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Book Reviews Height of Stalin's Repressive Policies Book Reviews height of Stalin's repressive policies. The of Michel Foucault's writings. However, increased persecution of homosexuals following familiarity with many of the essays published in de-Stalinization is also puzzling given the The emergence ofsexuality should not encourage generally more liberal climate that existed in the contempt. Davidson's work is one of the most country under Khrushchev. significant applications ofFoucault's (and in part As the author himself recognizes, much work Georges Canguilhem's) "historical still needs to be done to further our understanding epistemology" to the development ofpsychiatric of sexual politics and the treatment of sexual thinking about sexuality. Not only are the dissent in the Soviet Union, as well as their chapters written with style and wit, but they implications forunderstanding Soviet experience explicate some of the most important problems in general. For example, if one can accept, with faced by any historian of medical knowledge, some reservations, the author's arguments about particularly historians of psychiatry. Davidson's the reasons for decriminalizing homosexuality essays in CriticalInquiry in the late 1980s and his under the early Soviet regime (this reader at least commentaries on Foucault elsewhere are by no was not entirely convinced by the author's use of means old hat: they can be appreciated fully only evidence related to the German Social when read in conjunction with one another. And, Democratic Party to illustrate the attitudes furthermore, the remaining chapters of the book towards homosexuality among the Bolsheviks; provide the missing elements from an overall or by his inferences about Lenin's views on the system. No historian ofsexuality can afford not to subject based on his writings), it is harder to pay close attention to Davidson's work. It is for accept his argument that the recriminalization of this reason that he has already been lauded by homosexuality under Stalin was motivated by the David Halperin, Ian Hacking and others. need for "a marshaling ofresources into a narrow In a discipline where historiographical range of endeavors" (p. 171). One also wonders pronouncements are often regarded as the why Stalin abandoned modem approaches equivalent of After Eight mints, it is easy to towards homosexuality while pursuing an dismiss methodological statements as the aggressive policy of modernization in many banging of a hollow drum. Good historical other spheres. investigation is assumed to stand for itself, However, these and some other reservations and, indeed, this view is often substantiated. do not diminish the overall positive impression of But the quality of theory is often strained, or the book. It will be a welcome addition to a is lost in its own world of post-modern variety of graduate and advanced undergraduate discourse, lacking the significance to justify courses on the history of gender, sexuality, and, numerous obscure readings. This criticism is not of course, Soviet Russia. at all the case with Davidson's work. The first five chapters might be characterized as the Gennady Shkliarevsky, application of theory: they are detailed, brilliant, Bard College and insightful essays about sex and sexuality, about how new styles of reasoning come into being, and about how we came to be sexual beings. The essays rely on intensive primary Arnold I Davidson, The emergence of research into published documents in numerous sexuality: historical epistemology and the languages. Only a historian who was overly formation ofconcepts, Cambridge, MA, Harvard obsessed with the context of production of a University Press, 2001, pp. xvi, 254, illus., statement would fault Davidson's investigations £27.50 (hardback 0-674-00459-0). into the formation of sexological knowledge, and it should be remembered that he is first and Arnold Davidson's book has been a long time foremost a philosopher, not a social historian. in the making, and much of it has already been The remaining chapters might be considered a seen by historians of psychiatry and students profound exegesis of Foucault's archaeological 396 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.22, on 30 Sep 2021 at 00:58:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025727300057185 Book Reviews methodology, and indeed a part of their radiance medicine great service by bringing his mind to comes from Davidson's reinterpretation of bear on our territory. Foucault's works of his "middle period", best contained in Les mots et les choses and Ivan Crozier, L'Arche'ologie du savoir. Davidson shows the The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History similarity and difference between Canguilhem's of Medicine at UCL and Foucault's projects better than any other Anglophone commentator, and he relates all these theoretical insights back to the preceding Farokh Erach Udwadia, Man and medicine: analyses of sexology (which were themselves a history, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, already theoretically nuanced). To paraphrase 2000, pp. xvi, 496, illus., £31.50 (hardback Canguilhem, theoretical programmes are many, 0-19-565457-9) concrete results few; Davidson's work cannot be criticized in this way. It is a substantial When Michel Foucault, following his earlier achievement in the application of philosophy to works such as Madness and civilisation and The history of science and medicine, and is historical birth of the clinic, talked in the 1970s about the investigation of the first order. birth of what he called "Bio-politics", he was in Because Davidson's work is so impressive, a fact defining the theoretical and practical context number of specific issues are worthy of further with which a new age in historiography was examination. While the Foucaultian project, for associated. An age in which the history ofdisease example, is very much involved with erasing and health is increasingly seen in relation to authorship and agency in preference for politics and society; in which historians study descriptions of the conditions necessary for the social and political history through the "body", emergence ofsavoir, there are other, sociological i.e. its diseases, its health and its ability. History approaches to the history of sexology which are can no longer ignore the ravages wrought by possible, and which also address how the epidemics or the role they played in socio- formation of concepts of sexuality, and political changes. As Roy Porter put it, especially of perversion, proceeded, but at a "historians at large, who until recently tended to micro-social rather than an archaeological level. chronicle world history in blithe ignorance of or Ifhe had focused on the actors' strategies to adopt indifference to disease, now recognise the dispositions in the field of sexology in this way, difference made by plague, cholera and other Davidson's interpretation of Sigmund Freud's epidemics" (The greatest benefit to mankind, significance in reconceptualizing sexuality, for London, 1997, p. 5). The study of social history instance, might have been different. Foucault without reference to man's physical well-being is was interested in the development of discursive outdated, as is medical history considered in fields; some of this development can be thought isolation from its sociopolitical environment. of as social as well as "structural". Erach Udwadia's Man and medicine follows Finally attention should be drawn to the the modem trend. This book, organized in 75 appendix: 'Foucault, psychoanalysis, and chapters subdivided in sections, will appeal to a pleasure'. These seven short pages are the most wide range of readers from specialist scholars to profound interpretation ofFoucault that I have the general public. Different schools of medicine read. Not only do they perfecdly round-off the from antiquity to the present are studied and the experience ofreading Davidson's book, but they emergence and development of new branches of capture succinctly the challenge in writing medical knowledge are dealt with. Udwadia histories ofthe present, as Foucault and his provides useful details about different diseases, acolytes characterize themselves. It is only in their development and decline through the the works ofFoucault and Friedrich Nietzsche centuries. His work is not only a history of that historicity has had such monumental medicine, but also a clever and erudite study of resonance. Davidson has done historians of world history. It is against the backdrop of social 397 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.22, on 30 Sep 2021 at 00:58:03, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025727300057185.
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