The Book of Minor Perverts: Sexology, Etiology, and the Emergences of Sexuality By Benjamin Kahan

Shortlisted for the Modernist Studies Assocation Book Prize

­Statue-fondlers, wanderlusters, sex magicians, and nymphomaniacs: the story of these forgotten sexualities—what Michel Foucault deemed “minor perverts”—has never before been told. In The Book of Minor Perverts, Benjamin Kahan sets out to chart the proliferation of sexual classification that arose with the advent of nineteenth-century sexology. The book narrates the shift from Foucault’s “thousand aberrant sexualities” to one: homosexuality. The focus here is less on the effects of queer identity and more on the lines of causation behind a surprising array of minor perverts who refuse to fit neatly into our familiar sexual frameworks. The result stands at the intersection of history, queer studies, and the medical humanities to offer us a new way of feeling our way into the past. The Book of Minor Perverts: Sexology, Etiology, and the Emergences of Sexuality

summary The Book of Minor Perverts: Sexology, Etiology, and the Emergences of Sexuality

a bit short, & it felt like every chapter had so much more to say, but overall a very interesting & important academic monograph on the history of sexuality, with special attention to object-related sexualities and discourses around coherency/& the definitional impulse of sexology. Interestingly details literary phenomena where sexological discourses have been positively reversed in a way that queer subjects could find self-affirmation and identity in their definition. 240 Unfortunately I found this too dense for my liking and although well-referenced, I found it difficult to fully grasp the author's arguments with only an amateur's prior understanding of the topic and thought the lack of context when references were provided made it difficult for someone without the necessary background to fully appreciate the author's arguments 240