferhave had two husbands than and realizes thatshe will exhaust one," is frustrated by her husband's inattention herself arguingwithhim beforeshe will change his disposition. Indeed, he has "a mind farmore disposed otherwhat than to her [molto dhe a leil'animo avea pil ad altro ." At theculminationofthestory, Pietro'swifereproacheshim forbeing as disposto] ii candelle desirousofwomen as "a dog of cudgels [cosivago di noicome ." mazze] is Note thatBoccaccio's narratorsays nothingto indicate that Pietro effeminate, or in any way deviantin termsof his personal styleor sexual morphology."' You wouldn'tknow he was a pederast or a sodomiteby looking at him: nothing about his looks or his behaviorgiveshim away or giveshis wifeany advance warnAs she says,she had supposed he ing about the nature of his sexual peculiarities. desired what men do and should desire when she married him; otherwise,she would never have done so: "He knew I was a woman," she exclaims to herself; ifwomenwerenotto his mind [contro "why, then,did he takeme to wife, all'animo]?" 106
REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Nothing in his morphologymade her suspecthe harbored deviant desires.And signsofeffeminacy? whyin anycase shouldwe imagine thehusbandwould exhibit forethan does his literary the ancientfigure ofthe kinaidos He no more resembles "feminine" inclination to submit displaying a supposedly bear in Apuleius:farfrom by them,thehusband in Boccaccio himself to othermen to be sexuallypenetrated all, is role in intercourse withhis wife'slover.That, after plays a sexuallyinsertive morningthe youthwas espunchline: "On the following the point of the story's certainwhichhe had themorebeen cortedback to thepublic square notaltogether toPietro's toPietro or husband thatnight, wifeor husband" meaning,obviously, wife What is at issue in Boccaccio's portraitof Pietro di Vinciolo, then,is not wife.39 genderdeviance but sexual deviance. Finally,in Apuleius's tale the husband's enjoymentof his wife's lover is an incidentalcomponentofhis revengeand does not expressany special or distinctive whereas in Boccaccio's sexual taste on his part, much less a habitual preference, sexual desiresand is onlytoo as thesubjectofdeviant tale thehusbandis identified forthepurposes ofhis own pleasure."' happy to exploithis wife'sinfidelity A comparisonof these two premoderntextsindicates that it is possible for in such textsas eithermore or lessrelatedto sexual sexual acts to be represented textmakes no incrimiWhereas Apuleius's dispositions, desires,or subjectivities. of the adulterousyouth natingassociationbetweenthe baker's sexual enjoyment or sexual disposition, Boccaccio's textconmasculinity, and thebaker'scharacter, ofsodomiticalacts witha deviantsexual tasteand a deviant nectstheperformance In orderto update Apuleius'splot it seems to have been necessexual subjectivity. on thehusband's or inclination Boccaccio toposita sodomiticaldisposition saryfor part; he seems to have had no other way of motivatingthe scandalouslywitty it fromApuleius. Pietro'sinclinationis conclusionof the tale as he had inherited or formof much less a sexual identity not the same thingas a sexual orientation, his sexualpreference seemscontained,compartmentlife,to be sure:forone thing, such alized, and does not appear to connectto any otherfeatureof his character, or a a set of personal mannerisms, a styleof genderpresentation, as a sensibility, men a notable taste for Pietro's sexual young represents Nonetheless, psychology.4 featureof his life as a sexual subject,as well as a and perhaps even a defining distinctive featureof his life as a social and ethical subject. Pietromay not be a to his gender liketheancientGreekor Roman kinaidos a traitor deviantlife-form, in his but neitheris he is inscribed demeanor whose deviance visibly personal for merelythejuridical subjectof a sodomiticalact. Rather,his sexual preference fact about his social youthsis a settledfeatureof his characterand a significant as a moral and sexual agent.42 identity To sum up, I have triedto suggestthat the currentdoctrinethat holds that is beforethe nineteenth century sexual acts were unconnectedto sexual identities as mistakenin at least twodifferent respects. First,sexual acts could be interpreted ofSexuality and theHistory Foucault: Forgetting Acts,Identities, 107

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

representative expressionsof an individual's sexual morphology. Second, sexual acts could be interpreted as representative expressionsof an individual's sexual A sexual morphology subjectivity. is notthesame thingas a sexual subjectivity: the figureof the kinaidos, forexample, represents an instanceof deviantmorphology withoutsubjectivity, whereasBoccaccio's Pietrorepresents an instanceof deviant subjectivity withoutmorphology. Thus, morphologyand subjectivity, as I have been usingthose terms, describetwo different logics accordingto which sexual acts can be connectedto some more generalizedfeatureof an individual'sidentity. In particular, I've argued thattheancientfigure ofthekinaidos qualifiesas an instance of a sexual life-form or morphologyand that the propertyof kinaidia (or being a kinaidos) is accordinglya propertyof social beings, not merelyof sexual acts. the kinaidos Nonetheless, whatdefines is not a unique or peculiar subjectivity, but a shamelessappetiteforpleasure,whichis common to all human beings,along with a deviantgender-style, whichassimilateshim to the culturaldefinition ofwoman. The sodomiticalcharacterof Boccaccio's Pietrodi Vinciolo, by contrast, does not a deviantmorphologybut through his sexual tastes, expressitself through prefera deviantsubjectivity. ences, or desires thatis, through Neitherthesexual morphology ofthekinaidos nor thesexual subjectivity ofthe Italian sodomiteshould be understoodas a sexual identity, or fourteenth-century a sexual orientation in the modern sense much less as equivalentto the modern formation knownas homosexuality. At theveryleast,modernnotionsofhomosexand homosexual orientation ual identity tend to insiston the conjunction of sexual morphologyand sexual subjectivity: theypresume a convergencein the sexual " In fact, whathistoriactorofa deviantpersonalstyle witha devianteroticdesire. is itsunprecedented as a sexual classification cally distinguishes "homosexuality" and previously combinationofat least threedistinct uncorrelated conceptualentities: (1) a psychiatric orientation, notion of a pervertedor pathologicalpsychosexual derivedfromnineteenth-century medicine,which applies to the inner life of the entailsame-sexsexual behavioror desire;(2) a individualand does not necessarily or desire,derivedfromSignotion of same-sexsexualobject-choice psychoanalytic mund Freud and his coworkers, which is a categoryof eroticintentionality and does not necessarily implypathologyor deviance (since,accordingto Freud,most normal individualsmake an unconscioushomosexualobject-choiceat some point in their derived fantasy lives);and (3) a sociologicalnotionofsexuallydeviant behavior, fromnineteenthand twentieth-century forensic inquiriesinto "social problems," refer to eroticpsychology whichfocuseson sexual practiceand does notnecessarily to meettherequirements or psychosexual orientation. Despite theirseveralfailures and Boccaccio's Pieofthemoderndefinition of thehomosexual,both thekinaidos tro,in theirquite different and distinctive ways,challenge the orthodoxpseudoFoucauldian doctrineabout the supposedlystrict separationbetween sexual acts in European culturebeforethe nineteenth and sexual identities century. claim in does not refute Foucault's about the different My argument, short, 108
REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

