Gay Life & Culture: A World History
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Book Summary Editor: Robert Aldrich Edition: Hardcover Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published) Published: 2006-10-31 ISBN: 0789315114 Number of pages: 384 Publisher: Universe |
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Book Reviews of the Gay Life & Culture: A World History
Customer Review: Polished production, if only it were not politicized
Summary: 1 Stars
This is a very professional and visually opulent work, to which a number of top-notch scholars have contributed original and thoughtful material, and that could and should have served as the standard introduction to the topic. A great deal of care and thought obviously went into what is in many ways a splendid accomplishment. Unfortunately, it is marred by some eggregious flaws, most specifically in the opening section.
Hupperts, in his section on the Greeks, repeatedly pushes a disparaging view of same-sex relations in ancient Greece, in a transparent attempt to introduce a value judgement between the age-structured relations of the Hellenes and the egalitarian ones promoted today. But this was supposed to be a historical work, not a manifesto. What were the editors thinking?
For starters, Hupperts takes leave of scholarly objectivity to refer to Zeus' abduction of a willing Ganymede as "preying upon" him. Next, when discussing Ephorus' description of the Cretan practice, he forces the discussion into a sally on anal sex. This is an inflamatory sexualization of a millennial tradition of pedagogic and initiatory relationships among the Cretans, a people renowned for its moderation and conservatism, according to Plutarch. It is also completely gratuitous since we have no idea how the Cretan couples related, only that it was seen as a mutual exchange of honor, and the youth could repudiate his lover if the latter had abused him). To top it off, the reader is subjected to the reduction of intimate relations, whatever their nature might have been, to the mechanistic Dover-Halperinesque conceit of "penetration."
From that we are taken to the epigraphs on Thera, carefully and often professionally engraved inscriptions in a sacred precinct celebrating consummation of same-sex relations, only to have them dismissed as crude graffiti in cruising grounds and rent-boy pick-up places, with the improbable explanation that these could not be temple-related because sexual relations were forbidden in sacred places - patently false since they _were_ permitted in temples devoted to love deities, and Apollo certainly was a god of pederastic love.
Not surprisingly, Hupperts also rehashes the tired dogma of "domination" as the ruling feature in the relations of Athenian men to their sexual partners, making abstraction of the overwhelming evidence for the relations being romantic, the men being in a pleading position vis-a-vis their lovers, and dreading rejection, to say nothing of the positive effects on the polis and the youth, according to Plato, Plutarch and many others. Certainly we are obligated to see Greek pederasty in all its manifestations, good and bad, but there is no justification for one-sided views in a work such as this. The only domination here is that of the author standing on his credentials the better to dominate the naive reader.
Finally, to top off his analytical tour-de-force, Hupperts feels obligated to admonish any reader still foolish enough to imagine that pederastic relations in ancient Athens had any redeeming social value by insisting that "To suggest however that such relationships had a pedagogical function is to exaggerate the point." Have you forgotten, sir, that Pericles in his funeral oration exhorts the Athenians to be patriotic by acting like "erastes" (pederastic lovers) towards their own city??? So if we were to take you at your word, what Pericles was implying was that the citizens should "penetrate" their city from behind?! Caveat lector!
Sad to say, there are yet other examples of Hupperts playing fast and loose with his interpretations, such as his "refutation" of intercrural sex, his insertion of 21st century gay slang in his descriptions of Greek customs, and others too numerous and too tedious to mention. Tendentious polemic of this sort might make a good sales tool for the more reactionary or politically correct markets, but it does little for intellectual integrity. Too bad that an otherwise excellent work has to be held hostage to this kind of an agenda. And what a pity since much else that Hupperts presents, such as his pictures, and the careful exegesis of Plato's "Symposium" is just the kind of original approach to this kind of volume that could set it apart from more run-of-the-mill offerings.