Is There a history of sexuality?, David m. Halperin

Is There a History of Sexuality ?
David M. Harperin
 History and theory, Vol. 28. No 3. (oct., 1989) pp. 257–274

In this text Haperin is questioning if there is such a thing as a history of sexuality as “sex has no history” (p. 257). He claims, like Foucault, that sexuality is a modern production. “Unlike sex, sexuality is a cultural production: it represents the appropriation of the human body and of its physiological capacities by an ideological discourse.” (p. 257). Because of this sexuality according to him, does have a history even though it might be a short one.

So we have to differentiate sex which is hard-wired into human/animal nature and the term sexuality, which does have a history as it is a way attaching meaning to classifying sexual acts and sexual behaviors.

Harperin asks: “What, in particular, do we understand by our concept of “sexuality” As it is difficult to determine what it actually is and continues with “I think we understand “sexuality” to refer to a positive distinct, and constitutie feature of the human personality, to the characterological seat within the individual of sexual acts, desires, and pleasures – the determinate source from which all sexual expression proceeds. “Sexuality” in this sense is not a purely descriptive term, a neutral representation of some objective state of affairs or a simple recognition of some familiar facts about us; rather, it is a distinctive way of constructing, organizing and interpreting those “facts,” and it performs quite a lot of conceptual work.” (p. 259)

“First of all, sexuality defines itself as a separate, sexual domain within the larger field of human psychophysical nature. Second, sexuality effects the conceptual demarcation and isolation of that domain from other areas of personal and social life that have traditionally cut across it, such as carnality, venery, libertinism, virility, passion, amorousness, eroticism, intimacy, love, affection, appetite, and desire - to name but a few of the older claimants to territories more recently staked out by sexuality. Finally, sexuality generates sexual identity: it endows each of us with an individual sexual nature, with a personal essence defined (at least in part) in specifically sexual terms; it implies that human beings are individuated at the level of their sexuality, that they differ from one another int their sexuality and, indeeds, being to different types or kinds of being by virtue of their sexuality. (p. 259)



Harperin pinpoints two themes that seem essential to the modern notion of sexuality which are not found in Ancient Greece:
“(1)The autonomy of sexuality as a separate sphere of existence (deeply implicated in other areas of life, to be sure, but distinct from them and capable of acting on them at least as much as it is acted on by them), (2)and the function of sexuality as a principle of individuation in human natures.” (p. 259)



How did the Ancient Greeks consider sex then? Firstly we have to consider the big class divide at that time. “Sex is portrayed in Athenian documents not as a mutual enterprise in which two or more persons jointly engage but as an action performed by a social superior upon a social inferior. (p. 260).

Secondly even though same sex activities did occur, one cannot speak about homosexuality, as that concept did not exist. As mentioned above it was a question of rank and status that decided who could penetrate whom.

(not finished yet)