How to be deleted from history...

I would like to treat you to a hilarious fact about Loeb Classics, the authoritative bilingual series of classical Greek and Latin texts standardly used by students and scholars, which I discovered in my essay readings:

Until recently, passages in the Greek texts dealing with homosexuality, whether positively or negatively, were translated not into English but into Latin. Similarly, problematic Roman passages were translated into Italian!

This is revealing not only about Loeb's attitude to homosexuality, but also about the esteem they had for their readers. And for Italians...

N.B. In the new translations Loeb has mended it ways, restoring passages that "might give offense". (For another laugh look at their own explanation and illustration.)
Still, it will take a long time before the old editions will have disappeared from book collections and libraries.

Foucault on Sexualities

as explained by David M. Halperin (2002):

“Sex takes on new social and individual functions, and it assumes a new
importance in defining and normalising the modern self. The conception of the
sexual instinct as an autonomous human function without an organ appears for the
first time in the nineteenth century, and without it our heavily psychologised
model of sexual subjectivity […] is inconceivable. Sexuality is indeed, as
Foucault claimed, a distinctively modern production."

“The nineteenth-century disciplining of the subject, though it purported to aim
at the eradication of ‘peripheral sexualities,’ paradoxically required their
consolidation and ‘implantation’ or ‘incorporation’ in individuals, for only by
that means could the subject’s body itself become so deeply, so minutely invaded
and colonised by the agencies of normalisation."

> 19th century laws against and medical marginalisation of 'homosexuals' actually played an important role in creating a homosexual self-conception ("a homosexual subjectivity" as it is called).

“It is only lately, Foucault emphasises […] that it has become almost impossible
simply to pursue the pleasures of homosexual contact ‘just so, when you felt
like it, every once in a while, or in phases’ […], without being forced to
deduce from one’s own behaviour that one is homosexual, without being
interpellated by the culpabilising category of ‘the homosexual’.”

What Foucault does/invites us (historians) to do

“is a question of systematically defining different historical forms of sexual
experience – different ways of being, different sets of relations to others and
to oneself, different articulations of pleasure and meaning, different forms of
consciousness.”

> each historical period and place has it own forms of sexuality, its own sexual idenitities.

These thoughts mainly belong to the later Foucault, i.e. after the publication in 1976 of the first volume of his History of sexuality (La volonté de savoir).

I suggest that any of these statements on homosexuality apply equally well to heterosexuality, as the latter is just as much a cultural construction as the former (although not marginalised).

For clarifications you can have a look at a glossary of Foucauldian terms and ideas, or you can read a very short summary of some of his ideas bearing on sexuality, identity, and power-knowledge (which also features a nice tour through "Foucault's Paris"!).

And even these postmodern, academic discussions, Lewis Carroll has eerily foreseen:

“Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I—I hardly know, Sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then.”
“What do you mean by that?” said the Caterpillar, sternly. “Explain yourself!”
“I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, Sir,” said Alice, “because I’m not myself, you see.”
“I don’t see,” said the Caterpillar.
“I’m afraid I can’t put it more clearly,” Alice replied, very politely, “for I can’t understand it myself, to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.”
“It isn’t,” said the Caterpillar.
“Well, perhaps you haven’t found it so yet,” said Alice; “but when you have to turn into a chrysalis—you will some day, you know—and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?”

Dixit

Dominus. Dixit Dominus. Dixit Dominus. A-men. A-men. A-a-a-a-a-a-a-men. Amen. A-a-a-men. Amen. Amen.

Thus, Mozart can fill 56 pages of score. So can Vivaldi.

It was a wonderful experience. Acoustics were great. Music was beautiful. We sang pretty okay I think (although at one moment I noticed I was exactly one beat ahead of the other sixty singers). Conductor charming&funny as usual. The white shirt I bought in a moment of despair, at some awful shop where they didn't even have changing rooms, actually turned out better on me than on the "clotheshorse" (is that an ordinary word to use?) - which is a rare phenomenon. From an unfashionable flowery middle/old-aged woman shirt it has canged into a handsome, silk, kinda' Latin shirt...

After this purchase I found I had done enough concessions to gender-affirmative choir-prescriptions and decided to leave the "long black skirt" for the long-black-skirt-minded. And wel heb je ooit if I wasn't the only woman in trousers, with the exception of one female tenor who had to wear a suit to mask her gender...

Anyway: back to the wonderful experience: the church we sang in, Saint Michael and all Angels, was an impressive (neo)gothic space, with immense dark ceilings and, indeed, sculpted angels everywhere. Apart from us, we got to listen to the University Orchestra playing Corelli's Christmas concert! (Well, hurrah, doesn't that sound familiar to some of us? Oh, where are the days that we gathered in an Amsterdam South church to experience the joy of making music on strings and performing such Great Art before a willing audience etc. etc.?). It was magnificent.

In the queue for the toilet I had the dubious privilege of meeting the president of ChapSoc. He told me he was, but I could have known, for 1) he wears whiskers; 2) his opening sentence was "Wouldn't mind a bit less rain" (it had been raining); 3) he was in the same formal costume as the orchestra-members, but on the question what instrument he plays, he answered: "Not any, but I'm a Chap and today is Dress-up Friday. For those fortunate souls who haven't figured out yet what ChapSoc(iety) is (I guess that would make all of you): it's the club of students who purport to promote the return of politeness into British society - but I suspect the crux of the matter is that they are Dickens-nostalgians deploring the fall of the Empire.

And, last but not least: I met a new group of friends which provided me with yet another Christmas party invitation!

Three other random Things of Today:
1) We got reservations for the Twelfth Night matinee tomorrow!
2) Misoandry today in History of Sexuality got really embarrassing: fifteen girls whining about patriarchal discourse (how "men" would expect them to serve, care, live for them and are only concerned of their own positive self-conception (i.e. the anxiety for their 'masculinity', whatever that means nowadays)) in the magazines and books they buy and read and write (men generally find them either uninteresting or questionable). The one (!) boy in class didn't dare to open his mouth for the rest of the seminar. Maybe I should write a thesis about how in the modern western world patriarchy (which, I agree, still exists) is maintained primarily by (a specific group of) women, not men.
3) Got as many as two true Proust-experiences: the foyer of our Great Hall smelled exactly like my pre-previous grandmother's house, while the porch of the church smelled like her cellar. Unfortunately I didn't have the same time to my disposal as had Proust, to dwell on the associated memories. Still, it reminds me to tell you this: after you've read Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, read À la recherche du temps perdu (translations allowed ;-)!