bythediscourseof"the ancientcivil was constructed waysmale same-sexeroticism Nor does sexology. or canonical codes" and bythediscourseofnineteenth-century acts and sexual betweensexual indispensabledistinction it demolishtheabsolutely identitiesthat historiansof homosexualityhave extractedfromFoucault's text nowhereoccurs)and that,in anycase, antedateditbymany (wherethetermidentity approach to the historicizing years.t4 Least of all does it underminea rigorously and of sexual subjectivity sexual idenstudyofthe social and culturalconstitution with tity. (WhateverI may be up to in thispaper, a posthumousrapprochement John Boswell is not it.)What my argumentdoes do, I hope, is to encourage us to beforethe emergenceof sexual of sexual identities inquire into the construction and notions of sexualityor to modern orientations, to do this without recurring to a kind of antihistoricist backlash. and thereby contributing sexual orientation witha more refined our notionof sexual identity Perhapswe need to supplement semi-identity, identity, transient identity, emergent concept of,say, partialidentity, In any case, my intentis not proto-identity, or sub-identity.45 incompleteidentity, a notionofsexual identity as a historical category so muchas to indicate to reinstall sexandidentiy, a multiplicity whose between the historical connections ofpossible multiplicity crifocused,totalizing existencehas been obscuredby the necessarybut narrowly as a unitaryconcept.We need to findways of askinghow tique of sexual identity sortsof linksbetweensexual acts, different historical culturesfashioneddifferent characters, genderpresentaon theone hand, and sexual tastes, dispositions, styles, on the other. tions,and forms of subjectivity, distinction beIt is a matterof considerableironythat Foucault'sinfluential construction of the sodomiteand the discursive construction tweenthe discursive been intendedto open up a domain of of the homosexual,which had originally researchinto has now become a major obstacleblockingfurther historical inquiry, in and modern Eurothe rudiments of sexual identity formation premodern early would surelyhave been astonished.Not onlywas pean societies.Foucaulthimself everto have authorizedthe incautiousand implauhe much too good a historian a sexual morphology, or sible claim thatno one had everhad a sexual subjectivity, if thenineteenth a sexual identity ofanykindbefore century (even he painstakingly a psychosexual thatthe conditionsnecessaryforhaving a sexualit, demonstrated in the modern sense,did not in factobtain until then).His approach orientation to the historyof the presentwas also too searching,too experimental,and too open-ended to tolerate convertinga heuristicanalytic distinctioninto an illto do. foundedhistorical epigoneshave not hesitated dogma, as his more forgetful is Of course,the chiefthingabout Foucaultthathis self-styled disciplesforget That is the factabout Foucault more ofsexuality. thathe did notpropounda theory in theUnited Statesand Britain, as Foucaulthas become,especially easilyforgotten of those,in otherwords, of academic criticaltheorists theproperty theproperty derivesfrom the reflected titleof "theorist" whose claim to the professional status, ofSexuality and theHistory Acts,Identities, Forgetting Foucault: 109

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

authority, and "theoretical"credentials of the thinkers theystudy. As one of those thinkers whose identity as a "theorist"is necessaryto groundthe secondaryand derived"theoretical"statusof others, Foucaultis requiredto have a theory. Theories,after all, are what "theorists" are supposed to have. Now Foucault'sHistory of Volume I, is perforce theoretical, inasmuch as it undertakes a far-reaching Sexuality, in the realm of theory. criticalintervention It is, more specifically, an effort to dislodgeand to thwart the effects ofestablished theories theories thatattempt to tell us the truthabout sexuality, to produce true accounts of its nature,to specify whatsexuality as a positivethingthathas a truth reallyis, to inquire into sexuality that can be told, and to ground authoritative formsof expertisein an objective in approaching knowledgeofsexuality. Foucault'sradical takeon sexuality consists it fromtheperspective ofthe history of discourses, treating it accordingly not as a positive thingbutas an instrumental effect, notas a physical or psychological reality butas a social and politicaldevice: Foucaultis not trying to describewhatsexuality is but to specify whatit does and how it worksin discursive and institutional praca theoretical tice. That approach to sexualityrepresents intervention insofaras it engages withalreadyexistingtheories of sexuality, but the natureofthe engagement to effect a thoroughgoing remainspurelytactical:itis part ofa largerstrategic effort evasion of theoriesof sexualityand to devise variousmeans of circumventing their the truthof sexuality not by attempting to refute claims to specify those claims butby attempting to expose and to delegitimate thestrategies directly theyemploy to construct and to authorizethose claims in the first place. It is this deliberate, to "theory"thatdefines Foucault'sown practice ardent,and consideredresistance his distinctive brand of (theoretical) oftheory, critique."m to attempt To undertake sucha theoretical critique, to reorient our understandfrom theperspective ofthe ing ofsexuality by approachingthehistory ofsexuality is obviously not to offer a new theoryof sexuality, history of discourses, much less such a theory forthose thatalreadyexist.Nor is it an attempt to tryto substitute thatsexuality or thatitis constituted isdiscourse, to claim,theoretically, discursively an effort It is rather to denaturalize, and derealinsteadofnaturally. dematerialize, itfrom ize sexuality so as to prevent fora theory servingas thepositivegrounding to preventit fromansweringto "the functionalrequirements of a of sexuality, It is an attemptto destroy the circuitry discourse thatmustproduce its truth."47 and power.And thusitis an effort to make sexuality thatconnectssexuality, truth, and politicalcounterpracavailable to us as a possiblesourcefora seriesofscholarly Volume does not contain an originaltheory tices. TheHistory ofSexualiy, I, in short, ifanything, liesin itsrefusal itstheoretical ofexisting ofsexuality; originality theory It offers a model demonstraand itsconsistent elaborationof a criticalantitheory, how to deprivethemof theirclaims tion ofhow to dismantletheoriesof sexuality, The History Volume book to read to legitimateauthority. ofSexuality, I, is a difficult because we read it as conveyingFoucault's formulation of his theoryof chiefly students than by askingthemto explain sexuality. (There is no easier way to baffle
110
REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

