Some years ago a collection of historical and philosophical essays on sex was advertised under the slogan: Philosophers are interested in sex again. Since that time the history of sexuality has become an almost unexceptionable topic, occasioning as many books and articles as anyone would ever care to read. Yet there are still fundamental conceptual problems that get passed over imperceptibly when this topic is discussed, passed over, at least in part, because they seem so basic or obvious that it (...) would be time badly spent to worry too much about them. However, without backtracking toweard this set of problems, one will quite literally not know what one is writing the history of when one writes a history of sexuality.An excellent example of some of the most sophisticated current writing in this field can be found in Western Sexuality, a collection of essays that resulted from a seminar conducted by Philippe Ariès at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in 1979-80.1 As one would expect, Western Sexuality is characterized by a diversity of methodological and historiographical approaches—social history, intellectual history, cultural history , historical sociology, the analysis of literary texts, and that distinctive kind of history practiced by Michel Foucault and also in evidence in the short essay by Paul Veyne. One perspective virtually absent from this collection is the history of science, and since I believe that the history of science has a decisive and irreducible contribution to make to the history of sexuality, it is not accident that I am going to focus on that connection. But the history of sexuality is also an area in which one’s historiography or implicit epistemology will stamp, virtually irrevocably, one’s first-order historical writing. It is an arena in which philosophical and historical concerns inevitably run into one another. 1. Philippe Ariès and Adnré Béjin, eds., Western Sexuality: Practice and Percept in Past and Present Times . Arnold I. Davidson, a coeditor of Critical Inquiry, is assistant professor of philosophy and member of the Committees on General Studies in the Humanities and on the Conceptual Foundations of Science at the University of Chicago. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, “How to Do the History of Psychoanalysis: A Reading of Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,” appeared in the Winter 1987 issue. (shrink)

I have two primary aims in the following paper, aims that are inextricably intertwined. First, I want to raise some historiographical and epistemological issues about how to write the history of psychoanalysis. Although they arise quite generally in the history of science, these issues have a special status and urgency when the domain is the history of psychoanalysis. Second, in light of the epistemological and methodological orientation that I am going to advocate, I want to begin a reading of Freud’s (...) Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, one whose specificity is a function of my attachment to this orientation, to a particular way of doing the history of psychoanalysis. Despite the enormous number of pages that have been written on Freud’s Three Essays, it is very easy to underestimate the density of this book, a density at once historical, rhetorical, and conceptual. This underestimation stems in part from historiographical presumptions that quite quickly misdirect us away from the fundamental issues.In raising question about the historiography of the history of science, I obviously cannot begin at the beginning. So let me begin much further along, with the writings of Michel Foucault. I think of the works of Foucault, in conjunction with that of Gaston Bachelard and Georges Canguilhem, as exemplifying a very distinctive perspective about how to write the history of science. In the English-speaking world, perhaps only the work of Ian Hacking both shares this perspective and ranks with its French counterparts in terms of originality and quality. No brief summary can avoid eliding the differences between Bachelard, Canguilhem, Hacking, and Foucault; indeed, the summary I am going to produce does not even fully capture Foucault’s perspective, which he called “archaeology.”1 But this sketch will have to do for the purposes I have in mind here, whose ultimate aim is to reorient our approach to the history of psychoanalysis. 1. The sketch that follows reproduces, with some omissions and additions, the beginning of my “Archeology, Genealogy, Ethics,” in Michel Foucault: A Critical Reader, ed. David Hoy , pp. 221-34. Arnold I. Davidson is assistant professor in the department of philosophy, the Committee on the Conceptual Foundations of Science, and the Committee on General Studies in the Humanities at the University of Chicago. He is currently writing a book on the history and epistemology of nineteenth-century psychiatric theories of sexuality. (shrink)

True to his longstanding bias against grand unifying theories, Hacking chooses to pursue these questions by focusing on a specific case of memory-thinking: the history of multiple personality. His excavation of the contemporary terrain leads him, however, to the surprisingly grand conclusion that the various sciences of memory—including neurological studies of localization, experimental studies of recall, and studies in the psychodynamics of memory—all emerged in connection with attempts to “scientize the soul,” as a result of which spiritual battles have been (...) recast as scientific controversies “where we suppose there is such a thing as knowledge to be had”. (shrink)

This article describes the conceptual framework within which knowledge about Africa was legitimized in eighteenth-century French philosophy. The article traces a shift or rupture in this conceptual framework which, at the end of the eighteenth century, led to the emergence of new conditions for knowledge legitimation that altered Europe's perception of Africa. The article examines these two conceptual frameworks within the context of a discussion of the social theory of the time, which categorized Africans first as savages, and then, with (...) the advent of our modern "style of reasoning," as primitives. The argument used to demonstrate this change in categorizations is historical. The greater part of the article analyzes in detail the principal social theory of Enlightenment philosophy, the stadial theory of society, with the aim of demonstrating how it determined what could be affirmed about Africa. The shift in the perception of Africans from savages to primitives involved an epistemological change in how societies were grasped. The article provides a greater understanding of the constitution of Africa as a cognitive construct, which is not only of theoretical concern; this construct shaped Europe's intervention in Africa, and continues to influence what we believe Africa is and should become. (shrink)

