One Hundred Years of Homosexuality

One Hundred Years of Homosexuality: and other essays on Greek love

Cover of the first edition, showing Jose de Madrazo Santander's painting The Death of the Spanish Rebel Viriathus
Author	David M. Halperin
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	The New Ancient World
Subject	Homosexuality
Published	1990 (Routledge)
Media type	Print (paperback)
Pages	230
ISBN	978-0415900973

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, who supports the social constructionist school of thought associated with the French philosopher Michel Foucault. The work has been praised by several scholars, but criticized by others, some of whom have attributed to Halperin the view that the coining of the word "homosexuality" in the nineteenth century brought homosexuality into existence.

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 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 classical scholar 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 Halperin's book 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. Paglia criticized Halperin for implying that homosexuals and homosexuality did not exist until the word "homosexuality" was coined and for drawing conclusions about the views of classical Athenians based on Aristophanes' speech in Plato's Symposium, noting that "Aristophanes is a literary characters and not the real-life man on which he was based". Paglia contrasted One Hundred Years of Homosexuality unfavorably with John J. Winkler's The Constraints of Desire (1990), although she also criticized Winkler's book on various grounds.^[11]

Philosopher Edward Stein calls Halperin's reservations about scientific research "provocative and highly contentious".^[12] In his The Mismeasure of Desire (1999), Stein writes that Halperin's views about the development of contemporary categories of sexual orientation are not universally shared: while Halperin maintains that the word "homosexual" was coined by Karl-Maria Kertbeny in 1869 and attaches significance to this event, others such as John Boswell argue that the concept the word refers to has existed for centuries.^[13]

Sociologist Gary W. Dowsett writes that Halperin, like Foucault in The History of Sexuality redraws "the terms of our understanding of ancient male-to-male sexual activity and man-boy love", and that he does so with a "view to the politics of the late twentieth century". Dowsett sees Halperin's views as following those of both Foucault and the poet and literary critic John Addington Symonds, maintaining that all three present a censored and overly idealized picture of homosexuality and sexual activity in general.^[14] Neuroscientist Simon LeVay writes that Halperin's title "encapsulates...the notion that homosexuality was brought into existence by the invention, in the late nineteenth century, of the word used to define it." LeVay criticizes Halperin's social constructionist arguments, observing that the concept of homosexuality can exist without the word and that homosexuality itself exists independently of the concept. LeVay finds Halperin's interpretation of the Symposium strained, noting that while according to Halperin Aristophanes divides men-loving men into youths who love adult men and adult men who love youths, Aristophanes represents the two kinds of love as "different stages on a single life course." LeVay observes that Halperin's form of social constructionism seems to "replace consciousness with self-consciousness, and a highly linguistic self-consciousness at that."^[15]

Psychologist Jim McKnight writes that Halperin is one of several critics of evolutionary explanations of homosexuality who "argue that homosexuality is not an innate but rather an acquired behavior and that Darwinistic explanations are spurious or ultimately misguided". McKnight grants the possibility that Halperin and the other critics may be correct.^[16]

Timothy F. Murphy writes that while Halperin claims that erotic preferences are no more fundamental than dietary preferences and should therefore be explained in cultural rather than biological terms, dietary habits themselves can be explained partly in terms of inherent human needs for proteins, fats, and sugars. Murphy believes that Halperin is mistaken to claim that the discovery of a gene for homosexuality would refute his claims about the cultural determination of sexual object-choice, since social constructionism can be interpreted as claiming that sexual orientation is inevitably influenced by social forces and thus does not rule out scientific investigation of the origins of homosexuality.^[17]

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Books