![]() In some ways, your novel is consonant with Foucault’s rejection of the repressive hypothesis: its central characters are preoccupied with finding better, scientifically-grounded accounts of human sexuality, especially homosexuality – or ‘inversion’, as they call it – and strive to understand (and liberate) themselves in relation to those scientific accounts. ![]() These discourses did not repress sexuality so much, Foucault says, as produce it. In fact, Foucault says, the 19th century teemed with various discourses about sex, especially scientific and legal discourses that sought to understand (and thus control) marginalised or ‘perverted’ sexualities, including homosexuality. But when I think about sex and sexuality in the Victorian period – the broad historical backdrop of The New Life – I can’t help thinking of Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, and in particular his rejection of the “repressive hypothesis”, according to which human sexuality and discussions of it were repressed in the Victorian era. ![]() ![]() Amia Srinivasan: You’re a 19th-century British historian by training, so you’ll have to forgive me for starting with Foucault. ![]()
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