One Hundred Years of Homosexuality: And Other Essays on Greek Love

In One Hundred Years of Homosexuality (1990), David Halperin argues that modern interpretations that read back identities of "gay" on Greek society are anachronistic and inappropriate to understanding Greek life; his analysis shows that the heterosexual/homosexual binary (and sexual identity) is a very recent way of conceptualizing and experiencing sexual desire (9). Halperin argues that sexuality is a modern invention (24) and argues that the ancient Greeks didn't understand sex in terms of sexuality. He contrasts today and ancient Greece: "Instead of viewing public and political life as a dramatization of individual sexual psychology, as we often tend to do, they see sexual behavior as an expression of political and social relations" show more (37). Halperin reads backward in the vein of Foucault, to understand better what we know now, and to be "more aware of the enigma we present to ourselves" and "discovering, and changing, who we are" (71). show less