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A Passage To The Self: Homoerotic Orientalism And Hispanic Life-Writing., Robert Ellis

Robert Ellis

The development of autobiography as a dominant literary genre and the formulation of modern conceptions of sexuality are largely synchronic phenomena. Modern autobiography, produced in the context of high capitalism, presupposes the existence of a discrete self whose meaning is revealed through reflection and rendered tangible through linguistic representation. According to late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sexologists, this self is fundamentally sexual. In what is perhaps the most famous passage of The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault explains how sexologists conceived of male homosexuality as “a singular nature” lying “at the root of all [one’s] actions” (43). Its essence, they …