In an analysis that promises to be controversial, Man to Man: Desire,
Homosociality, and Authority in Late-Roman Manhood surveys the presence
of same-sex desire between men in the later Roman empire. Most accounts
of recent years have either noted that sexual desire between men was
forbidden or they have ignored it. This book argues that desire between
men was known and that it was a way to express friendship, patronage,
solidarity, and other important relationships among elite males in late
antiquity. The evocation of this desire and its possible attendant
corporeal satisfactions made it a compelling metaphor for friendship. A
man’s grandeur could also be portrayed metaphorically as sexual
attractiveness, and the substantial status differences often seen in
late antiquity could be ameliorated by a superior using amatory language
to address an inferior. At the same time, however, there was a marked
ambivalence about same-sex desire and sexual behavior between men, and
indeed same-sex sexual behavior was criminalized as it had never been
before. While rejection and condemnation may seem to indicate a decisive
distancing between authority and this desire and behavior, authority
gained power from maintaining a relation to them. Demonstrating
knowledge of the actual mechanics of sex between men suggested to a
witness that there was nothing unknown to the authority making the
demonstration: authority that knew of scandalous masculine sexual
pleasure could project its power pretty much anywhere. This startling
dissonance between positive uses of same-sex desire between men and its
criminalization in one and the same moment—a dissonance which recent
discussions have been unable to address—requires further investigation,
and this book supplies it.
Related ISBN(s)
9780814212684
Launched on MUSE
2014-10-29
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