Sexing the Citizen: Morality and Masculinity in France, 1870-1920 / Edition 1

by Judith Surkis

Overview

How did marriage come to be seen as the foundation and guarantee of social stability in Third Republic France? In Sexing the Citizen, Judith Surkis shows how masculine sexuality became central to the making of a republican social order. Marriage, Surkis argues, affirmed the citizen's masculinity, while also containing and controlling his desires. This ideal offered a specific response to the problems—individualism, democratization, and rapid technological and social change—associated with France's modernity.

This rich, wide-ranging cultural and intellectual history provides important new insights into how concerns about sexuality shaped the Third Republic's pedagogical projects. Educators, political reformers, novelists, academics, and medical professionals enshrined marriage as the key to eliminating the risks of social and sexual deviance posed by men-especially adolescents, bachelors, bureaucrats, soldiers, and colonial subjects. Debates on education reform and venereal disease reveal how seriously the social policies of the Third Republic took the need to control the unstable aspects of male sexuality. Surkis's compelling analyses of republican moral philosophy and Emile Durkheim's sociology illustrate the cultural weight of these concerns and provide an original account of modern French thinking about society. More broadly, Sexing the Citizen illuminates how sexual norms continue to shape the meaning of citizenship.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801444647
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	05/19/2006
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.94(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Judith Surkis is a Member of the School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I: Affective Government
1. Moral Education, the Family, and the State
2. Liberal Discipline

Part II: The Bachelor's Vice
3. Wasted Youth
4. Life and the Mind

Part III: Emile Durkheim and Desirable Regulation
5. The Limits of Desire
6. The Sacralization of Heterosexuality

Part IV: Preserving Men
7. Veneral Consciousness and Society
8. Hygienic Citizens

Epilogue

Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Mary Louise Roberts

In this closely argued, intelligent, and original book, Judith Surkis gives the notion of 'sexual politics' an exciting new meaning. Male sexuality, Surkis argues, was central to the stabilization of political authority in the French Third Republic. Through promotion of heterosexual marriage, French republican educators and officials were able to anchor wider debates about moral and social order, and thus promote their political agendas. Male sexuality became a source of disorder, a problem to be solved, but also, when contained and controlled through marriage, the foundation of republican politics. Surkis makes a major contribution to the study of masculinity by viewing it as both a highly unstable 'speculative unity' and a powerful regulatory norm. With its impressive mix of political, cultural and intellectual history, as well as the history of gender and sexuality, Sexing the Citizen is destined to become a 'big book' across many different fields.

Dagmar Herzog

This fabulous book shows just how much fantasies and worries about heterosexual masculinity-its frequently fragile and unstable nature, its excesses, and all-too-often inchoate aims-shape fundamental assumptions about citizenship and national identity. It is a brilliant demonstration of the significance of sex for politics.

Jan Goldstein

Judith Surkis argues forcefully that the conjugal couple was (and perhaps remains) the core of the French republican vision of society. This is a lucid and highly original work on the construction of masculinity in Third Republic France.

Editorial Reviews

Judith Surkis's masterful study of conjugality in the Third Republic's efforts to establish, affirm, and regulate its new citizens' heterosexual masculinity reminds us how powerfully different modes of interpretation can shift the ground of historical understanding.

Culture & Society French Politics

This deeply researched and powerfully argued book demonstrates how a masculinity that was apparently in 'crisis' nonetheless succeeded in maintaining material and symbolic power.

American Historical Review

Judith Surkis's Sexing the Citizen expands the field of gender studies in French history by focusing on the ways in which republic educators imagined, regulated, and reflected upon the meanings of male adolescence, adult manhood, and monogamous marriage in the founding decades of the Third Republic.

Journal of Modern History

Sexing the Citizen is a carefully researched book that provides a fresh perspective on public debates and policies related to masculinity, morality, and citizenship in Third Republic France. Judith Surkis's clear and engaging style will appeal to readers in a variety of disciplines including history, gender studies, and French studies.

Nineteenth-Century French Studies

Sexing the Citizen is a carefully researched book that provides a fresh perspective on public debates and policies related to masculinity, morality, and citizenship in Third Republic France. Judith Surkis's clear and engaging style will appeal to readers in a variety of disciplines including history, gender studies, and French studies.

-- "Nineteenth-Century French Studies"

Judith Surkis's Sexing the Citizen expands the field of gender studies in French history by focusing on the ways in which republic educators imagined, regulated, and reflected upon the meanings of male adolescence, adult manhood, and monogamous marriage in the founding decades of the Third Republic.

-- "Journal of Modern History"

Judith Surkis's masterful study of conjugality in the Third Republic's efforts to establish, affirm, and regulate its new citizens' heterosexual masculinity reminds us how powerfully different modes of interpretation can shift the ground of historical understanding.

-- "French Politics, Culture & Society"

This deeply researched and powerfully argued book demonstrates how a masculinity that was apparently in 'crisis' nonetheless succeeded in maintaining material and symbolic power.

-- "American Historical Review"

From the Publisher

"This fabulous book shows just how much fantasies and worries about heterosexual masculinity-its frequently fragile and unstable nature, its excesses, and all-too-often inchoate aims-shape fundamental assumptions about citizenship and national identity. It is a brilliant demonstration of the significance of sex for politics."

Dagmar Herzog

"Judith Surkis argues forcefully that the conjugal couple was (and perhaps remains) the core of the French republican vision of society. This is a lucid and highly original work on the construction of masculinity in Third Republic France."

Jan Goldstein

"In this closely argued, intelligent, and original book, Judith Surkis gives the notion of 'sexual politics' an exciting new meaning. Male sexuality, Surkis argues, was central to the stabilization of political authority in the French Third Republic. Through promotion of heterosexual marriage, French republican educators and officials were able to anchor wider debates about moral and social order, and thus promote their political agendas. Male sexuality became a source of disorder, a problem to be solved, but also, when contained and controlled through marriage, the foundation of republican politics. Surkis makes a major contribution to the study of masculinity by viewing it as both a highly unstable 'speculative unity' and a powerful regulatory norm. With its impressive mix of political, cultural and intellectual history, as well as the history of gender and sexuality, Sexing the Citizen is destined to become a 'big book' across many different fields."

Mary Louise Roberts