Sexuality Bibliography -- Part 2

Other bodies of thought and activism

Here I have referred to the work of African liberationists, feminisms in the global South, diasporic feminisms in the global North, Euro-American feminisms, transcontinental organising, the political economy of sexuality, Freud, post-structuralism and queer theory.

African liberationists, such as Amilcar Cabral and Frantz Fanon, whilst addressing the development of national culture and colonised subjectivity respectively in their work, have paid little attention overall to sexuality in their writing. The exception is Fanon’s (1980) essay “Algeria Unveiled” in Studies in a Dying Colonialism (section 3a), where he discusses French men’s violent sexual obsessions with veiled, therefore inaccessible, Algerian women and Algerian men’s difficulties in continuing their relations with wives who had been raped by the French. In Black Skin, White Masks (section 3a), Fanon summarily characterises the black women he had met in France and in the Antilles as being obsessed with attracting white partners and bearing children lighter than themselves.

Fanon’s other texts, The Wretched of the Earth (section 3a) and Toward the African Revolution (section 3a), may each be used to demonstrate the permeability of bodies to historical forces. Cabral’s argument in Return to the Source (section 3a) that the comprador bourgeoisie engage in a spurious “return to the source. as a means of resisting challenges to the status quo, is particularly useful for feminists in countering “culture talk”. In Unity and Struggle (section 3a), Cabral points to the need for the liberation movement to base its struggle on a thorough knowledge of the people and the elements of culture, a task that has yet to be carried out in most African countries, as Amina Mama points out (see section 5b).

Amongst feminists in the global South who have worked on sexuality, the themes of sexual violence and the complexities surrounding sexual politics have been of particular interest.
Patricia Mohammed discusses shifts in gender relations and increasing sexual violence, in the context of sexual politics in Trinidadian society and Trinidadian feminism (1991 - section 3b). Migration from India to Trinidad as indentured labourers had ruptured to some extent the caste system and gender relations structuring Indian patriarchy (Mohammed 1995 - section 3b). Mohammed argues that Indian women’s new status as wage earners, their low proportion in the Indian population, and the resulting premium on their sexuality gave them some bargaining power and allowed them a measure of freedom in sexual relationships. Kalpana and Vasanth Kannabiran (section 3b) explore their political engagement as feminists and document the praxis of the women’s movement in Andhra Pradesh. They observe that any emphasis by feminists on sexuality or any concern for sexual politics is promptly reduced by male nationalists to an obsession with sex and sexual behaviour. This is then cast as inconsequential when pitted against the “larger” political concerns of class and nation.

Elsewhere, researchers have addressed women’s sexuality in the context of communal violence (the anthology edited by Kumari Jayawardena and Vasanth Kannabiran - section 3b), conservative interpretations and implementations of Muslim laws in Pakistan (Zia - section 3b), and repressive uses of “culture” against women (Banerji - section 3b). Pioneering studies of sexual economies have been carried out addressing Thailand (Troung - section 3b), the range of geopolitical locations covered in the edited collection by John and Nair (section 3b), and the global sex trade (Kempadoo, Kempadoo and Doezema - section 3b). Kathleen Maltzhan (section 3b) recounts the difficulties and necessities of the advocacy work carried out by her organisation in supporting women marginalised by prostitution. Reproductive health and rights also receive concerted attention (the collection edited by Cornwall and Welbourne - section 3b, Sonia Correa - section 3b).

The literature produced by diasporic feminisms in the North is disparate and multi-layered. Diasporic communities in the global North have differing political histories shaped by colonial and imperial relations that have given rise to, and continue to maintain, different forms of division among nations, racialised groups, ethnic groups, classes and so on. The character of the dispersion - such as its occurrence due to slavery, indentured labour or migration - and the period of its duration are also critical features of the relationship between diaspora and mainland (see for example, Kalpana and Vasanth Kannabiran - section 3b). These features complicate the construction of sexuality in diverse diasporic locations and communities and are, to varying extents, reflected in the scholarship produced.

Within relatively recent diasporic communities, for example, it may be noted that differing emphases on sexuality are registered in the chapter on South Asian migrants in Britain by Bald (section 3c), relative to Raissiguier’s (section 3c) analysis of working class girls of Algerian descent in a French school. Haideh Moghissi (section 3c) makes the critical point that the position of Muslim minorities in the West, where they do not hold state power to impose their views and moral standards on others, is structurally different from that of Islamist movements and regimes that do hold state power in the Middle East and North Africa. Debates about multiculturalism and identity politics in the West are not appropriate for understanding the gender politics of fundamentalism in societies such as Afghanistan, Iran or Sudan. Moghissi’s argument may be generalised to state that intellectual and political positions elaborated in a given diaspora, with its own power configurations, cannot simply be transposed onto social realities arising out of quite different relations of power on the mainland.

A much older strand of diasporic feminisms in the global North is that of Black feminism in the USA. Alongside this, emerging from a different trajectory and working in alliance with Black feminism, is the feminism of Chicana and Latina activists and writers in the USA, as manifested in the two germinal anthologies, This Bridge Called My Back and Making Soul: Haciendo Caras (section 3c). The Black lesbian feminist collective, the Combahee River Collective (section 3c), based their politics on an active commitment to struggling against interlocking systems of racial, sexual, heterosexual and class oppression. The Collective’s aim was to build integrated analysis and practice based on this understanding. Within Black feminism, a major concern has been that of combating racism within white women’s organising and intellectual politics. Audre Lorde (section 3c), for example, critiques Mary
Daly’s assumption in Gyn/Ecology that the myths and herstories of white women necessarily represent those of all women, including those of Black feminists.

Defying categories is the philosopher Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who uses deconstructive strategies to engage theoretically with various bodies of thought - feminism, Marxism, literary criticism. Her chapter (section 3c) points to sexuality as a zone permeable to exploitation as a consequence of the capacity for monetary exchange embodied in sexual acts, a capacity that women living in poverty may have no other option than to utilise. Spivak wraps this understanding in a critical discussion of the ways in which language may be used to represent women’s bodies and sexuality.