This article describes the conceptual framework within which knowledge about Africa was legitimized in eighteenth–century French philosophy. The article traces a shift or rupture in this conceptual framework which, at the end of the eighteenth century, led to the emergence of new conditions for knowledge legitimation that altered Europe’s perception of Africa. The article examines these two conceptual frameworks within the context of a discussion of the social theory of the time, which categorized Africans first as savages, and then, with (...) the advent of our modern “style of reasoning,” as primitives. The argument used to demonstrate this change in categorizations is historical. The greater part of the article analyzes in detail the principal social theory of Enlightenment philosophy, the stadial theory of society, with the aim of demonstrating how it determined what could be affirmed about Africa. The shift in the perception of Africans from savages to primitives involved an epistemological change in how societies were grasped. The article provides a greater understanding of the constitution of Africa as a cognitive construct, which is not only of theoretical concern; this construct shaped Europe’s intervention in Africa, and continues to influence what we believe Africa is and should become. (shrink)

Here the distinguished philosopher Ian Hacking uses the MPD epidemic and its links with the contemporary concept of child abuse to scrutinize today's moral...

In ____Bodies That Matter,__ Judith Butler further develops her distinctive theory of gender by examining the workings of power at the most "material" dimensions of sex and sexuality. Deepening the inquiries she began in _Gender_ _Trouble,_ Butler offers an original reformulation of the materiality of bodies, examining how the power of heterosexual hegemony forms the "matter" of bodies, sex, and gender. Butler argues that power operates to constrain "sex" from the start, delimiting what counts as a viable sex. She offers (...) a clarification of the notion of "performativity" introduced in _Gender Trouble_ and explores the meaning of a citational politics. The text includes readings of Plato, Irigaray, Lacan, and Freud on the formation of materiality and bodily boundaries; "Paris is Burning," Nella Larsen's "Passing," and short stories by Willa Cather; along with a reconsideration of "performativity" and politics in feminist, queer, and radical democratic theory. (shrink)

This seminal early work of Foucault is indispensable to understanding his development as a thinker. Written in 1954 and revised in 1962, _Mental Illness and Psychology _delineates the shift that occurred in Foucault's thought during this period. The first iteration reflects the philosopher's early interest in and respect for Freud and the psychoanalytic tradition. The second part, rewritten in 1962, marks a dramatic change in Foucault's thinking. Examining the history of madness as a social and cultural construct, he moves outside (...) of the psychoanalytic tradition into the radical critique of Freud that was to dominate his later work. _Mental Illness and Psychology _is an important document tracing the intellectual evolution of this influential thinker. A foreword by Foucault scholar Hubert Dreyfus situates the book within the framework of Foucault's entire body of work. (shrink)

Matsuda proves his argument by visiting a remarkable array of "memory-sites": the destruction of a monument to Napoleon during the 1871 Paris Commune; the frantic selling of futures on the Paris stock-exchange; the state's forensic search for a vagabond rapist and murderer; a child's perjured testimony on the witness stand; a scientist's dissecting of the human brain; the invention of cameras and the cinema.

One. Hundred. Years. of. Homosexuality. I. In 1992, when the patriots among us will be celebrating the fivehundredth anniversary of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, our cultural historians may wish to mark the centenary of  ...

This book explores the tradition of the 'science of man' in French medicine of the era 1750-1850, focusing on controversies about the nature of the 'physical-moral' relation and their effects on the role of medicine in French society. Its chief purpose is to recover the history of a holistic tradition in French medicine that has been neglected because it lay outside the mainstream themes of modern medicine, which include experimental, reductionist, and localistic conceptions of health and disease. Professor Williams also (...) challenges existing historiography, which argues that the 'anthropological' approach to medicine was a short-term by-product of the leftist politics of the French Revolution. This work argues instead that the medical science of man long outlived the Revolution, that it spanned traditional ideological divisions, and that it reflected the shared aim of French physicians, whatever their politics, to claim broad cultural authority in French society. (shrink)

In this innovative cultural history, Carolyn J. Dean sheds light on the origins of poststructuralist thought, paying particular attention to the reinterpretation of the self by Jacques Lacan, Georges Bataille, and other French thinkers.

In ____Bodies That Matter,__ Judith Butler further develops her distinctive theory of gender by examining the workings of power at the most "material" dimensions of sex and sexuality. Deepening the inquiries she began in _Gender_ _Trouble,_ Butler offers an original reformulation of the materiality of bodies, examining how the power of heterosexual hegemony forms the "matter" of bodies, sex, and gender. Butler argues that power operates to constrain "sex" from the start, delimiting what counts as a viable sex. She offers (...) a clarification of the notion of "performativity" introduced in _Gender Trouble_ and explores the meaning of a citational politics. The text includes readings of Plato, Irigaray, Lacan, and Freud on the formation of materiality and bodily boundaries; "Paris is Burning," Nella Larsen's "Passing," and short stories by Willa Cather; along with a reconsideration of "performativity" and politics in feminist, queer, and radical democratic theory. (shrink)