Editorial: Histories of Sexuality

In the past two to three decades, not only has the study of sexuality become a burgeoning field of scholarly inquiry, but 'sexuality" has also become a pivotal axis of social analysis across the board. In many respects, historians of sexuality, and scholars who take the question of sexuality and history as a guiding problematic, have led the way in this endeavour. Through groundbreaking accounts of historically contingent and shifting sexual meanings, practices and relations, these scholars have shown persuasively how human eroticism, sex, reproduction, sexual identity, sexual subjectivities, sexual desire and sexual regulation all profoundly shape individual and collective behaviour, identity, knowledge, culture and history. What has emerged from this scholarship is the recognition that sexuality is an illuminating axis of social analysis that is both analytically distinct yet inextricably enmeshed with the more familiar and taken-for-granted axes of analysis such as class, race, Empire and gender. In this way, researchers of sexuality have revealed that no account of history and culture can afford to ignore the dynamic and productive role of sexualities and sexual meanings