question.)As what Foucault'sdefinition of "sexuality"is: it'sthe worstsortof trick ofSexuality, Volume I, is unreadable. That a theoryof sexuality, however,TheHistory virtues. may be one of itsgreatest after a correct account or theory seemsscarcely ofsexuality For our hankering of sodiminishedsince Foucault'sday,least of all among academic practitioners Foucault'sexcalled queer theory.48 Byjuxtaposingto this "theoretical"tendency ample, by contrasting the theorizingof sexualitywith the strategicundoing of I am not trying to lend aid and comfort to "the enemiesof theory" sexual theory, notjust Foucaultbut "theory"itself), nordo I mean to contribute (whowouldforget and homogenization of"theory" as iftherecould possito thephobic totalization theoryas a unitaryentity that could then be either bly be any sense in treating I, containsnot praised or disparaged.To argue that TheHistorjofSexualij, Volume is not to argue that the book is "anti" theory, a theorybut a criticalantitheory which is the against theory, but ratherto indicate that its theoreticalenterprise, of sexuality, militatesstrenuously againstthe derealizationor desubstantialization Moreover,no inquiryinto construction or vindicationof any theoryofsexuality. of the deficiencies of contemporary workin lesbian and gay studiesor the history itself withmerecarpingat individthatpretends to be seriouscan content sexuality abuses of "theory"(the notionthatscholarsnowadayshave all been ual scholarly corruptedby "theory"is about as plausible as the notion that lesbian and gay itmusttakeup such instioftheuniversities); rather, academics have seized control in "queer theory" with qualifications tutionalquestionsas how many professors are tenuredat major universities and are actually guiding the workof graduate careersin the field. and able to pursue scholarly students intending Nonetheless,I findthe doctrinairetheoreticaltendenciesin "queer theory" at odds with the antidogmatic, and in academic "criticaltheory"to be strikingly critical,and experimental impulses that originallyanimated a good deal of the Foucault standsout in this workwe now considerpart of the canon of "theory." whose theoretical workseems calcucontextas one of the fewcanonical theorists closure,and thereby totalization, prematuretheoretical lated to resisttheoretical to resistthe weirdestand most perverseinstance of "the resistanceto theory": thatexpresses itself thenow standard thesortofresistance to theory through namely, itself.,t Foucault'srefusal of a theory academic practiceof so-called criticaltheory resists thecomplacenciesoftheincreasingly ofsexuality dogmaticand reactionary resistanceto theorythat misleadinglyand all too oftenanswersto the name of I believe it is our resistance to Foucault'sresistanceto this resistanceto "theory." into a theory Foucault'scriticalantitheory our insistence on transforming theory, asserthathas led us to mistakehis discursive of sexuality, analysisfora historical distinction tion-and that has licensed us, on thatbasis, to remake his strategic between betweenthe sodomiteand the homosexual into a conceptual distinction a pata theoretical and into into bogus sexual acts and sexual identities, doctrine, entlyfalse set of historical premises.I also believe it is what has led us to convert ofSexuality and theHistory Foucault: Acts,Identities, Forgetting 111

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

his strategic appeal to bodies and pleasuresas a means ofresistance to theapparatus into a theoretical of the irreducible elementsof sexuality. ofsexuality specification And it is what has made Foucault's intellectualexample increasingly, and quite properly, forgettable. If indeed it is as a theorist of sexualitythat we remember after all: the greatest servicewe can do to Foucault,perhapsBaudrillardwas right him, and to ourselves, is to forget him as quicklyas possible. Let me give the last word to Foucault,however.In an earlyessay on Gustave that he believed was Flaubert,Foucault describedan experienceof the fantastic new in the nineteenth century, "the discovery of a new imaginativespace" in the archivesofthelibrary. "This domain ofphantasmsis no longerthenight, thesleep of reason, or the uncertainvoid that stands beforedesire,but, on the contrary, wakefulness, zealous erudition, and constant untiring attention, vigilance.Hencethe visionaryexperiencearisesfromthe black and whitesurfaceof printed forth, theclosed and dusty volumethatopens witha flight signs, from offorgotten words; with its columns of books, fantasiesare carefully deployedin the hushed library, withits titles but withinconfines that aligned on shelvesto forma tight enclosure, also liberateimpossibleworlds.The imaginarynow residesbetweenthe book and is no longera property of theheart,nor is it foundamong the lamp. The fantastic the incongruities of nature; it evolves fromthe accuracy of knowledge,and its lie dormantin documents."5" The history at itsbest,should treasures of sexuality, serveas a reminder oftheone thingthatno one who has been touchedbyFoucault's is likelyever to forget: thatthe space of imaginativefantasy that writing namely, the nineteenth centurydiscoveredin the libraryis not yetexhausted,and thatit and forour ongomay stillproveto be productive-both foracademic scholarship ing processesofpersonal and culturalself-transformation.

