Gay Life & Culture: A World History [Hardcover]

Robert Aldrich (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 31, 2006

In the years since Stonewall, the world has witnessed an outpouring of research, critical inquiry, and re-interpretation of gay life and culture. This book draws on groundbreaking new material to present a comprehensive survey of all things gay, stretching back to ancient Sumeria and ranging to the present day. Critically acclaimed historian Robert Aldrich and ten leading scholars juxtapose thought-provoking essays with an extensive selection of images, many never before seen. This masterful combination reveals the story behind gay culture from the industrialized world to the remotest corners of tribal New Guinea. Among the contributors are noted names in GLBT studies such as Brett Beemyn (author of Bisexuality in the Lives of Men), Charles Hupperts (expert on classical antiquity at the University of Amsterdam), Helmut Puff (University of Michigan expert on the medieval world), and Florence Temagne (author of A History of Homosexuality in Europe). The book covers such topics as the Old Testament relationship between Jonathan and David, the Age of Confucius, Native American berdaches, Polynesian mahus, Berlin in the '20s, Stonewall and the disco-flavored hedonism that followed, and the advent of AIDS, Act Up, and Angels in America. This book is an important contribution to understanding what makes gay life and culture universal throughout human culture and across time.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This lushly illustrated encyclopedia of gay life, culture, and the visual arts is a welcome addition to the ever-popular publishing phenomenon of general art history books..." "This volume should be commended for including a significant number of pages on AIDS and is invaluable to both the lay reader and well as the academic historian." -- Dec06 ART & UNDERSTANDING MAGAZINE

"...a sweeping narrative, but also inlcudes many of the nuances and complexities that the subject needs." "...it is both a scholarly and lusciously presented popular work..." "...this book is indeed an important one." -- 10/28/06 FINANCIAL TIMES

"...meticulously annotated...without a dull page in the lot." -- 10/19/06 ECHO MAGAZINE

"Editor Robert Alrich's tome reports on queer love from 1700 B.C. to today, with gorgeous (and rare) illustrations." -- Nov06 TIME OUT NEW YORK

"Gay Life and Culture deserves to read and should have a place on every bookshelf." 3/4 page with two photos -- Dec06 METROSOURCE NY

About the Author

Robert Aldrich is professor of history at the University of Sydney. He is the author of numerous books including The Seduction of the Mediterranean: Writing, Art and Homosexual Fantasy and Colonialism and Homosexuality.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Universe (October 31, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0789315114
• ISBN-13: 978-0789315113
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 7.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #978,598 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Polished production, if only it were not politicized, January 8, 2007

By 

Andrew Calimach (USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Gay Life & Culture: A World History (Hardcover)

This is a very professional and visually opulent work, to which a number of top-notch scholars have contributed original and thoughtful material, and that could and should have served as the standard introduction to the topic. A great deal of care and thought obviously went into what is in many ways a splendid accomplishment. Unfortunately, it is marred by some eggregious flaws, most specifically in the opening section.

Hupperts, in his section on the Greeks, repeatedly pushes a disparaging view of same-sex relations in ancient Greece, in a transparent attempt to introduce a value judgement between the age-structured relations of the Hellenes and the egalitarian ones promoted today. But this was supposed to be a historical work, not a manifesto. What were the editors thinking?

For starters, Hupperts takes leave of scholarly objectivity to refer to Zeus' abduction of a willing Ganymede as "preying upon" him. Next, when discussing Ephorus' description of the Cretan practice, he forces the discussion into a sally on anal sex. This is an inflamatory sexualization of a millennial tradition of pedagogic and initiatory relationships among the Cretans, a people renowned for its moderation and conservatism, according to Plutarch. It is also completely gratuitous since we have no idea how the Cretan couples related, only that it was seen as a mutual exchange of honor, and the youth could repudiate his lover if the latter had abused him). To top it off, the reader is subjected to the reduction of intimate relations, whatever their nature might have been, to the mechanistic Dover-Halperinesque conceit of "penetration."

From that we are taken to the epigraphs on Thera, carefully and often professionally engraved inscriptions in a sacred precinct celebrating consummation of same-sex relations, only to have them dismissed as crude graffiti in cruising grounds and rent-boy pick-up places, with the improbable explanation that these could not be temple-related because sexual relations were forbidden in sacred places - patently false since they _were_ permitted in temples devoted to love deities, and Apollo certainly was a god of pederastic love.

Not surprisingly, Hupperts also rehashes the tired dogma of "domination" as the ruling feature in the relations of Athenian men to their sexual partners, making abstraction of the overwhelming evidence for the relations being romantic, the men being in a pleading position vis-a-vis their lovers, and dreading rejection, to say nothing of the positive effects on the polis and the youth, according to Plato, Plutarch and many others. Certainly we are obligated to see Greek pederasty in all its manifestations, good and bad, but there is no justification for one-sided views in a work such as this. The only domination here is that of the author standing on his credentials the better to dominate the naive reader.

Finally, to top off his analytical tour-de-force, Hupperts feels obligated to admonish any reader still foolish enough to imagine that pederastic relations in ancient Athens had any redeeming social value by insisting that "To suggest however that such relationships had a pedagogical function is to exaggerate the point." Have you forgotten, sir, that Pericles in his funeral oration exhorts the Athenians to be patriotic by acting like "erastes" (pederastic lovers) towards their own city??? So if we were to take you at your word, what Pericles was implying was that the citizens should "penetrate" their city from behind?! Caveat lector!

Sad to say, there are yet other examples of Hupperts playing fast and loose with his interpretations, such as his "refutation" of intercrural sex, his insertion of 21st century gay slang in his descriptions of Greek customs, and others too numerous and too tedious to mention. Tendentious polemic of this sort might make a good sales tool for the more reactionary or politically correct markets, but it does little for intellectual integrity. Too bad that an otherwise excellent work has to be held hostage to this kind of an agenda. And what a pity since much else that Hupperts presents, such as his pictures, and the careful exegesis of Plato's "Symposium" is just the kind of original approach to this kind of volume that could set it apart from more run-of-the-mill offerings.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Crompton's book is much better, January 17, 2007

By 

Geoff Puterbaugh (Chiang Mai, T. Suthep, A. Muang Thailand) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gay Life & Culture: A World History (Hardcover)

I am assuming that most readers do not have infinite space on their bookshelves. If you want an excellent one-volume overview, the place to get it is Homosexuality and Civilization -- not here.

If you want a volume filled with sumptuous pictures, may I suggest L'Amour Bleu, a supposedly "out-of-print" book which keeps being continually reprinted?

The book under review is much weaker, in all respects.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More than a Coffee Table Book, September 5, 2007

By 

Stratonautus (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gay Life & Culture: A World History (Hardcover)

An excellent pictorial tour through the centuries on fine paper, with easy top understand prose, and plenty of references for further research and reading.

However, I am not sure that averything should be looked at from our contemporary narrow view of what constitutes 'gay'. The term is a dis-service for men who (occasionally) like men - appreciating the beauty or the person they see. Which has nothing to do with sexual orinetation. In those terms the gay label has put everyone either in or out of a new closet.

Former centuries did not have such terms and sexual behaviour was in many ways freer and less bound to convention. it used to be the that the upper and working classes were far more libertine in their approach to personal relationships. Some of this comes though inthis tome. A laudable effort.