[john Boswell] Introduction Of The Concept Of

The Appearance In Nineteenth-century Psychiatry, Jurisprudence, And Literature Of A Whole Series Of Discourses On The Species And Subspecies Of Homosexuality, Inversion, Pederasty, And "psychic Hermaphroditism" Made Possible A Strong Advance Of Social Controls Into This Area Of "perversity"; But It Also Made Possible The Formation Of A "reverse" Discourse: Homosexuality Began To Speak In Its Own Behalf, To Demand That Its Legitimacy Or "naturality" Be Acknowledged, Often In The Same Vocabulary, Using The Same Categories By Which It Was Medically Disqualified.

I Don’t Feel That It Is Necessary To Know Exactly What I Am. The Main Interest In Life And Work Is To Become Someone Else That You Were Not In The Beginning. If You Knew When You Began A Book What You Would Say At The End, Do You Think That You Would Have The Courage To Write It? What Is True For Writing And For Love Relationships Is True Also For Life. The Game Is Worthwhile Insofar As We Don’t Know What Will Be The End.

A Way Of Life Can Be Shared Among Individuals Of Different Ages, Status, And Social Activity. It Can Yield Intense Relations Not Resembling Those That Are Institutionalized. It Seems To Me That A Way Of Life Can Yield A Culture And An Ethics. To Be "gay," I Think, Is Not To Identify With The Psychological Traits And The Visible Masks Of The Homosexual But To Try And Define And Develop A Way Of Life.

What Makes Power Hold Good, What Makes It Accepted, Is Simply The Fact That It Doesn't Only Weigh On Us As A Force That Says No, But That It Traverses And Produces Things, It Induces Pleasure, Forms Knowledge, Produces Discourse. It Needs To Be Considered As A Productive Network Which Runs Through The Whole Social Body, Much More Than As A Negative Instance Whose Function Is Repression

To Work Is To Undertake To Think Something Other Than What One Has Thought Before