The Language of Historical Education

James F. Voss and Mario Carretero, (eds.) Learning and Reasoning in History. International Review of History Education     

Controlling Bodies: The Punishment of Multiracialized Sexual Relations

Geographies of sexuality have paid minimal attention to interracial relations. To rectify this, we examine the genealogy of the criminalization and punishment of 'interracial' relations. Drawing on three historical moments in the evolution of race relations in Anglo-America, we argue that the criminalization of these relations has historically been grounded in material relations and not in abstract ideals of racial purity or fears of racial degeneration. Using a strategy of 'unnatural discourse,' we suggest that as the American capitalist system expanded, the punishment of multiracialized sexual relations has generated and retained important ideological functions that have never been far removed from their material base.     

Public reason and private passion

Distinctions between ‘public’ and ‘private’ dimensions of human life have traditionally been associated with philosophical distinctions between Reason and other, supposedly lesser, mental traits, such as passions and desires. This paper examines the ways in which these associations have affected character ideals associated with citizenship and our understanding of sexual difference. It discusses, in particular, Hegel's idea, in The Phenomenology of Spirit, that female consciousness is constituted through the exclusion of women from the public domain, and relates it to earlier interconnections between the male‐female and public‐private distinctions in Rousseau, Hume and Kant.