Navigating the Past
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23200496 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jana Funke (0000-0003-3898-9638, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Pages | 111-134 |
| Publication date | 2015-09-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Sex, Knowledge, and Receptions of the Past (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199660513.003.0006 |
| OpenAlex | W2486068568 |
| ISBN | 9780199660513 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
This chapter explores the as-yet little understood place of anthropological research into cross-cultural sexual behaviours and customs within the broader field of early twentieth-century sexual science. It offers a close reading of German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld’s travel narrative The World Journey of a Sexologist (1933) and focuses, in particular, on his engagement with allegedly ‘primitive’ phallic cults in Asia. In so doing, the chapter interrogates how temporal hierarchies between the primitive and the civilized shaped modern understandings of sexuality, which emerged in dialogue with colonial constructions of racial and cultural difference. It also draws on Hirschfeld’s travel writings to demonstrate that the primitive past could be used in contradictory ways that both challenged and reinforced racial and cultural hierarchies and to different ends: to open up an understanding of sexual diversity and variation across the world and to legitimize the Western project of sexual science.
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Diversity (politics) · German · Human sexuality · Linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Phallic stage · Psychoanalysis · Race (biology) · Reading (process) · Sociology · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Anthropology · European history and politics · Gender Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Philosophy · Psychology
| Citations per year | 0.6 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2021 - 2023 (3) |
| Highly cited | No |