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- Title
Something a Bit Peculiar? Sex, the Germans and the History of Sexuality.
- Authors
HARRIS, VICTORIA
- Abstract
Historians of sexuality are uniquely placed to act the flâneur. Loitering in an archive's seedier or more obscure files, they tour the marginal landscapes of the past. They can vicariously experience deviant activity while maintaining historical detachment, writing histories which titillate as much as educate. Fun though this may be, there is the danger that producing such texts benefits only the writers themselves. Michel Foucault famously suggested that writing about the history of sexuality occurs purely for the ‘speaker's benefit’. Historians have thus sought to prove that ‘marginal’ histories are of true academic, not just voyeuristic, significance. This quest has been particularly fruitful for histories of sexuality – stories which are fascinating not least because they are simultaneously marginal, or unspeakable, and utterly central to human life.
- Subjects
LIFE Among the Ruins: Cityscape &; Sexuality in Cold War Berlin (Book); LOVE in the Time of Communism: Intimacy &; Sexuality in the GDR (Book); BEFORE Porn Was Legal: The Erotica Empire of Beate Uhse (Book); EVANS, Jennifer; MCLELLAN, Josie; HEINEMAN, Elizabeth; NONFICTION
- Publication
Contemporary European History, 2014, Vol 23, Issue 2, p283
- ISSN
0960-7773
- Publication type
Book Review
- DOI
10.1017/S0960777314000058