The Social Construction of Homosexuality

Abstract

F OUCAULT'S IDEA that even the deepest-lying sexual categories are social constructs has surely been one of the most powerful developments on the intellectual horizon in recent decades. It gives a path of explanation for much that was inexplicable; it liberates us from some of our own most mysterious values; it allows us to see things in other societies and ages that were simply overlooked before. It is an idea that has generated a cascade of work in ancient social history in the last few years, most notably from David Halperin, Froma Zeitlin, and the late John J. Winkler.' One of the most seductive claims to issue from this work is the claim that the very category homosexual is a social construct which is scarcely more than a hundred years old. This claim is made of course by Foucault himself, and is restated and defended with great clarity and vigour by David Halperin in his book One Hundred Years of Homosexuality (above, note 1). This book has a number of essays on ancient erotic subjects; it would be pleasant to recount them and dilate on them here. But the book's most important and striking claim-its recurrent underlying thesis-is that homosexuality is not a natural but a social category. It is only this thesis, and Halperin's defence of it, that I shall consider in this review article.