In a classic text, Kate Millett (section 3d) poses the question of whether the relations between the sexes can be viewed in a political light. Politics is understood here to refer to relationships structured by power, involving personal contact and interaction between members of specific groups (such as races, castes, classes and sexes), such that one group of persons is controlled by another. Her response to this question is affirmative, in the light of the relations between the sexes being defined by a relationship of male dominance and female subordination. Gayle Rubin (section 3d) points out that disputes over sexual behaviour often become the channels for displacing social unease, and relieving the resulting emotional intensity. In times of great social stress, sexuality should be treated with special respect. At the same time, sexuality has its own internal politics, inequities and modes of oppression. The author examines these through an analysis of ideological formations that limit the theorising of sexuality as well as through a consideration of sexual stratification and sexual conflicts.

Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell and Sharon Thompson (section 3d) provide what they call a political and intellectual history of sex, outlining the ways in which feminist and socialist women and men, in the West, have sought to understand the relationships between sexuality and broader movements for human freedom. Working at a broader international level, Cynthia Enloe (section 3d) examines the question of how the dynamics between masculinity and femininity constructed the Cold War and are today, being played out at its end. As Enloe points out, however, the end of superpower rivalry has not in itself guaranteed an end to the militarisation of masculinity on which it flourished.

At the transcontinental level, considerable work has been carried out on the relationship of sexuality to reproduction, health and rights (e.g. Cornwall and Welbourne, Family Care International - section 3e), as well as violence (Cuthbert and Slote - section 3e). Sonia Correa (section 3e) examines the controversies related to sexuality, expressed in United Nations negotiations, and unravels the challenges inherent in different modes of conceptualising sexual rights. She argues that it is crucial to debate the unintended implications of choices in terms of the philosophies underlying human rights approaches. A critical task, in addition, is the identification of human rights principles that would be appropriate for defining entitlements in relation to sexuality. One of the critical areas around which women organised across continental boundaries concerned the specific impact of armed conflict on women (see Rehn and Sirleaf - section 3e), fuelled by the refusal of UN member states to include systematic rape during armed conflict on the list of crimes against humanity.

A range of authors and perspectives are considered under the rubric of the political economy of sexuality. Writing in Russia at the turn of the twentieth century, Alexandra Kollontai’s ultimate aim was the complete liberation of working-class women and the establishment of the foundation of a new sexual morality. In “The Social Basis of the Woman Question”, Kollontai (section 3f) argues that the solution of “the family question” was no less important than the attainment of political equality and economic independence for women. Women’s liberation ultimately encompassed freedom in love, an ideal that was unattainable without transformation of the social and economic conditions defining the obligations of working-class women, fundamental change in all social relationships between people, and a thorough change of moral, psychological and sexual norms.

Kollontai develops these ideas further in “Sexual Relations and the Class Struggle” (section 3f), pointing to the sexual crisis of the time and the hypocrisy of relegating sexual matters to
the “private” realm, beyond the consideration of the social collective. Her point that a social group works out its ideology, and thus its sexual morality, in the process of struggle with hostile social forces is as relevant today as it was in her time. Kollontai’s autobiography (section 3f) is an interesting example of the battle she experienced against the intervention of the male into a woman’s ego, a struggle that revolved around a complex of decisions: work or marriage or love. Her novel Red Love (section 3f) is a psychological exploration of sexual relations in the post-war period, against a backdrop of changes in the contexts of women’s engagement in public affairs and out-of-home work.

In the USA, the anarchist Emma Goldman was working and writing around the same time as Alexandra Kollontai. Goldman’s two-part autobiography, Living My Life (section 3f), focuses on her passionate commitment to the political ideals of anarchism and her accompanying personal search for love and intimacy. Goldman’s political aims concerned the quest for women’s economic self-determination and for women’s right to sexual freedom. Her fight for birth control was part of this larger struggle. Candace Falk’s (section 3f) biography explores the intersection of Goldman’s public and private lives, offering a critical analysis of the theory and practice of anarchism and Goldman’s relation to it, through the trajectory of her personal life. Goldman’s life-long companion and mentor, Alexander Berkman, was imprisoned for fourteen years for his attempt to assassinate Henry Clay Frick. His prison memoirs (section 3f) recount the brutality of the prison regime, his evolving attitudes towards fellow prisoners and include a sympathetic discussion of homosexuality in the prison context.

In more recent times, Michele Barrett’s highly influential Women’s Oppression Today (section 3f) has put forward the view that it is necessary for feminists to engage with and transform Marxist class analysis. Barrett addresses questions to do with the family and child rearing through a feminist critique of psychoanalytic theories of sexual development, based upon critical and literary examination of texts within the Freudian and Marxist canons. Gayle Rubin’s (section 3f) review and critique of Marxism, structuralism, and Freudian and Lacanian literature draws on perspectives in political economy to postulate a universal “sex-gender system”. She locates the universal existence of gender asymmetry within a framework of compulsory heterosexuality. Prohibitions on same-sex relations not only bar women from phallic power, they legitimise heterosexual alliance, or the traffic in women.

Micaela di Leonardo and Roger Lancaster (section 3f) trace the contours of Western historical political-economic work on gender and sexuality. They show that the taboo on homosexual relations in Europe was implicated in, among other things, the rise of capitalism, the fanning of religious and political intolerance, the emergence of the modern nation-state and the discourses and forms of colonialism. John d.Emilio (section 3f) refutes the myth that gay men and lesbians have always existed in all societies at all times. Instead, he argues that they are a product of history and have come into being in a specific era. The historical development of capitalism, specifically its free labour system, has allowed large numbers of men and women, aggregated in urban areas, to call themselves gay and lesbian and to organise politically on the basis of that identity.

