The Politics of Discourse

What can we expect from Dagmar Herzog's book on Sexuality in Europe: A Twentieth-Century History, published in a series on ‘new approaches to European history’? First, the series title suggests new approaches to this booming historical subdiscipline. There are plenty of burning questions about the history of sexuality waiting to be answered: the specificity of European sexuality or, perhaps better, sexualities, during the twentieth century, in comparison to the US, in a global context, and even the differences between the twentieth century and earlier periods. On our wish list we also have a comparative view of regional and national sexual cultures during the ‘century of sex’. A range of studies has been published on the history of sexuality in Europe during the last two decades, which could be used for reference and as templates. According to the mission statement of the Cambridge book series Herzog has to write about all these complex questions at the level of undergraduates. Therefore the bar is set really high for a historian of sexuality. To get straight to the point, Herzog has managed most of these requirements well over most passages of her book. It presents a successful combination of general introduction and historical explanation richly illustrated with numerous examples and historical images. The volume therefore offers an easy entrance into this up till now fairly confusing topic. But, as will be shown, she gives only a rather one-sided insight into the state of the art of recent historical research on European sexuality in the twentieth century.