Notes

1. For all of the informationand the quotations in this paragraph, I am indebted to David Macey, The LivesofMichelFoucault (London, 1993), esp. 358-60. See, further, I et I. 1980-1990 (Paris, 1993), 139-42, esp. 140 Jean Baudrillard, CoolMemories, ("L'oublier6taitlui rendreservice,l'aduler 6taitle desservir"),139 ("Mort de Foucault. en Perte de confianceen son propre genie.... La perte des systemes immunitaires, processus"). dehorsde toutaspect sexuel,n'estque la transcription biologique de 1'autre Forsome resumptions ofthe"forget Foucault" theme,see E. Greblo,"Dimenticare Foucault?" Aut-Aut 242 (March-April 1991): 79-90; Kate Soper, "ForgetFoucault?" NewFormations 25 (Summer 1995): 21-27. 2. Baudrillard delivershimself of thisenlightened opinion in the course of an interview withE Rbtzer,"VirtuelleKatastrophen,"Kuns~forum 1990): 266; I (January-February

112

REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

reproducehere the quotation and citationprovidedby Douglas Crimp, "Portraitsof People withAms,"in Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula A. Treichler(New York, 1992), 117-33 (quotationon 130). Michel Foucault, The History ofSexuality, Volume I: An Introduction, trans.Robert Hurley de la (New York, 1980), 159; cf. Michel Foucault,La volonte de savoir, vol. 1 of Histoire sexualiti (1976; reprint, Paris, 1984), 211. Whereverpossible,I quote the English text of Foucault's History because it is this textthat has influencedFoucault's ofSexualiy, but I have alteredthepublishedtranslation whenevernecessary Anglophonedisciples, to restore Foucault'soriginalemphasis or meaning. Foucault: Towards Foucault,History of Sexuality, 157. See, further, David M. Halperin, Saint a GayHagiography (New York, 1995), 92-97. Foucault,History ofSexuality, 157 (emended); La volonte desavoir, 208. 43 (translation La volonti desavoir, 59. Foucault,History ofSexuality, considerably modified); This view has recently been contestedby Mark D. Jordan, The Invention ofSodomy in Christian Theology (Chicago, 1997), esp. 42, 44, 163. In a passage thatprovidesthe closesttextualand historical parallel in Foucault'swritings to thefamouspassage in TheHistory ofSexuality, Volume I, Foucault seems to distinin much thesame termsas do thosehistoriguishbetweensodomyand homosexuality ans ofsexuality whose viewsI am criticizing here.The passage occurs in a book-length of six taped interviews with a younggay man named ThierryVoeltzel that transcript Foucault recordedduringthe summerof 1976,just as he was completingTheHistory Volume ofSexuality, I, and thathe arrangedto have publishedunder Voeltzel'sname. At one point in the conversationthe anonymous interviewer (i.e., Foucault) makes the It didn't following observation:"The categoryof the homosexual was inventedlately. use to exist;whatexistedwas sodomy, thatis to say a certainnumberofsexual practices which,in themselves, were condemned,but the homosexual individual did not exist." (La categorie de l'homosexuel a &t6inventeetardivement. Qa n'existaitpas, ce qui un certainnombre de pratiques sexuelles qui, existait,c'htaitla sodomie, c'est-A-dire condamnees,mais l'individuhomosexualn'existait elles,6taient pas); ThierryVoeltzel, ansetapres Vingt (Paris,1978), 33. (I wish to thankDidier Eribon forcalling myattention to thisimportant passage.) Here Foucault may sound as ifhe's sayingthatonce upon thatFoucault is a time therewere only sexual acts, not sexual actors.Note, however, and that matters forthe benefit of his decidedlyunacademic interlocutor simplifying between acts and identities, even here he stops shortof making a formaldistinction nor in factdoes he say thatbeforethe nineteenth therewere no sexual identicentury ties,only sexual acts. What preoccupies him in his exchange withVoeltzel,just as in The History recentinventionof the normalizing ofSexualiy,Volume I, is the relatively constitution ofa class ofdeviantindividu"category"ofthehomosexual,thediscursive als as opposed to themereenumeration ofa setofforbidden to practices;whenhe refers "the homosexualindividual,"he is referring to theentity constructed bythatdiscursive It is onlylately, Foucaultemphasizesin his interview withVoeltzel,thatithas category. become almost impossiblesimplyto pursue the pleasures of homosexual contact,as Voeltzel appears to have done, "just so, when you feltlike it,everyonce in a while,or in phases" (comme ca,quand tu en avais envie,par moments, ou par phases), without one's own behaviorthatone is homosexual,without being being forcedto deduce from interpellated by the culpabilizing categoryof "the homosexual." Voeltzel's narrative remindsFoucaultofan earlierhistorical homosexperiodwhenitwas possibletopractice homosexual. As time went by,and Foucault's thinkingabout the ualitywithoutbeing ofsexuality betweensodomyand homosexhistory evolved,he abandoned thecontrast