Nineteenth-century European perceptions of the “prostitute” were that there was little difference between her and the “black”, since loss of control over female sexuality meant degeneration into primitivism (see Megan Vaughan, section 5b). Freud’s influence in the twentieth century represents continuity with these earlier images, as demonstrated in his Three Essays on Sexuality (section 3g). Freud’s understanding of sexuality is ultimately biological, embedded as it is within a model of instincts, their restraints and a “natural” libido subjected to repression. At the same time, the resurgence of interest in Freudian theory is principally due to the relevance of Freud’s core theory of the dynamic unconscious.

In contrast to Freud’s emphasis on repression, Foucault’s contention was that the modern European history of sexuality is not so much one of repression as one of the power of description and production. Volume one of Foucault’s The History of Sexuality (section 3h) unravels historically specific discursive relations in which power is always implicated, thus providing a starting point for thinking about available discourses of sexuality and their dynamic, changing inter-relatedness.

Ann Stoler (section 3h) refers to some of the ways in which Foucault’s work has been received. These include the criticisms on the part of historians dismissing his empirical work as highly flawed, and the engagement on the part of social analysts with his theoretical insights, who treat his historical claims as less significant. She questions the neat partitioning of history from theory implied in these practices, pursuing a critique of her own regarding Foucault’s chronologies. Her argument is that the discursive and practical field in which nineteenth-century European bourgeois sexuality emerged was rooted in an imperial landscape that was shaped in unexamined ways by the politics and language of race.

Amongst a number of post-structural feminists, the distinction between “sex” and “gender” has been the focus of considerable attention. One of the most complex analyses of the distinction comes from Judith Butler, in Gender Trouble (section 3h). She argues that the relationship between gender and culture is not parallel to that between sex and nature but rather, that gender as a discursive element culminates in a belief in a prediscursive, “natural” sex. In other words, gender comes before sex, the latter being retrospectively produced through our understanding of gender.

The concept of “queerness” (see section 3i) has arisen as an expression of resistance to binary categories such as heterosexual/homosexual and dominant/subordinate. Instead, queer theory recognises more complex realities of multiple and shifting positions of sexuality, identity and power. Within the global South, queer theory has critically engaged with the politics of nation (Hayes, 3i) and decolonisation (Bhaskaran, 3i). The question of sexual orientation has been of considerable interest in the global North (e.g. Stein, 3i). The interview by Osborne and Segal with Judith Butler (section 3i) provides a useful introduction to the scope of Butler’s work, given the overlap between her view of herself as a post-structural feminist and the keen uptake of her work in queer theory.

African Liberationists

• Cabral, A. 1970 National Liberation and Culture Syracuse University Press
• Cabral, A. 1973 Return to the Source Africa Information Service
• Cabral, A. 1973 Return to the Source: Selected Speeches New York: Monthly Review Press
• Cabral, A. 1980 Unity and Struggle London: Heinemann Educational Books
• Fanon, F. 1963 The Wretched of the Earth Harmondsworth: Penguin
• Fanon, F. 1964 Toward the African Revolution New York: Grove Press
• Fanon, F. 1986 Black Skin, White Masks London: Pluto Press
• Fanon, F. 1989 Studies in a Dying Colonialism London: Earthscan Publications

Feminisms in the Global South

• Abeysekera, S. 1999 “Sexuality: A Feminist Issue?” Women in Action, 1, 10-14.
• Banerji, R. 1999 “Still on Fire”, Manushi, 113, 18-21.
• Cornwall, A. and Welbourne, A. (eds.) 2002 Realizing Rights: Transforming Approaches to Sexual and Reproductive Well-Being London: Zed Books
• Correa, S. 1994 Population and Reproductive Rights: Feminist Perspectives from the South London, New Jersey: Zed Books/New Delhi: Kali for Women/DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era)
• Jayawardena, K. 1995 The White Woman’s Other Burden: Western Women and South Asia During British Rule New York: Routledge
• Jayawardena, K. and de Alwis, M. (eds.) 1998 Embodied Violence: Communalising Women’s Sexuality in South Asia London: Zed Books/New Delhi: Kali for Women
• John, M. and Nair, J. (eds.) 2000 A Question of Silence? The Sexual Economies of Modern India London: Zed Books
• Kannabiran, K. and Kannabiran, V. 2002 De-Eroticising Assault: Essays on Modesty, Honour and Power Calcutta: STREE
• Kempadoo, K. 2001 “Women of Color and the Global Sex Trade: Transnational Feminist Perspectives”, Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, 1, 2: 28-51.
• Kempadoo, K. and Doezema, J. 1998 Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance and Redefinition New York, London: Routledge
• Louie, K. 1999 “Sexuality, Masculinity and Politics in Chinese Culture”, Modern Asian Studies, 33, 4: 853-867.
• Maltzhan, K. 1995 “Support Work for Prostituted Women”, Women in Action, 1, 67-69.
• Mohammed, P. 1995 “Writing Gender into History: The Negotiation of Gender Relations among Indian Men and Women in Post-Indenture Trinidad Society, 1917-1947”, in V. Shepherd, B. Brereton and B. Bailey (eds.) Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective Kingston: Ian Randle/London: James Currey
• Mohammed, P. 1991 “Reflections on the Women’s Movement in Trinidad: Calypsos, Changes and Sexual Violence”, Feminist Review, 38: 33-47.
• Thiruchandran, S. 1997 “Single Women’s Sexuality and its Cultural Version”, Nivedini: A Sri Lankan Feminist Journal, 5, 1: 4-14.
• Truong, T. 1990 Sex, Money and Morality: Prostitution and Tourism in South East Asia London: Zed Press
• Zia, A. 1994 Sex Crime in the Islamic Context: Rape, Class and Gender in Pakistan ASR Publications

