Female Homosexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome

Plurigenealogies: Marriage and address to women in Foucault's Confessions of the Flesh

“…For her important elaboration of the latter, (see Boehringer, forthcoming, b). For alternative considerations of eros between women in Ancient Greece, Boehringer refers to Pomeroy (1975), Halperin (1988), and the recent translation of her study Female Homosexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome (Boehringer, 2021), see also Brooten (1998), Hallett (1989aHallett ( , 1989b and Boehringer (2014).…”

“…Critique of the inadequate treatment of women in these volumes has prompted innovative methodological suggestions for how one can understand women's role in Antiquity otherwise. These include suggestions for reinterpreting women's multifaceted inter‐relationality (both erotic and intergenerational) from scholars ranging from Foxhall (1994) to Boehringer (2021, 2022, 2023). But further potential for alternative interpretation of the role of women within the volumes might also lie in the distinctions they sustain between continuity, discontinuity, interdiction, problematization, and politicization, and in the contingency of their genealogies.…”

“…See also volume two's broader discussion distinguishing the ethics of existence specific to male-male relations from the more codified obligations incurred by wives(HS II, 22 [Fr 32]).20 In short, without Foucault foregrounding this point, the emergence of ideas concerning a more "mutual" relationship between spouses is not to be confused with an increase in recognition of the principles of sexual equality.21 When Foucault describes Roman imperial bureaucracy as seeking to increase its hold on the lives of individuals, he also claims that "this phenomenon cannot be separated from the new relations being established in the same period between Christianity and empire. An institution at first recognized, then made official, the Christian Church occupies more and more easily and visibly functions of organization, management, control, and regulation of society," (HS IV, 195).22 See the related projects on women's same-sex eros further developed through the lens of Boehringer's parallel view of sexuality as not a universal, constant or "invariant"-to use the term suggested early in Use of Pleasure(HS II, 4 [Fr10]; and her focus on assymmetries of same-sex eros and of gender inBoehringer (2014Boehringer ( , 2021.23 In this regard see, for a specific account, Foucault's discussion of Methodius (HS IV, 127 [Fr 166]), and for a general and…”

“…1 1 See, for example, with respect to work on both Greek and Roman Antiquity, Boehringer's reference to a Foucauldian understanding of discontinuity to thematize female homoeroticism and her emphasis of the assymetry of gender and lack of equivalence between male and female same‐sex eros in Ancient Greek and Roman contexts (in addition to Boehringer, 2021, see Boehringer, 2014, 164–165; and Boehringer (forthcoming a and b). With respect to the early Christian material in volume four, and the multiple significance of the flesh as “revolt” (Sforzini, 2021a, 33), see Sforzini's account of Foucault's modulation of the History of Sexuality towards a genealogy of the subject engaged in the practice of working on itself, but also called on to release [ se deprendre ] itself from itself.…”

“…22 22 See the related projects on women's same‐sex eros further developed through the lens of Boehringer's parallel view of sexuality as not a universal, constant or “ invariant ”—to use the term suggested early in Use of Pleasure (HS II, 4 [Fr10]; and her focus on assymmetries of same‐sex eros and of gender in Boehringer (2014, 2021). …”