Fin-de-siecle Sexuality and Excretion

Moore, A

Fin-de-siecle Sexuality and Excretion

Moore, A

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Publisher:: University of Delaware Press
Publication Type:: Chapter
Citation:: Sexuality at the Fin de Siècle: The Makings of a "Central Problem", 2008, 1, pp. 125 - 139
Issue Date:: 2008-01

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Moore, A	en_US
dc.contributor.editor	Cryle, PM	en_US
dc.date.issued	2008-01	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Sexuality at the Fin de Siècle: The Makings of a "Central Problem", 2008, 1, pp. 125 - 139	en_US
dc.identifier.isbn	978-0-87413-037-9	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/8212
dc.description.abstract	WHAT HAS THE HISTORY OF EXCRETION GOT TO DO WITH THE history of sexuality? On one level the relationship is obvious to any scholar ofnineteenth-century texts, and is implicit in the work ofAlain Corbin, who is renowned for his work on both the history ofprostitution, of sexuality and the history of cleanliness, pollution, and disease in nineteenth-century France;' it is implicit too in the work of Georges Vigarello, who has looked at shifting attitudes both to rape and to dirt across the early to late modern eras.? Historians alive at the turn of the twenty-first century may also find it obvious because they can easily imagine excretion as something obscene and shameful in a manner comparable to sex, or indeed because the notion of excretion as something even more private and embarrassing than sex is so recognizable within many current-day industrialized cultures.' Both are about the lower part of the body: is there perhaps something universally, symbolically obvious about the connection? In fact what I want to suggest is that the relationship of excretion to sex in the nineteenth century operated in a way that is profoundly unfamiliar to the present. How did late nineteenth-century preoccupations with these two fields of meaning intersect? Furthermore, if we recognize this relationship, what are the implications for the way in which we interpret discourses of sexuality in the nineteenth century and at the fin de siecle in particular?	en_US
dc.publisher	University of Delaware Press	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	Sexuality at the Fin de Siècle: The Makings of a "Central Problem"	en_US
dc.title	Fin-de-siecle Sexuality and Excretion	en_US
dc.type	Chapter
utslib.location	Newark, USA	en_US
utslib.for	2002 Cultural Studies	en_US
utslib.citation.edition	1	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/e-Press
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
utslib.copyright.status	closed_access
pubs.consider-herdc	false	en_US
pubs.edition	1	en_US
pubs.place-of-publication	Newark, USA	en_US

Abstract:

WHAT HAS THE HISTORY OF EXCRETION GOT TO DO WITH THE history of sexuality? On one level the relationship is obvious to any scholar ofnineteenth-century texts, and is implicit in the work ofAlain Corbin, who is renowned for his work on both the history ofprostitution, of sexuality and the history of cleanliness, pollution, and disease in nineteenth-century France;' it is implicit too in the work of Georges Vigarello, who has looked at shifting attitudes both to rape and to dirt across the early to late modern eras.? Historians alive at the turn of the twenty-first century may also find it obvious because they can easily imagine excretion as something obscene and shameful in a manner comparable to sex, or indeed because the notion of excretion as something even more private and embarrassing than sex is so recognizable within many current-day industrialized cultures.' Both are about the lower part of the body: is there perhaps something universally, symbolically obvious about the connection? In fact what I want to suggest is that the relationship of excretion to sex in the nineteenth century operated in a way that is profoundly unfamiliar to the present. How did late nineteenth-century preoccupations with these two fields of meaning intersect? Furthermore, if we recognize this relationship, what are the implications for the way in which we interpret discourses of sexuality in the nineteenth century and at the fin de siecle in particular?

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/8212