and theHistory ofSexuality Forgetting Foucault: Acts,Identities,

113

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

uality, along withthe implicitoppositionbetweenpracticesand persons,and came up withnew strategies forrepresenting the differences betweenmodern and premodern formsof same-sexsexual experience.In 1982, forexample, in a reviewof the French translation of K.J. Dover's 1978 monograph Greek Homosexualiy, Foucault wrote: "Of course,therewill stillbe some folksdisposed to thinkthat,in thefinalanalysis,homosexualityhas always existed.... To such naive souls Dover gives a good lesson in historical nominalism. [Sexual] relations betweentwopersonsofthesame sex are one thing.But to love the same sex as oneself,to take one's pleasure in that sex, is quite anotherthing, it'sa whole experience,withitsown objects and theirmeanings,witha specificway of being on the part of the subject and a consciousnesswhich he has of himselfThat experienceis complex,it is diverse,it takesdifferent forms, it changes." (Bien sfir, on trouvera encoredes esprits aimables pour penserqu'en sommel'homosexualite a toujoursexist&.... A de tels naifs,Dover donne une bonne le~on de nominalisme historique.Le rapportentredeux individusdu mdmesexe estune chose. Mais aimer le mrme sexe que soi, prendre avec lui un plaisir,c'est autre chose, c'est toute une experience,avec ses objets et leurs valeurs,avec la maniere d'etre du sujet et la conscience qu'il a de lui-meme.Cette experience est complexe, elle est diverse,elle change de formes);Michel Foucault, "Des caressesd'hommes considereescomme un 1June 1982, 27. Here Foucaultinveighs art,"Liberation, againstapplyingto the Greeks an undifferentiated, ahistorical,and transcendental notion of homosexualitydefined in termsofmeresexualpractice ("sexual relations betweentwopersonsofthe same sex") in favorof a more nuanced understanding of specific,conscious "ways of being" on the part of different historicaland sexual subjects.This is verymuch in keepingwith Foucault'semphasis in his famous 1981 interview in Le gaipiedon homosexuality as a de vie);Michel Foucault, "De l'amitie comme mode de vie," Le gai "way of life" (mode Live (Interviews, 1961pied 25 (April 1981): 38-39, trans.JohnJohnston,in Foucault 1984), ed. SylvereLotringer(New York, 1989), 308-12. But now it is not so much a question of opposing "sexual practices" to categoriesof individuals,as Foucault was inclinedto do in 1976; rather, itis a questionofsystematically different historidefining cal formsof sexual experience different sets of relationsto ways of being, different othersand to oneself, different articulations ofpleasure and meaning,different forms of consciousness.The exact termsin which such historicaldiscriminations are to be remainunspecified. Foucaultleavesthatpracticalquestionofhistorical made, however, a analysisand methodologyto the individual historian.He is contentsimplyto offer model ofhow to proceed in thesecond and thirdvolumesofhis own unfinished History ofSexuality. 9. See, forexample,Mary McIntosh, "The Homosexual Role," SocialProblems 16 (1968/ 69): 182-92; Randolph Trumbach, "London's Sodomites: Homosexual Behavior and WesternCulture in the Eighteenth Journal 11 (1977): 1-33; Century," ofSocialHistory Richard Sennett,TheFall ofPublic Man: On the SocialPsychology ofCapitalism (New York, andSociety: TheRegulation Since1800 (Lon1978); Jeffrey Weeks,Sex,Politics, ofSexuality don, 1981); Arnold I. Davidson, "Sex and the Emergenceof Sexuality,"Critical Inquiry 14 (1987 /88), 16-48;John D'Emilio and EstelleD. Freedman,Intimate A/atters: A History inAmerica Sex:Bodyand Gender ofSexuality (New York, 1988); Thomas Laqueur, Making toFreud the Greeks York: from (Cambridge,Mass., 1990); George Chauncey,Gay ANew Gendel, andthe Urban 1890-1940 (New York, 1994);JonaCulture, Making ofthe GayMale World, thanNed Katz, TheInvention ofHeterosexuality (New York,1995); CarolynJ.Dean, Sexualiy andModern Culture Western (New York,1996).

114

REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

10. See the very carefuldemonstration of this point by Arnold I. Davidson, "Closing up the Corpses: Diseases of Sexualityand the Emergence of the Psychiatric Style of ed. George Boolos Reasoning," in A/leaning andMethod: EssaysinHonor ofHilary Putnam, (Cambridge, 1990), 295-325. 11. Foucault's French text,ironically, allows more scope for misinterpretation than the English-languageversion,which explicitly emphasizes that the relevantsense of the termn in thispassage is determinedbytheformaldiscursive contextofmedieval sodony theunambiguousinitialphrase civil and canon law.In Foucault'soriginalformulation, "as definedby" does not occur; instead, we find a more offhandreferenceto "the sodomyofthe old civil and canonical codes." Foucault,it seems,didn'tfeelthe need to his readers to understand"sodomy" here as a strictly be so carefulabout instructing discursivecategoryratherthan as a sexual practice or as a cultural representation; in order instead,it is Foucault'stranslator who has expanded the originalformulation to make its meaning clear. As I am concerned with the misreadingsof Foucault by scholars who work largelyfromthe published translationof The History ofSexuality, Volume at all depending on) I, and as myexegesisof Foucault is facilitated by (without the greaterexplicitness of the English-languageversion,I have not hesitatedto cite it in my textforthe sake of clarity, jettisoningit later once the interpretative point has been established. 12. Foucault,History ofSexuality, 42-43; La volontM desavoii, 58-59. Italics in original. 13. Foucault, History 37 (translationmodified); La volonte ofSexuality, de savoir, 51. Italics added. 14. Foucault,History 38 (translation modified); La volontide savoii; 52-53. Foucault ofSexuality, theconclusionofthepassage quoted here,that"the explains,in a sentencethatfollows 'nature' on which [sexualprohibitions] were based was stilla kind oflaw." 66. 15. Foucault,Histoiy ofSexuality, 48; La volonte desavoir, 16. A more completeand systematic ofthisancienttermhas now been provided definition in Classical by Craig A. Williams,RomanHomosexuality: Ideologies ofMasculinity Antiquity "A cinaedus is a man who fails to live up to traditionalstandards of (forthcoming): and one way in which he may do that is by seeking to be masculine comportment, of the deeper disorder, [anallyor orally]penetrated;but thatis merelya symptom his gender deviance. Indeed, the word's literalmeaning has no specificconnection to a sexual practice.Rather,borrowedfromGreek kinaidos have been a (whichmay itself froma language ofAsia Minor), itprimarily an effeminate dancer borrowing signifies who entertained his audienceswitha tympanum or tambourinein his hand, and adopted in such a way as to suggest a lascivious style, oftensuggestively wigglinghis buttocks anal intercourse.... The primarymeaning of the word never disappeared; cinaedus neverbecame a dead metaphor." 17. JohnJ.Winkler,The Constraints of Desire: TheAnthropology ofSexandGender inAncient Greece is repeated by Winkler,somewhat less (New York, 1990), 45-46. The formulation in "Laying Down the Law: The OversightofMen's Sexual Behavior in emphatically, TheConstruction inthe Classical Athens,"in Before Erotic Ancient Greek Sexuality: of Experience and Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton, ed. David M. Halperin,JohnJ.Winkler, NJ., J/Vorld, and minoritizing 18. I borrowthe distinction betweenuniversalizing conceptsof (homo)fromEve Kosofsky sexual identity Sedgwick,Epistemology oftheCloset (Berkeley, 1990), 1, 9, 85-86. 19. Winkler,Constraints ofDesire, 50; Winkler, "Laying Down the Law," 182.