Diasporic Feminisms in the Global North

• Bald, S. 1995 “Coping with Marginality: South Asian Women Migrants in Britain”, in M. Marchand and J. Parpart (eds.) Feminism/ Postmodernism/ Development London, New York: Routledge
• Christian, B. 1990 “The Race for Theory”, in Anzaldua, G. (ed.) Making Face, Making Soul: Haciendo Caras San Francisco: Aunt Lute Foundation Books
• Combahee River Collective 1983 “A Black Feminist Statement”, in Morraga, C. and Anzaldua, G. (eds.) This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color 2nd edition New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press
• Lorde, A. 1983 “An Open Letter to Mary Daly”, in Morraga, C. and Anzaldua, G. (eds.) This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color 2nd edition New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press
• Lorde, A. 1990 “I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organising Across Sexualities”, in Anzaldua, G. (ed.) Making Face, Making Soul: Haciendo Caras San Francisco: Aunt Lute Foundation Books
• Moghissi, H. 1999 Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism: The Limits of Postmodern Analysis London: Zed Books
• Mohanram, R. 1999 Black Body: Women, Colonialism and Space Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press/Public Worlds, Volume 6
• Raissiguier, C. 1995 “The Construction of Marginal Identities: Working-Class Girls of Algerian Descent in a French School”, in M. Marchand and J. Parpart (eds.) Feminism/Postmodernism/Development London, New York: Routledge
• Spivak, G. 1992 “Woman in Difference: Mahasweta Devi’s ‘Douloti the Bountiful’”, in A. Parker, M. Russo, D. Sommer and P. Yaeger (eds.) Nationalisms and Sexualities New York, London: Routledge

Euro-American feminisms

• Daly, M. 1979 Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism London: The Women’s Press
• Enloe, C. 1993 The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War Berkeley, London: University of California Press
• Ferguson, A. 1989 Blood at the Root: Motherhood, Sexuality and Male Dominance London: Pandora Press
• Janssen-Jurreit, M. 1982 Sexism: The Male Monopoly on History and Thought (transl. Verne Moberg) London: Pluto Press
• Knudsen, C. 1994 The Falling Dawadawa Tree: Female Circumcision in Developing Ghana Hojbjerg: Intervention Press
• Millett, K. 1970 Sexual Politics New York: Ballantine
• Moi, T. 1985 Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory London, New York: Methuen
• Richardson, D. 2000 Rethinking Sexuality London: Sage
• Rubin, G. 1984 “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality”, in C. Vance (ed.) Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul
• Segal, L. 1990 Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men London: Virago
• Snitow, A., Stansell, C. and Thompson, S. 1983 “Introduction”, in Snitow, A., Stansell, C. and Thompson, S. (eds.) Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality New York: Monthly Review Press

Transcontinental organising

• Achterberg, A. 1995 “Violence Against Women: Women in Algeria Live in Terror”, in Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights, 49.
• Bhavnani, K., Foran, J. and Kurian, P. (eds.) 2002 Feminist Futures: Re-Imagining Women, Culture and Development London: Zed Press
• Cornwall, A. and Welbourne, A. (eds.) 2002 Realizing Rights: Transforming Approaches to Sexual and Reproductive Well-Being London: Zed Books
• Correa, S. 2002 “Sexual Rights: Much Has Been Said, Much Remains to be Resolved”. Lecture in the Sexuality, Health and Gender Seminar, Department of Social Sciences, Public Health School, Columbia University, October 2002.
• Cuthbert, C. and Slote, K. 1999 Intimate Partner Sexual Abuse: An International Survey and Literature Review Wellesley: Wellesley Centers for Women
• Family Care International 1999 Meeting the Cairo Challenge: Progress in Sexual and Reproductive Health New York: Family Care International
• Rehn, E. and Johnson Sirleaf, E. 2002 “Progress of the World’s Women 2002” Volume 1 Women, War, Peace: The Independent Experts. Assessment on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Women and Women’s Role in Peace-building New York: United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)
• Thorbek, S. and Pattanaik, B. (eds.) 2002 Transnational Prostitution: Changing Patterns in a Global Context London: Zed Press

Political Economy of Sexuality

• Barrett, M. 1980 Women’s Oppression Today: Problems in Marxist Feminist Analysis London: Verso
• Baxandall, R. 1995 “Marxism and Sexuality: The Body as Battleground”, in Callari, A., Cullenberg, S. and Biewener, C. (eds.) Marxism in the Postmodern Age: Confronting the New World Order New York: Guildford Press
• Berkman, A. 1970 Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist New York: Schocken Books
• D.Emilio, J. 1997 “Capitalism and Gay Identity”, reprinted in Lancaster, R.N. and di Leonardo, M. (eds.) The Gender/Sexuality Reader New York, London: Routledge (original 1979)
• Di Leonardo, M. and Lancaster, R. 1996 “Gender, Sexuality, Political Economy”, New Politics, 6, 1: 21.
• Falk, C. 1990 Love, Anarchy and Emma Goldman New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press
• Goldman, E. 1986 Living My Life (2 volumes) London: Pluto Press
• Kollontai, A. 1927 Red Love New York: Seven Arts Publishing Company (Transcribed in 1998 by slr@marx.org) http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/works/r…
• Kollontai, A. 1971 The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman Translated by Salvator Attansio Herder & Herder (first published in 1926) http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/works/b…
• Kollontai, A. 1977 “The Social Basis of the Woman Question”, in Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollontai Allison & Busby (first published 1909 as a pamphlet) Translated and edited by Alix Holt http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/works/1…
• Kollontai, A. 1977 “Sexual Relations and the Class Struggle”, in Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollontai Allison & Busby (written 1921) Translated by Alix Holt http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/works/1…
• Kollontai, A. 1977 “Prostitution and Ways of Fighting it”, in Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollontai Allison & Busby (Speech by Alexandra Kollontai to the third all-Russion conference of heads of the Regional Women’s Departments, 1921) Translated by Alix Holt http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/works/1…
• Rubin, G. 1975 “The Traffic in Women”, in R. Reiter (ed.) Toward an Anthropology of Women New York: Monthly Review Press

Freud

• Freud, S. 1977 On Sexuality The Pelican Freud Library Vol. 7
• Freud, S. 1991 On Sexuality: Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality and Other Works London: Penguin Book

