One Hundred Years of Homosexuality

One Hundred Years of Homosexuality: and other essays on Greek love is a 1990 book about homosexuality in ancient Greece by classicist David M. Halperin.

Summary

Halperin addresses the constructivist-essentialist debate on gay history from a constructivist point of view.^[1] He supports the social constructionist school of thought associated with the French philosopher Michel Foucault, although he admits that the social constructionist view would be proven false if it could be shown that sexual orientation is innate.^[2][3] Social constructionists argue that the categories of "homosexual" and "heterosexual" have emerged from the social, political and scientific debate over sexuality that has taken place since the late 19th century, and that their application to people in effect makes them "homosexual" or "heterosexual".^[3] Halperin believes that the appearance of the English translation of the first volume of Foucault's The History of Sexuality in 1978, together with the publication of Kenneth Dover's Greek Homosexuality the same year, marked the beginning of a new era in the study of the history of sexuality.^[4] Halperin suggests that The History of Sexuality may be the most important contribution to the history of western morality since Friedrich Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality (1887).^[5]

In Halperin's view, the introduction of the term "homosexual" in the 1892 English translation of Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psycopathia sexuallis by Charles Gilbert Chaddock marks an important change in the treatment and consideration of homosexuality.^[6] Discussing Aristophanes' speech in Plato's Symposium, he argues that Aristophanes did not recognize a category of "homosexual" people but only the separate categories of men-loving men and women-loving women. According to Halperin, Aristophanes divided men-loving men into two different kinds, youths who loved adult men and adult men who loved youths.^[7]

Scholarly reception

One Hundred Years of Homosexuality was praised by numerous scholars, including philosopher Martha Nussbaum.^[8] Gay writer Neil Miller commended One Hundred Years of Homosexuality for its lucidity,^[9] while English professor Leonard Barkan called it "brilliant".^[10]

However, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality received a negative review from literary scholar Camille Paglia, who accused Halperin of poor scholarship and careerism, as well as over-valuing Foucault's ideas. Paglia found the work pretentious and confused, and expressed her dismay at Nussbaum's positive review.^[11] Neuroscientist Simon LeVay criticizes Halperin's arguments about the social construction of homosexuality, observing that people can formulate the concept of homosexuality without the word and that homosexuality exists independently of the corresponding concept. LeVay finds Halperin's interpretation of the Symposium strained, noting that Aristophanes represents the sexuality of youths who love adult men and the sexuality of adult men who love youths as different stages on a single life course. LeVay observes that, "Social constructivists, particularly of the "strong" variety represented by Halperin, seem to want to replace consciousness with self-consciousness, and a highly linguistic self-consciousness at that."^[12]

References

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