Anders denken mit der Antike? Antike Konzeptionen von Geschlecht und moderne Transformationen

Meister, Jan B. (2023). Anders denken mit der Antike? Antike Konzeptionen von Geschlecht und moderne Transformationen. In: Meister, Jan B.; Ruprecht, Seraina (eds.) Weiblichkeit – Macht – Männlichkeit? Perspektiven für eine Geschlechtergeschichte der Antike. Geschichte und Geschlechter: Vol. 79 (pp. 79-102). Frankfurt a.M. / New York: Campus

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Gender history is more than just a history of women and men. The emphasis on the cultural construction of gender and the intricate relationship between gender and power has broadened our perspectives, integrating gender as an essential component of ancient history. When examining gender history, antiquity holds a distinctive position, extending beyond being merely another premodern era: the development of modern concepts of “sexuality” and “sexual identities” has long intertwined with references to antiquity. Antiquity served as both a point of reference and a source of legitimacy for sexual identities considered deviant in modern times, as well as a reaffirmation of timeless (‘classical’) validity of current concepts of masculinity and femininity.
By exploring the reception of Pierre Louÿs' "chansons de Bilitis," this article illustrates how fictional Sapphic poetry could simultaneously serve as a reference point for feminist-lesbian intellectuals like Natalie Clifford Barney and provoke conservative reactions from academics such as Wilamowitz, who sought to align Sappho with 19th-century bourgeois notions of femininity. The heated debates that ensued following Michel Foucault's work can be interpreted as a final resurgence of this intellectual tradition, that pictures antiquity as a unique authority highly relevant for the present. However, this influence of antiquity is increasingly losing credibility in the 21st century, which, in turn, opens up perspectives for future research: a history of gender in antiquity that examines reception not as a separate entity from the production of academic knowledge but as closely interwoven and constitutive of the discipline's development.

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