Post-structuralism

• Butler, J. 1990 Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity Routledge: London, New York
• Butler, J. 1993 Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” London, New York: Routledge
• Foucault, M. 1990 (Translated from French by Robert Hurley) The History of Sexuality Vol. 1: An Introduction New York: Vintage Books
• Foucault, M. 1990 (Translated from French by Robert Hurley) The History of Sexuality Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure New York: Vintage Books
• Hollway, W. 1996 “Recognition and Heterosexual Desire”, in D. Richardson (ed.) Theorising Heterosexuality Milton Keynes: Open University Press
• Irigiray, L. 1985 This Sex Which is Not One New York: Cornell University Press
• Stoler, A. 1995 Race and the Education of Desire Durham, London: Duke University Press
• Weedon, C. 1987 Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory Oxford: Basil Blackwell
• Weeks, J. 1985 Sexuality and its Discontents - Meanings, Myths and Modern Sexualities London: Routledge and Kegan Paul

Queer theory

• Bhaskaran, S. 2004 Made in India: Decolonizations, Queer Sexualities, Trans/national Projects Palgrave Macmillan (forthcoming November 2004)
• Hayes, J. 2000 Queer Nations: Marginal Sexualities in the Maghreb University of Chicago Press
• Osborne, O. and Segal, L. 1994 “Gender as Performance: An Interview with Judith Butler”, Radical Philosophy, 67: 32-39.
• Stein, E. 1999 The MisMeasure of Desire: The Science, Theory and Ethics of Sexual Orientation Oxford: Oxford University Press

Research methodologies

Robert Connell (1994) discusses the absence of bodies from social analysis, and from mainstream as well as more radical theoretical frameworks (sociobiology and social constructionist approaches, respectively) that aim to reintegrate the body and gender. He argues that neither of these frameworks is adequate, opting instead for a theoretical position in which bodies are seen as sharing in social agency, by generating and shaping courses of social conduct. Connell’s earlier work (1987) points to the social relations of gender as a starting point for analysis; such relations are central in structuring the ways in which the plurality of bodies are organised.

The important point that research methodologies cannot be partitioned from ideological orientations is made, in differing ways, by Goldstein and Manlowe’s edited collection on the gender politics of HIV/AIDS in women in the USA, and by Carole Vance’s chapter on “Gender Systems, Ideology and Research”. Bullough’s Science in the Bedroom provides a useful historical overview of “sex research”, including examples of some of the more reductive quantitative tendencies that it would be advisable to avoid. Such approaches may be interestingly juxtaposed to Ken Plummer’s Telling Sexual Stories, which exemplify more accessible and qualitative modes of engaging in research on sexuality.

Wendy Hollway’s and Tony Jefferson’s article on “Eliciting Narrative Through the In-depth Interview”, whilst not specifically on sexuality, could nevertheless be utilised for engaging with the question of methodology in research on sexuality. Focus group discussions have often been championed as a method of choice for eliciting discussion among participants on issues of sexuality. Kamran Ali, however, writes about going beyond focus groups to engage in informal discussions and a free exchange of views with his rural and urban informant-friends. This allowed him to develop a more contextualised understanding of men’s decisions about contraceptive use.

Kendall discusses research methods and ethics in relation to her research on Zulu traditional healers, Izangoma. Specifically, she raises questions about her own positioning as a white scholar from the United States working with a cohort of research students, only a minority of whom were Zulu. The group were, on request, observing, interviewing and writing about a
ritual performance. The latter was designed to re-invent aspects of Zulu tradition that had been overshadowed by colonisation and Christianity. This it did by providing a showcase for teenage girls, in particular, to perform “traditional” song and dance, and by attempting to restore what was believed to be ancient Zulu respect for virginity.

The references cited below tend to foreground methodological considerations. However, they are not the only references cited in this bibliography that have implications for methodology in research on sexuality. Each of the other bibliographic sections refers to texts that may be useful in this regard, depending on the thematic focus of the research.

• Ali, K. 1996 “Notes on Rethinking Masculinities”, in Zeidenstein, S. and Moore, K. (eds.) Learning About Sexuality: A Practical Beginning New York: The Population Council/International Women’s Health Coalition
• Bullough, V. 1994 Science in the Bedroom: A History of Sex Research New York: BasicBooks
• Connell, R. 1987 Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics Stanford: Stanford University Press
• Connell, R. 1994 “Bodies and Genders”, Agenda, 23: 7-18.
• Goldstein, N. and Manlowe, J. (eds.) 1997 The Gender Politics of HIV/AIDS in Women: Perspectives on the Pandemic in the United States New York, London: New York University Press
• Hollway, W. and Jefferson, T. 1997 “Eliciting Narrative Through the In-Depth Interview”, Qualitative Inquiry, 3, 1: 53-70.
• Kendall (n.d.) “The Role of Izangoma (Traditional Healers) in Bringing the Zulu Goddess Back to Her People”
• http://www.unp.ac.za/UNPDepartments/politics/gen…
• Plummer, K. 1995 Telling Sexual Stories: Power, Change and Social Worlds London, New York: Routledge
• Ross, E. and Rapp, R. 1997 “Sex and Society: A Research Note from Social History and Anthropology”, in R. Lancaster and M. di Leonardo (eds.) The Sexuality Reader: Culture, History, Political Economy New York, London: Routledge
• Vance, C. 1983 “Gender Systems, Ideology and Research”, in Snitow, A., Stansell, C. and Thompson, S. (eds.) Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality New York: Monthly Review Press
• Zeidenstein, S. and Moore, K. 1996 (eds.) Learning About Sexuality: A Practical Beginning New York: The Population Council/International Women’s Health Coalition

Understanding constructions of sexuality

Foucault’s conception of sexuality (see section 5e), not as an innate or “natural” aspect of the body but rather the effect of historically specific power relations, provides a useful analytical framework for explaining how women’s experience is diminished and controlled within certain culturally shaped notions of female sexuality. Moreover, Foucault’s idea that the body is produced through power and is thus a cultural, rather than a “natural” entity, supports a critique of essentialism.

