Abstract
This groundbreaking study, by one of the most imaginative new critical legal scholars of sexuality, brings a fresh perspective to stories, intrigues and scandals about same-sex desire that have attracted considerable academic and popular attention. The historical range is vast, stretching ‘across a period of 2,300 years’ (p. 17). Beginning in antiquity the focus is the intimate relationships between Alexander the Great and Hephaiston, the Emperor Hadrian and Antinous and those of the Syrian emperor Elagabalus. From here the attention moves, and remains, in Britain. Initially keeping the focus on rulers, the stage is set for a revisiting of the personal lives of the two most famous ‘gay’ kings, Edward II and James I, from the medieval and early modern periods respectively. The last two chapters take us to the late 19th and mid 20th centuries, where the focus shifts from individual rulers to the Cleveland Street and Dublin Castle scandals and the high profile prosecutions of Lord Montagu and the government minister Ian Harvey.
It is only in the 20th century that the stories examined involve trials in a legal sense. But using the concept of ‘trials’ to describe all of these varied histories is key to the distinct underlying questions asked by Zanghellini. The truth about the sex lives of the rulers discussed here has long been placed under the microscope. Often this has taken the form of a ‘Did they? Didn’t they?’ prurience. And regardless of the answer to these questions the inappropriateness of using contemporary identity labels – ‘gay’, ‘queer’, ‘homosexual’ – to describe same-sex intimacies in different times is by now accepted by scholars as a matter of course. These debates are revisited here but they are not the main focus. For on ‘trial’ here are not the subjects of the stories but, rather, their contemporary and subsequent commentators, biographers and historians. The ‘truth’ is of interest to Zanghellini, but only to the extent that it enables him to interrogate the contingent ways in which same-sex desire has been revealed, masked and denied in order to serve wider political calculations. The result is a compelling argument for taking seriously ‘erotic undercurrents’ (p. 5) as a site for thinking about power and the legitimization of political authority.
Zanghellini’s genealogical span, troubling of singular narratives, and nuanced reading of original archival sources, presents a picture of both continuity and radical shifts. For while same-sex desire is demonstrated as having always potentially provided the possibility for challenging political authority, the rationales vary considerably from, for example, providing evidence of lack of self control, betraying the interests of the state, vulnerability to bad counsel, setting a poor example, and a disposition to particular political positions.
The cultural conditions of possibility for imagining and speaking of same-sex relationships are key to understanding the different responses. The readings of the texts from antiquity are particularly revealing here for three reasons. First, because in all the subsequent periods and for scholars of sexuality – in particular Foucault – they have and remain a ‘haunting’ (Gordon, 2008) presence in imaginations of same-sex desire. Secondly, because same-sex desire per se was not condemned in this period, it only represented a legitimate challenge to political authority when providing ‘evidence’ of lack of self-control or insatiability. Thirdly, and linked to this, is the possibility of an appropriate same-sex relationship serving as a metaphor for Greek democracy’s political settlement, within which there is no distinction between ruler and ruled, and, consequently, the skills of citizenship require a male same-sex relationship premised on self governance. As Zanghellini argues: The pedagogic function of Greek pederasty – and hence its political valence (pedagogy here must be seen as citizen training, and citizenship involved first and foremost the exercise of self-government through democratic rights) – was not centred on teaching abstinence but moderation. (p. 43)
In the context of the Dublin Castle scandal the revelation of same-sex desire amongst the English colonial class, by ‘casting doubt over England’s masculinity meant shaking off the effeminacy associated with Ireland’s submissive position in the configuration of imperial relations’ (p. 136). Similarly, in the context of the Cleveland Street scandal, same-sex desire enabled a strategy for challenging the Conservative and patrician government of Lord Salisbury by establishing three equivalences: the government and the aristocracy, the aristocracy and homosexuality and consequently the government and homosexuality. Zanghellini’s analysis here constructs a useful alternative and earlier history that complements contemporary human rights conceptualizations of same-sex desire within political and national figurations (Phillips, 2002; Stychin, 1998).
Nestled between both the ancient and modern democracies and in times that, while deeply Christian, provided more ambivalent possibilities for same-sex desire, the accounts of the two kings are particularly compelling and original.
About Edward II, Zanghellini argues that ‘a king practising sodomy was not necessarily an incompetent ruler, as long as he – unlike Edward – managed to avoid becoming hopelessly infatuated with his partners in sin’ (p. 85) and suggests that for this reason Edward’s contemporaries, as opposed to later commentators, did not criticize him on this account alone. It was only much later that vice became synonymous with poor government.
