Homoaffectivity, Concept

The term homoaffectivity, or same-sex affectivity, and its derivations emerged in the early 1990s along with two other terms, homoerotic and homosocial, to describe bonds between same-sex individuals or communities, or to describe an affective orientation of an individual, especially in the context of early modern and medieval studies, particularly in literature, art, and history. Whereas the terms homosocial and, to an ever-greater extent, homoerotic are quite common, the term homoaffective is relatively infrequent. Early modern and medieval scholars as well as specialists in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and history have used the term (Caroline Gonda [2007] uses the term homoaffection). Whereas the term homosocial has a specific theoretical origin in the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, the two other terms have a more diffuse provenance. The term homoaffective can be traced to Adrienne Rich's (1929–) lesbian continuum, although few scholars using it make that genealogy explicit. Instead, it seems that the term is a spontaneous coinage that occurred to a number of scholars rather than emerging from one person's theoretical work, like homosocial.

The three terms divide the multidirectional conglomerate of same-sex relations into the fields of erotic, social, and affective affinity. The three are not mutually exclusive; they overlap, and are sometimes used interchangeably. When used to describe distinct manifestations of same-sex orientation, by placing emphasis on one aspect, these terms create an entry point to the study of a phenomenon that extends well beyond each manifestation. If instability of the boundaries between these categories (same-sex acts, affects, affinities, desires, social interactions) throughout historical periods can be documented, then by studying one, insight into the others is gained. Because it is self-evident that there are few traces of same-sex acts in the periods and societies that penalize them, the focus on homoaffective and homosocial relations enhances our ability to study same-sex-oriented individuals, couples, and communities, and to write their history.

The emergence of these new terms was also initially conditioned and continues to be influenced by the fact that if desire and affection are universal, the institutions and structures that influence and shape their manifestations are historically specific. From that historical contingency results the need to differentiate between historical and contemporary definitions and performances of same-sex orientation. In each specific historical context, depending on their social position and many other variables, same-sex-oriented individuals, couples, and communities navigated different landscapes of prohibitions and possibilities, and they negotiated their relations differently from modern homosexual individuals and groups. The elaboration of a more nuanced vocabulary including terms such as homoaffectivity explicitly helped to articulate these cultural and historical differences.

Moreover, during the 1990s, premodern historians and literary critics elaborated a collective response to the Foucauldian paradigm dating the birth of the homosexual individual to the second half of the nineteenth century (History of Sexuality. Vol. 1, Michael Foucault 1976). According to Michel Foucault, since the French Revolution, the place of sex in the process of subject formation has fundamentally changed. The influence of the Foucauldian paradigm is so strong that many scholars are unwilling to use terms such as subject, lesbian, or homosexual with reference to premodern periods, whereas others point out not only differences but also similarities on the two sides of the Foucauldian epistemic break. The use of the term homoaffectivity is one of the symptoms of attention to the Foucauldian paradigm. Dividing the field of phenomena that constitute the homosexual orientation into its composite parts, such as affect, desire, economic and social alliances, and others, allows the analysis of specific cases rather than project ill-fitting, anachronistic concepts that occlude rather than illuminate the past. Instead of determining historical presence or absence of homosexual individuals, homoaffectivity and related terms imply the study of specific aspects of same-sex orientation in the past, cataloguing continuities, displacements, and discontinuities.

It is important to note that replacing the category homosexuality as the hermeneutical tool of research on pre-1800 history of sexuality by multiple new categories, including homoaffectivity, has not ended the debate on anachronism and further elaboration of optimal conditions for historical accuracy by refining methodologies. Whereas all scholars claim that historical accuracy is the primary concern underlying their methodology, some argue that many studies fall short of that ideal by projecting onto the past, concepts and models anchored in the present. This leads some to create new models (for example, Allen Frantzen's shadow), and generally to emphasize the discontinuities between past and present concepts (titles of works sometimes indicate this emphasis, as in Frantzen's Before the Closet (1998), or James A. Schultz's "Heterosexuality Before Heterosexuality").

Whereas the use of the term homoaffectivity allows scholors to eschew the dangers of an anachronistic imposition of modern categories such as lesbian or homosexual identity (shaped by the evolution of sexology since the late nineteenth century, the gay rights movement, etc.), homoaffectivity is still, at the core, a universal category. While manifestations of homoaffectivity are historically determined—its representation, performance, or repression depends on historical variables—it is also assumed that same-sex affect always existed, and can be documented in its historically specific manifestations. In that sense, as a universal core desire or relation whose realizations are historically contingent, the use of the terms homosexual and lesbian is just as accurate, and some scholars, therefore, insist on it (Judith Bennett, Valerie Traub, Martha Vicinus).

Homoaffectivity describes same-sex emotions expressed or enacted by individuals or groups, but does not necessarily include sex acts. Whereas it is useful to divide the field of homosexual orientation into its components for the above-stated reasons, this parsing also has the effect of splitting homoaffectivity from sex. As a consequence one can argue that demonstrating the presence of homoaffectivity does not necessarily prove the existence of same-sex desires, performance of same-sex acts, or existence of same-sex couples (in the sense of an affective dyad that could be described as a lesbian couple) or communities in the past. However, even in the twenty-first century, sex acts are only the tip of the iceberg; desires and emotions fill far more cultural space do than acts. Therefore the focus on affectivity instead of acts facilitates, rather than impedes, the research on historical genealogies and avatars of contemporary homosexuality.