Key absences in Foucault’s work, namely, the history of empire and the construction of race, are brought to the fore by Ann Stoler’s (section 5b) critique. Stoler suggests that the production and distribution of desires in the 19th century European discourse on sexuality was filtered through an earlier set of discourses and practices that were prominent in imperial technologies of rule. Amina Mama’s (section 5b) discussion of imperial culture highlights the sexual politics of European culture in which the despised Other became a receptacle for the repressed sexuality of Europeans. This, she points out, explains the consistent rendition of African men and women as hypersexual.

A number of essays provide analyses of changing constructions of sexuality across time, grounded in historical materialism and politics. Anne Mager (section 5b) argues that in the decade following the second world war, the increasing marital instability and violence against African women were the outcome of complex social changes in South Africa. These were changes in which African men were desperately trying to reassert patriarchal domination. Men’s valuation of women was also shifting: from being previously valued for their fertility, women were now viewed as objects of sexual gratification. Jane Parpart (section 5b)
examines women’s resistance to the use of urban African courts and new “customary” laws redefining sexuality in terms of patriarchal power. These processes occurred in the context of male rural elders. loosening control of women’s productive and reproductive labour. Agnes Runganga and Peter Aggleton (section 5c) show how changes in the political economy of Zimbabwe over the last 100 years or so, have changed dominant meanings of sexuality among indigenous people. New meanings have permeated existing systems, profoundly changing elements of more traditional sexual culture.

Differences in the legitimacy of members of particular groups engaging in sexual activity are also constructed, as are the activities themselves in the context of hierarchical constructions of “appropriate” sexuality. Children are a prime example of a social category whose sexuality is more likely to be proscribed than not. Sylvia Tamale (section 5d) argues against the use of standardised regulatory mechanisms, such as the “age of consent”, to determine the boundaries of legitimate sexual activity. Zachie Achmat (section 5d) destabilises the received view of sexual activity amongst adults and adolescents. From another perspective, practices that adults call “sex”, may not be categorised as such by street children, as Rakesh Rajani and Mustafa Kudrati demonstrate (section 5d). Elaine Salo (section 5d) highlights the tensions that adolescents in Manenberg in the late 1990s experience in their navigation of co-existing and divergent meanings of sexuality and personhood - those emanating from the dominant local moral economy and newer, more cosmopolitan ideas.

Conflicts around the sexuality of young people and the pregnancies of young unmarried women have been analysed by Heike Becker (section 5e), in her historical perspective on customary law and power relations. Tejaswini Niranjana (section 5e) contrasts the formation of the “Indian” in the subaltern diaspora - Trinidad - with the hegemonic construction of “Indians” in India. She analyses two distinct historical moments that each foreground the question of female sexuality - the early 20th century campaign against indenture by nationalists in India, and a contemporary controversy around East Indian women and popular music in Trinidad. Bruce Dunne’s (section 5e) discussion of power and sexuality in the Middle East highlights the way in which sexual relations, whether heterosexual or homosexual, are understood as relations of power that are linked to rigid gender ascriptions. Men who are dominant in sexual relations with other men are not considered homosexual; more threatening to the sexual order would be the suggestion of equality in sexual relations, whether heterosexual or homosexual.

Haideh Moghissi (section 5e) points to the conception of women in Muslim societies as weak in moral judgement and deficient in cognitive capacity, yet sexually forceful and irresistibly seductive. Women’s susceptibility to corruption, in this view, underlies the obsession with sexual purity in the Middle East and hence the surveillance of women by family, community and state. At the same time, the relative variations in religious and political traditions, from Indonesia and Malaysia to Morocco, indicate that Islamic traditions and values may accommodate local cultural practices and processes of social and economic development. Nawal El Saadawi (section 5e) refers to the use of religion as an instrument by political and economic forces, and those who rule to keep down those who are ruled. She points out how, in any society, it is not possible to separate religion from politics, and politics from sex.

Prostitution in Thailand is the focus of Thanh-Dam Truong (section 5f) study. She begins from the perspective of the political economy of women’s labour, sexuality and tourism, in contrast to the prevailing conception of prostitution as a manifestation of promiscuity and crime. Truong argues that the thriving sex industry is in large part due to the contradiction between recognition and denial of particular aspects of prostitution: recognition of prostitutes as criminals, but not clients, pimps or brothel owners; the silencing of economic policy and international relations; and the ethics of business and sexual conduct as bases for prostitution. The transcontinental character of trafficking in women, and its African dimensions, are outlined by Patience Elabor-Idemudia (section 5f). At another level, transcontinental sex tours via the Internet are increasingly being promoted, as Donna Hughes (section 5f) points out.

Pre-colonial

• Akyeampong, E. 1997 “Sexuality and Prostitution among the Akan of the Gold Coast c.1650-1950”, Past and Present: A Journal of Historical Studies, 156, 144-173.
• Becker, H. 2000 “A Concise History of Gender, “Tradition. and the State in Namibia”, in C. Keulder (ed.) State, Society and Democracy: A Reader in Namibian Politics Windhoek: Gamsberg MacMillan
• Mernissi. F. 1993 Hidden From History: Forgotten Queens of Islam (translated by M.J. Lakeland) Cambridge: Polity Press/Blackwell Publishers
• Rowson, E. 1991 “The Categorisation of Gender and Sexual Irregularity in Medieval Arabic Vice Lists”, in J. Epstein and K. Straub (eds.) Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity New York: Routledge
• Smith, M.F. 1981 Baba of Karo: A Woman of the Muslim Hausa New Haven, London: Yale University Press

