Langage coercitif, pratiques émancipatrices : des lesbiennes sous l’œil de la clinique
At the end of the 19th century, sexology emerged as a scientific field that aimed to diagnose “sexual perversions”, including sapphism, already dealt with, mostly by male writers, in a derogatory manner. For several decades, clinicians will endeavour to understand homosexuality in order to cure it a...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Presses universitaires du Midi
2018-11-01
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| Series: | Histoire, Médecine et Santé |
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| Online Access: | http://journals.openedition.org/hms/1249 |
| Summary: | At the end of the 19th century, sexology emerged as a scientific field that aimed to diagnose “sexual perversions”, including sapphism, already dealt with, mostly by male writers, in a derogatory manner. For several decades, clinicians will endeavour to understand homosexuality in order to cure it as well as to determine whether it was inborn or acquired. They then established frames and categories in which lesbians ultimately would recognize themselves, going so far as to find in such medicalised discourse a way to exist, nay to accept one’s self. I examine that ambivalent phenomenon in the light of a few literary works, i. e. The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall (1928) and Diana: A Strange Autobiography (1939). In both cases, medical theories are used as a reading grid by their [female] authors as well as by their main characters, namely their alter ego, hence allowing them to claim the naturalness of their desires and of their sexual identity. |
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| ISSN: | 2263-8911 2557-2113 |