One Hundred Years of Homosexuality
Cover, showing Jose de Madrazo Santander's painting The Death of the Spanish Rebel Viriathus
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| Author | David M. Halperin |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | The New Ancient World |
| Subject | Homosexuality |
| Published | 1990 (Routledge) |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
| Pages | 230 |
| ISBN | |
One Hundred Years of Homosexuality: and other essays on Greek love is a 1990 book about homosexuality in ancient Greece by the classicist David M. Halperin, in which the author supports the social constructionist school of thought associated with the French philosopher Michel Foucault. The work has been praised by several scholars, but criticized by others, some of whom have attributed to Halperin the view that the coining of the word "homosexuality" in the nineteenth century brought homosexuality into existence.
Halperin addresses the constructivist-essentialist debate on gay history from a constructivist point of view. He supports the social constructionist school of thought associated with Foucault, although he admits that the social constructionist view would be proven false if it could be shown that sexual orientation is innate. Social constructionists argue that the categories of "homosexual" and "heterosexual" have emerged from the social, political and scientific debate over sexuality that has taken place since the late 19th century, and that their application to people in effect makes them "homosexual" or "heterosexual".
Halperin believes that the appearance of the English translation of the first volume of Foucault's The History of Sexuality in 1978, together with the publication of classical scholar Kenneth Dover's Greek Homosexuality the same year, marked the beginning of a new era in the study of the history of sexuality. Halperin suggests that The History of Sexuality may be the most important contribution to the history of western morality since Friedrich Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality (1887).
In Halperin's view, the introduction of the term "homosexual" in the 1892 English translation of Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psycopathia sexuallis by Charles Gilbert Chaddock marks an important change in the treatment and consideration of homosexuality. Discussing Aristophanes' speech in Plato's Symposium, he argues that Aristophanes did not recognize a category of "homosexual" people but only the separate categories of men-loving men and women-loving women. According to Halperin, Aristophanes divided men-loving men into two different kinds, youths who loved adult men and adult men who loved youths.
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