1990),171-209,esp. 176-77.

and theHistory ofSexuality Forgetting Foucault: Acts,Identities,

115

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

PlatoGorgias 494c-E (quotedand discussed Constraints of 20. See,for example, byWinkler, Desire, 53). see pseudo-Aristotle Problems 4.26; Phaedrus 21. Forancient physiological explanations, Ethics 7.5.3-4 4.15 (16). Forimputations ofmental disease,see Aristotle Nicomachean (1148b26-35); Priapea 46.2; SenecaNatural Questions 1.16.1-3;Dio Cassius80.16.1-5; On Chronic to whomI CaeliusAurelianus Diseases 4.9. Williams, Roman Homosexuality, owe theforegoing (Seneca citation from thePriapea, also provides additional parallels for Letters 83.20;Juvenal Satires 2.17 and 2.50),noting however that"a predilection various kinds ofexcessive or disgraceful behaviors was capableofbeingcalleda 'disease"' by theRomans(he citesa number of compelling ofsucha usage) instances and therefore "cinaedi werenot said to be morbosi in thewaythattwentieth-century language, in 'homosexuals' havebeenpitied or scorned as 'sick."'The medicalizing in thetwocultures in thesameway, other words, doesnotoperate nordoesitgiverise to thesamekindofdisqualification. The pointis an important usage one: theancient is disapproving, butitis notwholly pathologizing. ofGender:Physiognomy and Self-Fashioning in 22. Maud W. Gleason,"The Semiotics theSecond Century C.E.," in Before on 390); Maud W Sexuality, 389-415 (quotation Men: Sophists NJ., Gleason,Making andSef-Presentation in Ancient Rome (Princeton, 1995),58. ofGender," 396. 23. Gleason, Making Men, 64; Gleason,"The Semiotics of Gender," 24. Gleason,"The Semiotics 411-12. Cf. David M. Halperin,OneHundred Years of Homosexuality andOther Essays onGreek Love (NewYork, 1990),22-24. Roman 25. Williams, Homosexuality. 26. Amy review ofHalperin, One Hundred Years inBryn Mawr ClassiRichlin, ofHomosexuality, calReview Richlin, Feminism, 2, no. 1 (1991):16-18;Amy "Zeus andMetis:Foucault, to The Classics," Helios 18,no. 2 (Autumn 1991):160-80; Amy Richlin, introduction xiii1992), Garden of Priapus: Sexuality andAggression inRoman Humor, rev. ed. (NewYork, andRome xxxiii;AmyRichlin, introduction to Pornography andRepresentation in Greece "NotBefore The Materiality (NewYork, 1992), xi-xxiii; Amy Richlin, Homosexuality: ofthe History oftheCinaedus Love Between and theRomanLaw Against Men,"Journal "The Ethnographer's Dilemma of Sexuality 3, no. 4 (1992/93): 523-73; Amy Richlin, and theDream of a Lost GoldenAge,"in Feminist ed. Nancy Theory andthe Classics, Richlin, "ToSorkin Rabinowitz andAmy Richlin (NewYork, 1993),272-303; Amy in Inventing ofBodyHistory," wardsa History Ancient Culture: Historicism, Periodization, andthe Ancient ed. MarkGoldenand Peter (London,1997),16-35; Amy Toohey World, A UsefulTheoryforWomen?"in Rethinking History Richlin,"Foucault's ofSexuality: andClassical ed. David H.J.Larmour, PaulAllenMiller, and Foucault Sexuality: Antiquity, Charles Platter (Princeton, NJ.,1998),138-70. "NotBefore 530 (cf. Richlin describes herwork 27. Richlin, Homosexuality," 571,where as employing "a modelthat as a category foranalyzing ancient uses'homosexuality' for Richlin's insisSee also therevised introduction to TheGarden societies"). of Priapus and "materialism" tencethat herapproach is distinguished (xx). byits"essentialism" for thefollowing twostatements bothofthem 28. Compare, made example, byRichlin, in therevised "I suggest on introduction to TheGarden that Foucault's work of Priapus: is so ill-informed thatitis notreally worth antiquity reading" (xxixn. 2), and "Thus itoriginated in a different TheGarden critical Foucauldian of though spacefrom Priapus, a trueFoucauldian Skinner childofitstime(what exhibits somesimilar work, traits, I accept that 1986calls'postclassicist'). theapproach melds anthropolwholeheartedly I viewtexts I am I define humor as a discourse ofpower; as artifacts; ogywith history;

116

REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39.