Colonial

• Abrahams, Y. 2000 “Colonialism, Dysfunction and Dysjuncture: The Historiography of Sarah Bartmann”, PhD thesis, University of Cape Town
• Boswell, B. 2003 “Conversation with Yaba Badoe”, Feminist Africa, 2: 80-87.
• Dunne, B. 1994 “French Regulation of Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century Colonial Algeria”, Arab Studies Journal, 2, 1: 24-30.
• Jackson, L. 2002 “When in the White Man’s Town.: Zimbabwean Women Remember Chibeura”, in J. Allman, S. Geiger and N. Musisi (eds.) Women in African Colonial Histories Bloomington
• Kanogo, T. 1987 Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau 1905-63 London: James Currey/Nairobi: Heinemann Kenya
• Mager, A. 1996 “Sexuality, Fertility and Male Power” Agenda, 28: 12-24.
• Maloka, T. 1997 “.Khomo Lia Oela!. Canteens, Brothels and Labour Migrancy in Colonial Lesotho, 1900-1940”, Journal of African History, 38.
• Mama, A. 1997 “Shedding the Masks and Tearing the Veils: Cultural Studies for a Post-Colonial Africa”, in A. Imam, A. Mama and F. Sow (eds.) Engendering African Social Sciences Dakar: CODESRIA
• Mann, K. 1985 Marrying Well: Marriage, Status and Social Change Among the Educated Elite in Colonial Lagos Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• McClintock, A. 1994 Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Conquest New York: Routledge
• Musisi, N. 2001 “Gender and the Cultural Construction of “Bad Women” in the Development of Kampala-Kibuga, 1900-1962”, in D. Hodgson and S. McCurdy (eds.) “Wicked” Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann/Oxford: James Currey/Cape Town: David Philip
• Pape, J. 1990 “Black and White: The “Perils of Sex. in Colonial Zimbabwe”, Journal of Southern African Studies, 16, 4: 699-720.
• Parpart, J. 1986 “Sexuality and Power on the Zambian Copperbelt, 1926-1964” Working Papers in African Studies No. 120, African Studies Centre, Boston University
• Ranger, T. 1989 “The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa”, in E. Hobsbaum and T. Ranger (eds.) The Invention of Tradition Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Stoler, A. 1995 Race and the Education of Desire Durham, London: Duke University Press
• Tashjian, V. and Allman, J. 2002 “Marrying and Marriage on a Shifting Terrain: Reconfiguration of Power and Authority in Early Colonial Asante”, in J. Allman, S. Geiger and N. Musisi (eds.) Women in African Colonial Histories Bloomington
• Vaughan, M. 1991 Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness Cambridge: Polity Press

Postcolonial

• Afary, J. 1997 “The War Against Feminism in the Name of the Almighty: Making Sense of Gender and Muslim Fundamentalism”, New Left Review, 224, 89-110.
• Ahlberg, B. 1994 “Is There a Distinct African Sexuality? A Critical Response to Caldwell et al.” Africa, 64, 2: 220-242.
• Dirusweit, T. 1998 “Sexuality and Space: Sexual Identity in South African Mine Compounds and Prisons”, Development Update, 2, 2: 107-112.
• Dunbar, M. 2001 “Black Migrant Mine Labourers and the Vicissitudes of Male Desire”, in R. Morrell (ed.) Changing Men in Southern Africa Pietermaritzurg: University of Natal Press
• Elder, G. 2003 Hostels, Sexuality and the Apartheid Legacy: Malevolent Geographies Ohio: Ohio University Press
• Glaser, C. 1992 “The Mark of Zorro: Sexuality and Gender Relations in the Tsotsi Subculture on the Witwatersrand”, African Studies, 51, 1:47-67.
• Hodgson, D. and McCurdy, S. (eds.) 2001 “Wicked” Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, Oxford: James Currey, Cape Town: David Philip
• Madutjok, J. 1999 “Militarisation and Gender Violence in South Sudan”, Journal of Asian and African Studies, 34, 4: 427-442.
• Murray, S. and Roscoe, W. (eds.) 1998 Boy-Wives and Female-Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities Bloomsburg: Macmillan Press
• Runganga, A. and Aggleton, P. 1998 “Migration, the Family and the Transformation of a Sexual Culture”, Sexualities, 1, 1: 63-81.
• Vogelman, L. 1990 The Sexual Face of Violence: Rapists on Rape Johannesburg: Ravan
• Weeks, J. 1991 “The Body and Sexuality”, in The Polity Reader in Gender Studies Cambridge: Polity Press
• Zack, N. (ed.) 1997 Race/Sex: Their Sameness, Difference and Interplay New York: Routledge

Sexuality in Children and Adolescents

• Achmat, Z. 1990 “My Childhood as an Adult Molester”, in M. Gevisser and E. Cameron (eds.) Defiant Desire: Gay and Lesbian Lives in South Africa Johannesburg: Raven Press
• Bohmer, L. and Kirumba, E. 2000 “Socio-economic Context and the Sexual Behaviour of Ugandan Out of School Youth”, Culture, Health and Sexuality, 2, 3: 269-285.
• Fredman, L. and Potgieter, C. 1996 “Sexuality Too Narrow to Fit?” Agenda, 28: 48-53.
• Rajani, R. and Kudrati, M. 1996 “The Varieties of Sexual Experience of the Street Children of Mwanza, Tanzania”, in Zeidenstein, S. and Moore, K. (eds.) Learning About Sexuality: A Practical Beginning New York: The Population Council/International Women’s Health Coalition
• Salo, E. 2002 “Condoms are for Spares, Not the Besties: Negotiating Adolescent Sexuality in Post-apartheid Manenberg”, Society in Transition, 33, 3: 403-419.
• Tamale, S. 2001 “How Old is Old Enough?: Defilement Law and the Age of Consent in Uganda”, East African Journal of Peace & Human Rights, 7, 1: 82-100.

