QuestGrunny The entire history of sexuality from 20,000 BC or thereabouts. I look at how the concept of sexuality as an important part of identity developed from a world which had sex acts but no notion of sexuality to the fixation towards the end of the 19th century with the taxonomisation of sexualities and the pathologisation of homosexuality. Content Warning: Discussion of homophobia from 5:20 onwards. Discussion of racism and genocide from 9:20 onwards. Flashing images throughout. They’re quite flashy but not really really flashy so I don’t know if that’s too flashy for anyone… Back to description: I draw on Michel Foucault’s four volumes of The History of Sexuality, The Will to Know, The Use of Pleasure, The Care of Self, and The Confessions of the Flesh, as well as his lectures of governmentality, biopower, and biopolitics. I also look at some post-colonial critiques of Foucault, primarily Stoler’s Race and The Education of Desire, as well as drawing on the work of Lillian Faderman, like Surpassing the Love of Men, to counter Foucault’s little problem with generally forgetting that women exist… I have a quick look at some ancient societies treatments of homosex before moving on to look at the Ancient Greeks in a little more detail to provide a backdrop for how the early Christians began to focus on desire and the purity of desire. I look at how this developed into the move from confession being centered around acts to being centered around desires in Council of Trent, and how this caused desires to become an integral part of the self. I then look at how the regulation of workers in the industrial revolution, the control of colonial subjects, and European’s paranoia of racial degeneracy in the colonies, fed into and was fed by the developing notion of sexuality. Finally I look at how lead into sexuality being conceptualised, taxonomized, and pathologized by the sexologists, big names including Krafft-Ebbing and Freud. I was going to put my reference in a comment, but I didn’t realise how much space there is here, so I’m going to put them here. I think I’ll list them more as some recommended readings than just a bibliography. Bibliographies are just kind of annoying, they never really tell you what the books are about and if they’re any good or what not… You can find PDF’s of most of these for free online, I might link to those if a load of people happen to be interested. So there’s the Foucault books: If you’re interested in the history of sexuality then the starting place is definitely The Will to Know. It’s quite a tricky book, so I’d suggest just giving it a few reads. Probably three. Just read it through and don’t worry about understanding it too much, just get the general picture, the read it again and you’ll probably get the hang of it. Then read it once more just to show off. Then The Use of Pleasure or The Care of Self if you’re interested in the Greeks or the Romans, or what Foucault was thinking towards the end of his life. The Confession of the Flesh seems super duper interesting, but so far it’s only published in French. If you speak French definitely go for it. I read a couple of academic summaries of it because I can’t speak French, they’re interesting, I can link some if you can’t find any, but they’re all generally a much of a muchness so just pick whichever ones you find on google… Then there’s his stuff on biopower, and governmentality, and biopolitics. There’s The Birth of Biopower, Society Must Be Defended, Ethics Subjectivity and Truth, Governmentality. To start I’d recommend just opening the Ethic Subjectivity and Truth pdf and doing control f to find the term you’re interested in. I’m thinking I’ll make some videos on these concepts at some point maybe. Lillian Faderman’s Surpassing the Love of Men is a great book. Read it. If you want an accessible history of sexuality that’s also really rigorous, this is the place to start. Her The Gay Revolution is also great. Also, the Kim Tallbear articles I mentioned are great. Read those if you’re interested in that. They are Disrupting Settlement, Sex, and Nature, and Making Love and Relations Beyond Settler Sex and Family. Stoler’s Race and the Education of Desire is great if you’re interested in sexuality and Europeans in the colonies. Particularly read Chapters 3 and 4, 1 and 2 are tricky and quite skippable. 5 is fine. If you haven’t read The Will to Know then read that first, otherwise you’ll be lost in this book. I think those are probably the best starts, I mentioned some other texts in the video, but they’re not super duper relevant to someone interested in the main thrust of the video. I’ll list them in the pinned comment. The pictures that I didn’t draw are from wikimedia, mostly the archive of the Tropenmuseum. If you’re in Amsterdam and haven’t been then do so, it’s a great museum.