40.

seekingto piece together social normsbyjuxtaposing different kinds of evidence that seem to describedifferent realities, and I am examiningwhatproduces those disparities" (xxvii). In otherwords: "Everything Foucault said was wrong,and besides I said itfirst." The ferocity and tenacity of Richlin'spolemics have largelysucceeded in intimidatingand silencingpublic expressions ofdisagreement withher,but see the reviewof Pornography andRepresentation in Greece andRome by EarlJacksonJr.,Bryn Mawr Classical Review 3 (1992): 387-96, and fora recent(ifrather mild) rebukesee MarilynB. Skinner, "Zeus and Leda: The SexualityWars in ContemporaryClassical Scholarship," Thamyris 3, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 103-23. Richlin, "Not BeforeHomosexuality," 525. See, forexample,Halperin, One Hundred Years ofHomosexuality, 8 ("A certainidentification of the self with the sexual self began in late antiquity;it was strengthened by the Christianconfessional.Only in the high middle ages did certainkinds of sexual acts start to getidentified withcertainspecifically sexual typesofperson:a 'sodomite'begins to name notmerely thepersonwho commitsan act ofsodomybutone distinguished by a certaintypeofspecifically sexual subjectivity"), 26 ("Beforethescientific construction of 'sexuality'. . . certain kinds of sexual actscould be individuallyevaluated and categorized,and so could certain sexual tastesor inclinations"),and 48 (the kinaidos is a "life-form"). JonathanWalters,"'No More Than a Boy': The Shifting ofMasculinity Construction 1 (Spring 1993): fromAncient Greece to the Middle Ages," Gender and History 5, no. 20-33. Ass 9.22. Apuleius The Golden Ass 9.14. Walters,"'No More Than a Boy,"' 22-23, quoting Apuleius The Golden See Walters,"'No More Than a Boy,"' 22. Ibid., 24. Ibid., 26: "In Boccaccio's version... we findthe husband definedwhollyin termsof his sexual desire,whichmarkshim as abnormal from thestartand indeed setstheplot in motion." Cf. ibid.,24-25. For thecommon view in Florentinetextsoftheperiod thatsodomites "had little eroticinterest in women,"see Michael Rocke,Forbidden HomosexuFriendships: andMale Culture in Renaissance who also ality Florence (New York, 1996), 40-41, 123 ff., ofotherliterary ofsodomitesin contemporary Italian providesa usefulsurvey portraits many of which correspondin a number of respectsto Boccaccio's portraitof novelle, Pietro di Vinciolo (123 ff and 295 n. 79). Rocke also points out, however, thatmany Florentinesources,both literaryand judicial, presume that a man with sodomitical desiresforboysmightequally desireinsertive sex withwomen (124-27). Walters,"'No More Than a Boy,"' 27, also emphasizes thispoint. See, further, ibid.,27-28. Whereas the ancientconceptionofthekinaidos foregrounded his effeminacy and passivity, and fifteenth-century the fourteenthFlorentinedefinitionsof "sodomy" and "sodomite" referred onlyto the "active" or insertive partnerin anal intercourse; see Rocke, Forbidden Friendships, 14, 110. Cesare Segre, the editorof my textof Boccaccio, gets thispoint exactlywrongwhen he says,in a note, that the Giovanni Boccaccio, Opere, ed. Cesare Segre Perugiansregarded Pietro as uninvertito; he is not an invert. (Milan, 1966), 1280: Pietrois a sodomitebut,unlike the kinaidos An erotic temperamentmidway between that of Apuleius's baker and Boccaccio's Pietro is representeda centurybefore Apuleius in a two-lineepigram by the Roman poet Martial Epigrams 2.49: "Uxorem nolo Telesinam ducere: quare? / moecha est.sed

Forgetting Foucault: Acts,Identities, and theHistory ofSexuality

117

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

pueris dat Telesina. volo" (I don't want to take Telesina formy wife. Why not? She's an adulteress. But Telesina puts out for boys. I'll take her!). As Williams, Roman Homosexuality, to whom I owe thisreference, explains,Martial'sjoke depends on foradultery in thebackgroundknowledgethata longstanding traditional punishment the classical world was anal rape of the male offender. The man imagined in the epigram overcomeshis initial reluctanceto marryTelesina when it is pointed out to forenactinga sweet him thatherbad character will procurehim endlessopportunities an outlandish revengeon her youthful partners.Martial's satiricalepigram constructs scenario in which a man is so fondofinsertive anal sex withboys thathe is willing to enterintoa disgraceful in orderto expand his possibilities and corrupt marriagemerely forenjoyingit.Exaggerationis part ofthejoke; nonetheless, as Williams,who also cites thepassage from withabundantargumentaApuleiusin thisconnection, demonstrates tion and evidence, the imaginaryhusband's preference fallswell withinthe range of acceptable male sexual tastesin Roman culture. 41. Walters, "'No More Than a Boy,"' 26-27, overstates thecase, I believe,whenhe writes, "What we see in Boccaccio's versionof the storyis one of the earliestportrayalsin Westerncultureof a man definedby his sexuality, which is somehow his most deeply and whichtells'the truth' about him. We witnessherean early defining characteristic, formofthe constitution Compare Glenn W and demarcationofthefieldofsexuality." Olsen,"St. Anselmand Homosexuality," 2 (ProceedAnselm Studies:An OccasionalJournal ings of the FifthInternational Saint Anselm Conference: St. Anselm and St. Augustine Episcopi ad Saecula), ed. Joseph C. Schnaubelt et al. (White Plains, N.Y, Boswell'sbook [Christianity, 1988),93-14 1,esp. 102-103: "If one wereto eliminatefrom his definition of SocialTolerance, andHomosexuality] all the materialswhich do not satisfy observationthat, 'gay,'one mightarguablybe left withthe truly novel and important as faras theMiddle Ages are concerned,itwas about 1100 in certainpoems ofMarbod of Rennes, and thenlater in the centuryin writers like Bernard of Cluny and Walter of Chatillon, and above all in the late twelfth centuryA Debate Between Ganymede forone's own and Helen,' thatwe mightsee theappearance ofa clear eroticpreference sex that, by still being called 'sodomy,'began the expansion of that term into the modern 'homosexuality"' (see also 129-30 n. 61 and 133 n. 87). Olsen puts thepoint and in facthe mighthave been speakingofBoccaccio's Pietrodi Vinciolo, veryclearly, in reference to Pietro.Nonetheless,I althoughBoccaccio never uses the termsodomy even the settledand habitual would stillwant to insistthatmere sexual object-choice, fallsshortofthe forsexual relations withpersonsofthesame sex as oneself, preference After definitional of "(homo)sexuality"or "sexual orientation." all, such requirements exclusivesexual preferences were not unknownin theancientworld:see mypartiallist in OneHundred ofcitations Years 163 n. 53. A "sexuality"in themodern ofHomnosexuality, sense would seem to require considerablymore than same-sex sexual object-choice, In particular,"homosexuality"requires, more even than conscious eroticpreference. of first of all, that homosexual object-choiceitself functionas a markerof difference, or sexual role social and sexual deviance, independent of the gender identification or preferred (activeor passive)performed bytheindividual;italso requireshomosexual an innerorientation oftheindividual, object-choiceto be connectedwitha psychology, not just an aestheticsor a form of erotic connoisseurship.See One Hundred Years of Homosexuality, 24-29, esp. 26-27 with notes; and foran expansion of that argument, and EroticIdentisee myessay, theSubject ofDesire: Sexual Preferences "Historicizing in Foucault andtheWriting tiesin thePseudo-LucianicEr6tes," ed.Jan Goldstein of History, (Oxford,1994), 19-34, 255-61, whichdocumentsseveralinstancesofsame-sexsexual

