Sharon Marcus

Social Research: An International Quarterly, Summer 2011

Abstract

In thinking about the relationship between the sexed body and the state, it is worth recalling that both have a history. This essay, divided into tw o sections, uses th e exam ple o f nineteenth-century England, w hich has had an exem plary status in scholarship on both the state and sexuality, to highlight the variability of law and governm ent w ith respect to the body. The first section shows how a particular state during a key historical period produced sexuality through its decisions to protect and regulate some bodies and n ot to regulate and protect others. The key examples in this section are m arriage laws and sodomy laws. The first section concludes by arguing th a t sexuality, as we have come to use the term , is defined by its entanglem ents w ith the state, and th at we neglect im portant aspects o f love, desire, and physical sensation w hen we focus too narrow ly on dim ensions o f h um an experience inflected by state oversight, defined as supervision for the purposes of custody and control. The second section of this essay looks beyond sexuality to explore state oversight in the second sense of the term : as an om ission or lapse in attention. W hat w ere th e intim ate m atters to w hich th e state was relatively indifferent? W hile sexuality is the term often used for desires catalyzed by the state’s supervision, I propose th a t we call the impulses and connections th a t flourish in the shade o f the state’s neglect the “erotic.” The first section demonstrates that the state often willfully  ignored relationships between w om en; fem ale marriage and fem ale friendship thus furnish key examples of the erotic in the final section.

View the paper here: The State’s Oversight: From Sexual Bodies to Erotic Selves