Sexuality and the Transformation of Culture: The Longue Durée

In the USA today, the election of gay bishops threatens to bring about a schism in the Episcopalian Church. This article asks questions about the extraordinary importance attached to matters sexual, both historically and in the present. Laqueur's anthropological answer to this broad question is that it is connected with a long and divergent tradition of thinking about the origins of culture. Sex and death, he says, organize the work of making culture. The thematic occasion for the history presented here is the notion of 'orgasm', and Laqueur offers four or five dates which can be regarded as turning points in the long history of 'allegories of orgasm'.