This application of the term homoaffectivity follows the use of the concept of homosocial coined by Sedgwick in the Epistemology of the Closet (1990): same-sex friendship, she showed, presents symptoms of same-sex desire. Because the uses of the two terms are so similar, the critique of homoaffectivity as a useful hermeneutic tool in writing the history of same-sex desire follows the critique of homosociality. In Tendencies (1993), Sedgwick expanded her argument from Epistemology and effectively invented queer studies by pointing out the relevance of any dissonant voices; thus, queer and nonstandard became a single category. The consequences of this move continue to draw criticism: if everything that is dissonant is queer, then nothing is specifically so, and queer studies postpone rather than write the history of same-sex desire. One answer to that critique is that the normalization of same-sex couples will eventually erase distinctions between homosexuality and heterosexuality, and therefore the perceived dissipation of purpose in queer theory prefigures the utopia to come. Although this is theoretically possible, that response does not address the issue at stake in the critique: the purpose, timeliness, and use of queer studies.

Another answer to the critique is that the splicing of the category sexual into fields such as erotic, social, and affective—and turning away from the study of sexuality understood as genital acts between people to the study of desire in areas previously unexplored because such acts are there absent—has enabled important investigations that acknowledge and analyze sex in phenomena from which sexuality has been traditionally evacuated. These include virginity and celibacy (see, e.g., Traub 2002), emphasis on corporeality in asceticism (putting the body back in the discipline of the body, as in the works of Caroline Walker Bynum), single women (such as Bennett's lesbian-like). All of these investigations have contributed to the study of same-sex desire. Obviously, then, it is not the emergence of categories such as homoaffectivity that distracts from the history of sexuality, but rather some forms of their application.

Because of the silences and secrets that cover up the existence of same-sex desires in the past, the study of same-sex friendship has developed as a way to show or refute the existence of same-sex desires. Homoaffectivity describes affection between persons of the same sex. Theoretically, the term homoaffectivity can be used to study phenomena such as friendship, either in isolation from or as part of a continuum that includes eroticism. However, in practice, homoaffectivity is a term more frequently used by scholars who study same-sex friendship in the past as a likely site of same-sex desire, rather than by those who study friendship as a phenomenon that precludes same-sex orientation.

However, because (with varying success) individuals can compartmentalize sexual relations and affective investments, instead of implying that homoaffectivity is a symptom of homosexual desire, the term homoaffectivity can also be used to distinguish between heterosexual desire and same-sex affectivity. A heterosexually identified individual can be homoaffective if she or he only forms affective bonds with individuals of the same sex, whereaS the sex act fulfills a role whose meaning is to be determined. The leakage between categories (affect, power, capital, gender self-definition), poses interesting problems that could not be analyzed if homosexual and heterosexual were the only available terms.

Because homoaffectivity is a term most frequently used in writing the history of individuals and communities characterized by same-sex preference, it is useful to mention two related terms that played a role in the fight for legal rights and cultural recognition of same-sex couples. The first is: homoaffectionalism, or male bonding (Hardman 1993). The second is a legal term, homoafetividade (homoaffectivity), a key word in legal fight for civil rights of nonheterosexual couples in Brazil used by a pioneering judge and women's and same-sex rights advocate, Maria Berenice Dias. Dias states that "affectivity is a social reality," and uses the term to describe the relationships of nonheterosexual couples.

see also Friendships, Passionate; Homoeroticism, Female/Male, Concept; Homosexuality, Contemporary: I. Overview; Lesbianism.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bennett, Judith. 2000. "'Lesbian-Like' and the Social History of Lesbianisms." Journal of the History of Sexuality 9(1-2): 1-24.

Bray, Alan. 2003. The Friend. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Burgwinkle, William E. 1993. "Knighting the Classical Hero: Homo/Hetero Affectivity in Eneas." Exemplaria 5(1): 1-43.

Bynum, Caroline Walker. 1987. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Fouchault, Michel. 1976–c. 1986. Histoire de la sexualité [History of sexuality]. 3 vols, trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon Books.

Frantzen, Allen. 1998. Before the Closet: Same-Sex Love from Beowulf to Angels in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Gonda, Caroline. 2007. "Being Faithful: The Ethics of Homoaffection in Antonia Forest's Marlow Novels." Journal of Lesbian Studies 11(1-2): 105-121.

Halperin, David M. 2002. How to Do the History of Homosexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hardman, Paul D. 1993. Homoaffectionalism: Male Bonding from Gilgamesh to the Present. San Francisco: GLB Publishers.

Sautman, Francesca Canadé, and Pamela Sheingorn, eds. 2001. Same-Sex Love and Desire among Women in the Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave.

Schultz, James A. 2003. Courtly Love, the Love of Courtliness, and the History of Sexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1990. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1993. Tendencies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Traub, Valerie. 2002. The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Vicinus, Martha. 2004. Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778–1928. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

                                           Anna Klosowska