Scientific Racism and the Emergence of the Homosexual Body - Article Analysis Essay

Introduction

In the article, the author offers the speculation regarding the manner in which the late 19th and the early 20th century discourses of the race and sexuality cannot be contrasted merely but linked together in ways that reflect both. In the view of the author, "the concurrent bifurcations of categories of the race and sexuality should both be viewed as historically coincident, structurally independent and perhaps mutually productive" (p. 246). The author intends not to garner and demonstrate the unequivocal evidence of the impact that racial categories on the individuals who develop the homosexuality models. However, he puts more emphasis on the racial ideologies, the cultural assumptions as well as the systems of representation regarding the race through which people develop an understanding of the relationships regarding the scientific debate on sexuality.

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The author recognizes that Ellis's Sexual Inversion was the first definitive text that played an integral role in offering the discussion regarding the homosexuality. As a hybrid text, Ellis's work, in the view of the author, poised in the technique between the earlier fields of the comparative anatomy with its procedures. Further, the author provides vivid suggestions regarding ways in which the discourses seem to have been mainly engaged. These models often existed jointly irrespective of the contradictions that exist among them. Due to their speculative nature, the models are integral towards enhancing the understanding the numerous and historical specific mechanisms through which the racial discourses shape one another currently as the homosexuality has entered scientific discourse. The three main phenomena that the author speaks about include homosexual relations, interracial sexuality, and sexual inversion.

Critical Terms

Monogeny-Refers to the idea that all the human beings were created or derived from a single pair of ancestor. This belief implies that the racial variations and differences emerged from the intrinsic adaptability and the perfectibility of the human kind.

Polygeny-refers to the idea that human races were created separately and this therefore contributed to the innate and immutable differences. The considerable support for this idea emanated from the anatomists such as Samuel George Morton who conducted the analyses of the racial cranial capacity.

Sexual Mobility refers to the mechanism through which one moves his body to express oneself sexually.

Ethnocentrism-refers to the act of judging another culture through the preconceptions associated by a given culture perceived superior.

Theory of Degeneration-a belief that an organism changes from a complex to simple form and to less differentiated form.

Open Ended Question

What makes both homosexuality and heterosexuality recent inventions of the western cultures rather than being trans-historical or natural categories of human beings?

Works Cited

Somerville, Siobhan. "Scientific racism and the emergence of the homosexual body." Journal of the History of Sexuality 5.2 (1994): 243-266.