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Histories of ‘Sex’, Histories of ‘Sexuality’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2013

VICTORIA HARRIS*
Affiliation:
Department of History, The University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT; [email protected]

Extract

For Dagmar Herzog, writing the history of sexuality is an act of rebalancing. Sexuality becomes neither positive nor negative, but ambivalent. Herzog destabilises a dominant ‘narrative of gradual progress’, which misunderstands ‘how profoundly complicated the sexual politics of the twentieth century in Europe actually were’ (p. 2). Instead of a linear chronology, Herzog reveals a twentieth century of cyclical change – revolutionary liberalisations and conservative backlashes occur in quick succession, or even concomitantly. Repression appears even within developments considered liberalising by contemporaries. The ambivalences within ‘progress’ and ‘change’ shape sexuality and its history. A third ambivalence is no less important – happiness. Despite being an act inextricably connected with pleasure, sex does not consistently give rise to happiness.

Type
Forum: Dagmar Herzog's Sexuality in Europe
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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References

1 For more on these issues of periodisation and chronology, and for a fuller discussion of challenges within the history of sexuality and its historiography, see Harris, Victoria, ‘Sex on the Margins: New Directions in the Historiography of Sexuality and Gender,’ Historical Journal, 53, 4 (Dec. 2010), 1085–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar