Sexuality and Modernity
Since I go to Brooklyn College and intend (ha!) to graduate from Brooklyn College, I have to complete what is known as the “Core Curriculum,” a set of courses intended to give every undergrad a liberal arts and sciences education in a nutshell. One of these courses I am currently taking is “ The Shaping of the Modern World,” or in other words, a Euro-centric history course beginning at the 1500. Some of the first questions my professor proposed on that course’s blog are “What does the word, ‘modern,’ even mean? What does it mean to say a society or a nation is not modern (i.e. “backwards”)? Who determines what is and what is not modern? Is the idea of ‘modernity’ distinctively ‘Western’?” Most of the responses to that post touched upon (physical) things produced and/or relevant in the present or near present, technological advances, and industrialization. There were more abstract answers like the concepts of nations, capitalism, and of government, especially democracy. Now at the midway of the semester, the idea of sexuality ideology as an indication of “modernity” has been ruminating in my mind for some time.
In Michel Foucault’s analytic narrative of the deployment of sexuality, modern concepts like industrialization, urbanization, capitalism, medicine, and science have been noted as contributing to and emerging with the qualitative and quantitative increase of sexual discourse. Can the shift from the deployment of alliance to the deployment of sexuality also be seen largely as a shift to what is considered Western modernity? For me, Jonathan Ned Katz’s “The Invention of Heterosexuality” further solidified this thought. From previous pieces examined in this course, we are familiar with the “invention” of the homosexual in the 19th century. Katz further completes this with the “invention” of the heterosexual.
One of the most interesting aspects of his argument was the relationship between sexuality and economy. Katz notes that as the economy of America gradually shifted from production to consumption, people became less of the work force and their accompanying families became less of procreation units (351). People became consumers and erotic pleasure became a commodity for both men and women. Going back to some answers to the modernity blog post, there was a discussion of modern nations/ societies and “backwards” nations/ societies. Generally, modern nations’/ societies’ economies are no longer primarily based on production as evident by the excessive outsourcing done by countries like the United States. The outsourcing of production is typically to “developing” countries that are viewed as not quite reaching the modern standards. Therefore, the shift from production to consumption and the accompanying shifts in sexuality can both reflect modernity.
Another powerful aspect of Katz’s argument is his discussion of the first uses of the words, “homosexual” and “heterosexual.” I found it extremely interesting that the first public use of “heterosexual” in America by Dr. James G. Kiernan was to indicate something abnormal and meaning mental inclination to both sexes, a somewhat far cry from today’s meaning and normality and dominancy associated with that word (351). The inconsistency of the meanings of the words flagged the historical value of these concepts. Even though, I agree with this analysis and the idea that homosexuality/heterosexuality binary was a recent invention, I struggle to not fall back in taking them for granted. I thought it was very important to keep on stressing that these are ideologies, not realities. Like how there is no true democracy or true capitalism, and the concept of nations is falling apart in the face of fringe groups, sexuality is malleable.
Thoughts?
Tags: Heterosexuality, Homosexuality, Identity, Sexuality, The History of Sexuality
March 26th, 2012 at 12:57 pm
Hi Vita,
This is a rich approach to the novel and the documents and essay for this week because it provides an historical context in which certain discursive formations occurred to frame and define sexuality (with its increasingly complex formulations of type). The momentum of scientific and consumer capitalist convergences that you point to may be seen throughout the pages of Lolita but rendered through Nabokov’s brilliant irony, which then comments obliquely on assumptions integral to modernity. In other words, one thing to consider in regard to the concept of modernity is its own development, from the early modern assumption that one lives in a period that provides a welcome break from the past through a late modern sense that modernity is itself riddled with problems.
A second point to think about in light of your analysis is the use of the term ideology. Foucault tended to critique it when it was used in the Marxist sense of a false set of ideas, because that implied that there was also a clear truth that needed to be in place of the ideology that was being used to control people. So Foucault’s concepts of deployments, technologies of power, and cultural apparatuses provide an alternative way of talking about how subjectivity is formed, bodies trained, and truths created.