118

REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

42.

43.

44. 45.

46. 47. 48.

49.

forpersons of the same sex as object-choice,and even of conscious eroticpreferences thatnonetheless do not satisfy the criteria forhomosexuality. In the absence of oneself, innerorientathedistinctively modernsetofconnectionslinkingsexual object-choice, and difference, the substantive tion, and deviantpersonality with notions of identity categoryof "men who have categoryof "homosexuality"dissolvesinto the descriptive not a sexuality ofAIDS epidemiology, sex withmen" (an artifact per se), and homosexumen escape interpellation by the category ally activebut otherwisenon-gay-identified of "homosexuality." I have chosen to dwell on the figureof Boccaccio's Pietro di Vinciolo not because I of medieval sodomitesin general but believe he is somehow typicalor representative ofthekinaidos: withtheancientfigure because he providesthestarkest possiblecontrast or so at least I am an instanceofmorphology withoutsubjectivity, thelatter represents an instanceof whereasPietrorepresents contendingforthepurposes ofmyargument, of the withoutmorphology.I do not mean to imply that constructions subjectivity or even typically at the sodomitein premodernEurope mostly emphasized subjectivity thoughtto have a peculiar expense of morphology, or that the sodomite was never or styleof genderpresentation or appearance (on the gradual expansion of sensibility thetermsodomy, the see Olsen, "St. Anselm and Homosexuality,"102-3). It is precisely aim of thispaper to open up such questionsforfurther research. This is not to deny that some lesbians can be conventionally feminineor that some gay men can be conventionally masculine, and thatboth can pass forstraight some can and some do but ratherto insistthatmodernconceptsand images ofhomosexualityhave neverbeen able to escape being haunted by the specterof genderinversion, and legibledifference. For a systematic genderdeviance,or at least some kind ofvisibly Essaysin GayLiterary brilliantexplorationofthisissue,see Lee Edelman, Homographesis: Closet. and Cultural Theory ofthe (New York, 1994); see also Sedgwick,Epistemology I wish to thankCarolyn Dinshaw forpointingout the absence ofthetermidentity from Foucault'stext. Cf. Alan Sinfield,Cultural Politics Queer Reading (Philadelphia, 1994), 14, notingthat ofhomosexuality historians by social-constructionist "tend to dispremodernhistories cover ambivalent or partial signs of subjectivity; theycatch not the absence of the modern subject,butitsemergence."He adds, "I suspectthatwhatwe call gay identity This last remark constituted." has, fora long time,been alwaysin theprocessofgetting and conceptual issuesbeforeus. closes off, rathertoo glibly, the historiographic I elaborate further on thispoint in a forthcoming paper, "The Art ofNot Being Governed: Michel Foucault on Critique and Transgression." 68. Foucault,History ofSexuality, A notable exceptionis Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick,"Queer Performativity: HenryJames's TheArtofthe Novel," ofLesbian and GayStudies 1, no. 1 (1993): 1-16, esp. GLQ~ A Journal 11: "The thingI least want to be heard as offering here is a 'theoryof homosexuality' I have none and I want none." See alsojordan, Invention 5: "I myself tend to ofSodony, thinkthatwe have barelybegun to gather[historical]evidence ofsame-sexdesire.We are thusveryfarfrombeing able to imagine having a finished theory." Statementsto in worksof so-called queer theoryare ratherless frequent than one might this effect imagine. of For the notion that theoryis ultimately "the universal theoryof the impossibility that"nothingcan overcometheresistance to theory since theory theory"and therefore is itself thisresistance," see Paul de Man, "The Resistanceto Theory,"in TheResistance to Theory explora(Minneapolis, Minn., 1986), 3-20 (quotationson 19). For a further

Forgetting Foucault: Acts,Identities, and theHistory ofSexuality

119

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

tion of these paradoxes, see the scathingremarksof Paul Morrison, "Paul de Man: Resistanceand Collaboration," Representations 32 (Fall 1990): 50-74. in Language, 50. Michel Foucault,"Fantasia of the Library," Counter-Memory Practice: Selected EssaysandInterviews, ed. and trans.Donald F Bouchard (Ithaca, N.Y, 1977), 87-109 (quotation on 90). This passage was originallybroughtto my attentionbyJamesW Force Bernauer, Michel Foucault's ofFlight: Toward an Ethicsfor Thought (Atlantic Highlands, NJ., 1990), 183.

120

REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded on Mon, 24 Dec 2012 10:46:34 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Anda mungkin juga menyukai