Intimate Citizenship and the Culture of Sexual Story Telling

Abstract

‘Stories’ have recently moved centre stage in social thought: as the pathways to understanding culture; as the bases of identity; as the tropes for making sense of the past; as ‘narrative truths’ (e.g. Spence, 1982; Bruner, 1987; Maines, 1993). A ‘narrative moment’ has now been sensed. Elsewhere, in some considerable detail, I have presented the elements and questions that need to be adressed in a symbolic interactionist account of story telling (Plummer, 1995). My focus is on one kind of story, ‘sexual stories’: the personal experience narratives of the intimate. Examples include the stories told by men and women of coming out as gay and lesbian; of women who discover they ‘love too much’; of tales told by the survivors of abortion, rape and incest; or of ‘New Men’ rediscovering their newly masculine roots through mythical stories (e.g. Norwood, 1985; Penelope and Wolfe, 1988; Bly and Wolfe, 1990). For in the late twentieth century, it could seem as if every sexual story that could be told is being told. Many desires have found a voice. From the well-rehearsed tales of ‘coming out’, ‘surviving abuse’ and ‘recovery’ found in every book store, to the continuing babble on TV programmes such as ‘Donahue’ or ‘Oprah’, the swirling simulacrum of sexual story telling seems everywhere. We have arrived in the Sexual Tower of Babel where a world of past silences has been breached. How have we come to this curious situation? What has led to this new culture where sexual stories are everywhere? When does a story come into its time? And what are the political implications of all this? These are the concerns of this essay.KeywordsSocial WorldModern PeriodPublic ProblemCultural IntermediarySexual CultureThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.