Yet at the same time, in his discussion of James I, Zanghellini argues that monarchy itself renders impossible the Greek democratic ideal imagination of appropriate same-sex relationships as a model for government. In its place, monarchy required the introduction of a new discourse: a rhetorical heterosexualisation of the relationship between the ruler and the ruled, conceived as a political marriage. Within the parameters of this discourse, James’s male favourites figure as disruptors of marital harmony. (p. 101)
The juxtaposition of the political failures and brutal murder of Edward II with the skilled and successful reign of James I effectively demonstrates and reinforces the contingency of same-sex desire as a discursive political tool. As an aside it is perhaps the tragedy of Edward II, and not simply Marlowe’s text, that made him such an evocative subject matter for the gay activist and film maker Derek Jarman in 1991 – a dark time of AIDS and of government-sponsored homophobia. In contrast James’ ability to survive by his wiliness and, at the same time, create a court that displayed and revelled in a ‘camp’ sensibility, renders him a poor subject within a still dominant ‘tragic-gay’ discourse (Monk, 2011), even of the most sympathetic form. And his effective rule coupled with abundant evidence of his same-sex desires similarly explains, as Zanghellini suggests, why until very recently, he has been treated in mainstream historiography ‘as a detested despot’ (p. 119). A gloriously queer costumed dramatization of his life is long overdue!
One limitation of this study, and it is explicitly acknowledged, is the fact that the focus is exclusively on male same-sex desire. Zanghellini attempts to justify this focus, theoretically, by drawing on Bersani’s identification of penetrative sex as being closely associated with feelings of dominance and submission, and consequently particularly responsive to an engagement with thinking about political power and that a focus on women might require a different methodological strategy. Moreover it is clear, in relation to the earlier rulers, that it is passivity, both sexual and emotional, as opposed to same-sex desire per se, which is critical in de-legitimizing their political authority. Nevertheless these explanations are, it is suggested, not wholly convincing. He is of course right to point out that ‘infinitely fewer women than men have been holders of public office; and the invisibility of female same-sex sexuality has probably largely prevented the occurrence of lesbian political scandals’ (p. 7). But his own, albeit brief, references to the opposite-sex intrigues about Marie Antoinette and Elizabeth I both demonstrate the malleability of sexual desire per se as a tool in political legitimization. And in the context of female same-sex desire, a regrettable omission is any reference to the well-documented love and highly political relationship between Queen Anne, the last Stuart monarch and great granddaughter of James I, and Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (Field, 2003, 2004; Morpeth, 2012). Including this story would have provided a way of testing the foregoing theoretical claim about the significance of ‘penetration’ and would have complicated his attempt in the conclusion to think about lesbian feminist exotic praxis as a site for defying state authority.
That said, gender is explicitly critical to his project. Indeed what is constantly made clear is that what is on trial here is not simply same-sex desire but more often masculinity; effeminacy is constantly suspect in a ruler. Gender roles and same-sex politics are of course intimately connected. But the link is still often overlooked. Sedgwick pointed out long ago that ‘the gay movement has never been quick to attend to the issues concerning effeminate boys’ (1991: 20). And a recent history of the Gay Liberation Front reminds us of the extent to which the role and distinctive politics of Radical Queens was ambivalently received within the left, and is still marginalized within academic studies (Feather, 2015). This begs the question why it is that ‘Queer’ was reclaimed and not ‘Queen’? The subversive appropriation of a royal metaphor is worthy of closer serious theoretical attention and Zanghellini’s analytical framework could provide a helpful starting point.
While this is a largely historical project, the last chapter and conclusion address the legacy of the past on the present. On the surface same-sex desire and public office are no longer to be perceived as in any way incompatible. The 20th-century narratives here and elsewhere (Bloch, 2015) seem from a far more distant past. After the last election there are now more openly gay and lesbian MPs in the House of Commons then in any other Parliament (Shariatmadari, 2015). And in January 2016, Stonewall named MI5 ‘Employer of the Year’ (Stonewall, 2016). A stark contrast to the 1950s’ narratives examined here about the perception of gay men as ‘security risks’. This is undoubtedly evidence of ‘the world we have won’ (Weeks, 2007). But alongside the many other commentators who have considered the conditions of inclusion in the post-equality world (Leckey, 2015), Zanghellini argues that in the context of political figures the new terrain requires a form of self-governance by requiring disclosure and conformity to mainstream lifestyles. His particular focus adds a valuable dimension to Joshi’s concept of ‘respectability’ (2012) and Reece’s analysis of ‘responsibility’ (2003). In some ways it seems we have returned to the state of affairs in antiquity: same-sex desire is permissible but highly regulated. Could a gay male MP today be effeminate, openly sexually passive and enjoy multiple lovers? Zanghellini does not ask this question explicitly but his analysis suggests not. For in returning in his conclusion to his key premise, that political authority is and always has been inherently sexualized, he utilizes the S/M metaphor to conceptualize the contemporary relationship between rulers and the ruled. The bottoms may ultimately be in charge but a credible top is required to play the game.
In looking back to the past through a fresh and original lens Zanghellini has presented a sophisticated political history of sexuality and a sexual history of politics. It deserves a wide readership across a variety of disciplines.