...unique to modern western societies. Michel Foucault (1980) provided the classic statement: As defined by ancient civil or canonical codes, sodomy was a category...homosexual became a personage, a past, a case history, a life form . . . Nothing that went into total composition was unaffected by his sexuality. It was...

...proposing the famous - if by no means new (see Weeks, 1977) - contrast between sodomy and homosexuality: as defined by the ancient civil or canonical codes,...more than the juridical subject of them [. . .] The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species. (Foucault, 1979:43) Several...

...exist in all times and places. For Foucault, the dividing line is the nineteenth century, when "the homosexual became a personage, a past, a case history,...addition to being a type of life, a life form, and a morphology"(43l. Before that, sodomy was nothing more than a category of forbidden acts. Foucault's...

...occurred in our understanding of genders and sexualities when, late in the nineteenth century, the "homosexual became a personage, a past, a case history,...in addition to being a type of life, a life form" (43). Earlier identified by the performance of individual acts, most of which had nothing to do with...

...passage, Foucault describes the invention of homosexual identity in the late nineteenth century: '[the] homosexual became a personage, a past, a case history,...childhood, in addition to being a type of life, a life form ... Nothing that went into his total composition was unaffected by his sexuality. It was everywhere...

...Quoted in David F Greenberg's The Construction of Homosexuality (Chicago: U of Chicago P, l988), p. 400. and a childhood, in addition to being a type of life, a life form, and a morphology, with an indiscrete anatomy and possibly a mysterious physiology. Nothing that went into his total composition...

...sexual sensations ... can stand as [his] date of birth.") 18 As defined by earlier legal and religious codes, "sodomy was a category of forbidden acts; their...nothing more than the juridical subject of them." In stark contrast, however, the nineteenth-century homosexual was a personage, a past, a case history,...

...they had already demanded from the earth, the stars, and the pure forms of their thought.... fined by the ancient civil or canonical codes, sodomy was a category of forbidden acts." But in the nineteenth century, writes Foucault, homosexual sex came to be seen as somehow definitive...

...used by histories of sexuality, the terms of which were set by Foucault's now-classic formulation: As defined by the ancient civil or canonical codes,...indiscreet anatomy and possibly a mysterious physiology.' Thus, while premodern sexuality may be envisaged as consisting of a number of more or less transgressive...

...into an identity. "As defined by the ancient civil or canonical codes," he writes in a famous passage, "sodomy was a category of forbidden acts; their perpetrator...childhood, in addition to being a type of life, a life-form, and a morphology, with an indiscreet anatomy and possibly a mysterious physiology Sodomy...