The Frail Social Body: Pornography, Homosexuality, and Other Fantasies in Interwar France

Studies on the History of Society and Culture

by Carolyn J. Dean

Amid the national shame and subjugation following World War I in France, cultural critics there—journalists, novelists, doctors, and legislators, among others—worked to rehabilitate what was perceived as an unhealthy social body. Carolyn J. Dean shows how these critics attempted to reconstruct the “bodily integrity” of the nation by pointing to the dangers of homosexuality and pornography. Dean's provocative work demonstrates the importance of this concept of bodily integrity in France and shows how it was ultimately used to define first-class citizenship.

Dean presents fresh historical material—including novels and medical treatises—to show how fantasies about the body-violating qualities of homosexuality and pornography informed social perceptions and political action. Although she focuses on the period from 1890 to 1945, Dean also establishes the relevance of these ideas to current preoccupations with pornography and sexuality in the United States.

Genres: History, France

275 pages, Hardcover

First published January 17, 2000

Reviews

[eliza!]

Thesis reading - fantastic range of primary source material, relevant insights on La Garçonne, but struggles with clarity

[John Thuppayath · Rating 5 out of 5]

*still reading. Only about half-way in.

My interest in this book stems from an interest in intellectual history rather than a particular interest in the social history of interwar France. I can only presume the somewhat tepid reviews this book has received on this site is due to perceived issues on the latter front. As a work of intellectual history - in my opinion - this is a book which, in deftly weaving painstaking primary source historical work (police records, court transcripts, avant-garde magazines, newspaper pieces, medical journals, academic treatises, et al) with practices from the sociology of knowledge, is forming a rich account of the history of the oddly interrelated ideas of pornography, violence, and sexuality in the interwar period.

Though perhaps not all will agree with me, I am finding the priority given to primary sources (there is an astonishing, and refreshing, dearth of secondary literature in the footnotes) to be particularly inspiring, given how stulted reading history becomes when it becomes overly deferent to guild code.