Customer Reviews

Gay Life & Culture: A World History

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

The book seems torn between a coffee-table book (it certainly looks and weighs like one) and an academic study. It is not a very pleasant position and anyone who takes it is bound to end up worse for wear because meeting the expectations connected with the two quite distant genres is simply impossible. It is important to bear this in mind because it seems that previous reviewers missed this point completely.
This is an introduction into gay and lesbian history. There are better, better researched, more in-depth and more detailed studies but you have to start somewhere, and it is better do so with a large overview like this one. Some can start from Foucault and take it from there but they are quite few while most readers will find Foucault sufficiently offputing never to try to approach gay and lesbian history again. This is a book aimed at those average readers. It is for them that it takes an approachable form with clear division of material and a large number of colourful illustrations. It is also for them that it tries to simplify certain issues (but providing an ample bibliography so anyone not quite satisfied should know where to look for more).
One thing must be stressed - this an extremely universal study that goes beyond the limits of the Western world both in descriptions of present state of gay and lesbian universe and in its attempts to present its past. If only for that it is a book well worth buying and reading.

Many books purporting to offer a history of homosexuality concentrate mainly on the last two centuries in Europe and North America. Since many readers of such books are interested in self-understanding, this bias is understandable. Unfortunately, it is supported by a mistaken theory known as Social Construction which holds, in essence, that there was no homosexuality before ca. 1870 and then only in European countries. In his introduction Robert Aldrich rightly eschews this error. His book includes important material on classical antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and non-Western civilizations.

Unfortunately, some of his authors do not follow this principle, and regurgitate the old Social Constructionist platitudes. There is also a discord concerning levels of accessibility, as some contributions are technical while others border on the simplistic.

Physically, the book is sumptious, with over 250 splendid illustrations gathered by the picture editor, the late Wendy Gay. Unfortunately, the illustrations seem to have been gathered independently of the texts, whose authors hardly ever refer to them.

In short, this book has much to offer. However, it would have benefited from a firmer editorial hand, so as to shape the contributions into a more organic whole.

This book exceeded my every expectation. I spent years writing about the gay movement as a journalist and worked in LGBT politics for much of my life and I found a wealth of new insights and history that I knew nothing about. The writing ranges from academic to entertaining and the photos and illustrations are first class.

Frankly, before this book came along gay studies had, for me, become boring (Foucault, Weeks, post-modernists, and the depoliticising of gay studies all contributed to this.)

At last I can get excited again. Here's a book which looks across history and societies, and stands outside of a particular academic approach.

I may be invisible, or gay history, myself, but I enjoy being able to dip in to articles that interest me. There is sheer joy in having this handsome volume on a shelf. It is a positive affirmation of gayness. It is better than a coffee table book but not as boring as a text.

From the standpoint of a public policy preofessional I have found it useful in development of gay health policy.

As an academic I find this to be an seminal work, essential to anyone with an interest with identity formation or gender studies.

Buy it.