The science of sex in a space of uncertainty: Naturalizing and modernizing Europe's East, past and present (original) (raw)

Many of the mentioned works map the late socialist and postsocialist histories underlying key aspects of present sexualities and sexual politics. Yet despite the tremendous recent growth of scholarly literatures expanding our knowledge of the history of sexuality in general, as well as specifically in Europe (both insightfully reviewed by Herzog 2009 and 2013, respectively), the importance of excavating the older histories of sexuality which have shaped Europe's postsocialist present, and its thinking about sexuality and its personal, social, and political significances, has been, as Herzog (2013) notes, relatively neglected. Recently emerging scholarship is beginning to direct attention to such concerns, as new and important studies on sex work under late Habsburg rule (Stauter-Halsted, 2011; Wingfield, 2011), sexual intimacies in East Germany (McLellan, 2011), and queer urban life in late 19thand early 20th-century Budapest (Kurimay, 2012) demonstrate. Much of the balance of research on the history of Eastern European sexualities, however, has focused on Russia and the Soviet Union (e.g. Engelstein, 1994; Healey, 2009; Naiman, 1999); the specific roots of sexual regimes elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe still require further investigation. Moreover, while since Foucault, science has been seen as central to the meanings and effects of both modern concepts of sexuality and modern biopolitics more generally, and histories of sexual science have been powerful analytical and theoretical tools for thinking about sexuality as personally, socially, and politically consequential in both Western Europe and the West's colonial encounters, surprisingly little attention has been paid to its presence and implications in scholarship on Central and Eastern Europe sexualities. As Stauter-Halsted and Wingfield (2011: 216-217) note, despite the fact that Central and Eastern Europe were at the very center of scientific and legal research on sex and sexuality in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the study of sexuality and its science in the region is 'still in its nascent stages.' Here too, important work is beginning to emerge (Kos´cian´ska, 2014a; Lisˇkova´, 2013; see also the special May 2011 issue of the Journal of the History of Sexuality edited by Stauter-Halsted and Wingfield). Yet, as already mentioned, much current research has focused on Russia and the Soviet Union (e.g. Healey, 2009; Kowalski, 2009) at the expense of Central and Eastern European sexual-scientific histories. In addition, the critical potential that science can have for not only naturalizing sexual identities and relationships and their social and political meanings, but for the linking of these naturalized meanings to their lasting effects on the borders of Europeanness and modernityand thus their significance for present tensions over sexuality between Europe's East and West-remains to be fully examined. We believe, however, that the role of science as discourse and practice is critical to fully understanding Central and Eastern European histories of sexuality and their legacies. Histories of