Culture, Tradition, Religion, Nation

• Asante, K. 1994 “Images of Women in African Dance: Sexuality and Sensuality”, Sage, 8: 16-19.
• Becker, H. 1996 “Shikumbu!. Premarital Female Sexuality and Customary Law in Northern Namibia” South African and Contemporary History Seminar, 1st October 1996, Department of History and Institute for Historical Research, University of Western Cape
• Dunne, B. 1998 “Power and Sexuality in the Middle East”, Middle East Report, 206, 28, 1. http://www.merip.org/mer/mer206/bruce.htm
• Ekpo, V.I. 1995 “Traditional Symbolism of the Women’s War of 1929”, in P.Dike (ed.) The Women’s Revolt of 1929: Proceedings of a National Symposium to Mark the 60th Anniversary of the Women’s Uprising in South Eastern Nigeria Lagos: Nelag & Co. Ltd.
• El Saadawi, N. 1980 The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World London: Zed Press
• Fanusi, L. 1992 “Sexuality and Women in African Culture”, in M. Oduyoye and M. Kanyoro The Will to Rise: Women, Tradition and the Church in Africa New York: Orbis Books
• Farah, N. 1970 From A Crooked Rib London: Penguin Books
• Foucault, M. 1990 (Translated from French by Robert Hurley) The History of Sexuality Vol. 1: An Introduction New York: Vintage Books
• Lalloo, S. 2000 “Hindu Women and Sexuality”, African Gender Institute Newsletter, 7.
• Mack, B. and Boyd, J. 2000 One Woman’s Jihad: Nana Asma.u, Scholar and Scribe Bloomington, Indianopolis: Indiana University Press
• Moghissi, H. 1999 Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism: The Limits of Postmodern Analysis London: Zed Books
• Niranjana, T. 1997 “‘Left to the Imagination’: Indian Nationalisms and Female Sexuality in Trinidad” South African and Contemporary History Seminar, 23rd May 1997, Department of History and Institute for Historical Research, University of Western Cape
• Salo, E. 2003 “Negotiating Gender and Personhood in the New South Africa”, Cultural Studies, 6, 3: 345 365.
• Shaarawi, H. 1998 Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press
• Steegstra, M. 2002 “A Mighty Obstacle to the Gospel.: Basel Missionaries, Krobo Women and Conflicting Ideas of Gender and Sexuality” Journal of Religion in Africa, 32, 2: 200-230.
• Women and Law Project - Sudan 1999 Women and Law in Sudan: Customary Laws of Indigenous Groups and Islamisation Women and Law Project - Sudan

Sexual Economies, Sex Trade

• Dirasse, L. 1991 The Commoditisation of Female Sexuality: Prostitution and Socio-Economic Relations in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia New York: NYAMS Press
• Elabor-Idemudia, P. 2003 “Migration, Trafficking and the African Woman”, Agenda, 58, 101-115.
• Holmes, R. 1994 “Selling Sex for a Living”, Agenda, 23: 36-48.
• Hughes, D. 1996 “Sex Tours via the Internet”, Agenda, 28: 71-76.
• Kempadoo, K. 2001 “Women of Color and the Global Sex Trade: Transnational Feminist Perspectives”, Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, 1, 2: 28-51.
• Kempadoo, K. and Doezema, J. 1998 Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance and Redefinition New York, London: Routledge
• Leggett, T. 2002 Rainbow Vice: The Drugs and Sex Industries in the New South Africa London: Zed Books
• McClintock, A. 1991 “The Scandal of Whorearchy: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi”, Transition, 51: 104-123.
• Schoepf, B. 1991 “Political Economy, Sex and Cultural Logics: A View from Zaire”, African Urban Quarterly, 6, 1/2: 94-106.
• Truong, T. 1990 Sex, Money and Morality: Prostitution and Tourism in South East Asia London: Zed Press
• White, L. 1990 The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press

Subjectivity, the unconscious and desire

The second and third volumes in Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, unlike volume one of the trilogy, go some way towards elaborating a notion of the self through Foucault’s discussion of technologies of subjectification. These are practices and techniques through which individuals actively shape their own identities.

Robert Young points to sexual exchange as the dominant paradigm through which colonialism was conceived, highlighting the intimate connection of racism with sexuality and desire. In Beyond the Masks, Amina Mama theorises the processes by which subjectivities are constructed, first by deconstructing the black subject construed in racist terms by academic psychology and then by addressing the construction of specific historically racialised, post-colonial black subjectivities.

The dualism between reason and desire that is central to modern Western thought was not a feature of migrant men’s sexual relationships, whether with young men in the mine compounds or town women. This is a central thesis of Dunbar Moodie’s analysis of the economy of African male desire on the mines. The making of young black professional men in South Africa is the subject of Kopano Ratele’s chapter, focusing on the intersection of race, class and heterosexual masculinity in the formation of men’s subjectivities. Tony Jefferson’s examination of the links between the highly visible, external world of social power associated with hegemonic masculinities, and the internal world of men’s psychic vulnerability allows us
to make sense of the actual difficulties men experience in relating to hegemonic masculinities and the response or resistance to these evident in the emergence of new masculinities.

• Foucault, M. 1990 (Translated from French by Robert Hurley) The History of Sexuality Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure New York: Vintage Books
• Foucault, M. 1988 (Translated from French by Robert Hurley) The History of Sexuality Vol. 3: The Care of the Self New York: Vintage Books
• Jefferson, T. 1994 “Theorising Masculine Subjectivity”, in T. Newburn and E. Stanko (eds.) Just Boys Doing Business? Men, Masculinities and Crime London: Routledge
• Mama, A. 1995 Beyond the Masks: Race, Gender and Subjectivity London, New York: Routledge
• Moodie, T. 2001 “Black Migrant Mine Labourers and the Vicissitudes of Male Desire”, in R. Morrell (ed.) Changing Men in Southern Africa Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press/London, New York: Zed Books
• Ratele, K. 2001 “Between “Ouens.: Everyday Makings of Black Masculinity”, in R. Morrell (ed.) Changing Men in Southern Africa Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press/London, New York: Zed Books
• Sayers, J. 1986 Sexual Contradictions: Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Feminism London: Tavistock Publications
• Young, R. 1995 Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race London, New York: Routledge

Section Navigation

• Sexuality Bibliography -- Part 3

  Sexuality Bibliography -- Part 1 Sexuality Bibliography -- Part 3