Abstract
This paper analyzes contemporary clinical research on sexual dysfunctions to explore the biomedical construction of sexual bodies. The clinical and commercial success of Viagra as a treatment for erectile dysfunction intensified the search for biomedical explanations and solutions for an expanded range of sexual disorders in both women and men. I review significant shifts in scientific and cultural narratives of sexual problems, focusing on the extent to which a variety of increasingly discrete sexual dysfunctions with presumed organic bases have been constructed as therapeutic targets. It is argued that a ‘pharmaceutical imagination’ which assumes linear progress from psychological to physiological etiologies and anticipates pharmaceutical solutions, frames these narratives. Drawing on critical and feminist science studies, I demonstrate how drugs (such as PDE-5 inhibitors, hormones, and SSRI antidepressants) become enrolled as actants in the construction of ‘functional’ sexual bodies.
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