Mosse lezing Wannes Dupont: ‘Belgian Sounds of Silence’

Woensdag 16 maart vindt in de Doelenzaal van Universiteitsbibliotheek van de Universiteit van Amsterdam (Singel 425) van 20.00 tot 22.00 een Mosse lezing plaats, gehouden door Wannes Dupont: Belgian Sounds of Silence. Inverting the Narrative on Homosexuality’s Invention. De toegng is gratis. De voertaal is Engels. The ‘invention’ of homosexuality in Belgium:

For about four decades now, homosexuality’s late 19th-century’s ‘invention’ has been considered as one of the most defining moments in gay history. That this happened more or less simultaneously across the West, however, is an unhelpful generalization based on the situation in only a handful of countries. The evidence from less well-studied countries, by contrast, suggests that even within Western Europe national chronologies and local circumstances varied more widely than is hitherto acknowledged. In Belgium, for example, no significant public or scientific debate about sexual inversion emerged prior to the mid-1950s.

This lecture will attempt to summarize why the issue was avoided at a time when it was eagerly explored abroad. In the final analysis, it will be argued, even the controversial work of the novelist Georges Eekhoud failed to trigger the kind of analytic scrutiny that was turning homosexuality into a pressing social problem in neighboring countries like France, Germany and the Netherlands.Wannes Dupont is part of the Center for Political History at the University of Antwerp and the author of several contributions on the history of (homo)sexuality in Belgium. His recently finished doctoral dissertation investigates the striking lack of discourse concerning sexual inversion and perversion in Belgium prior to the Second World War from an internationally comparative perspective. He currently works on a new project about antigay politics in postwar Europe and will conduct research at the Yale Research Initiative on the History of Sexualities as a fellow of the Belgian American Educational Foundation next year.

Next Mosse lecture: Eleni Demetriou on children of lesbian, gay and bisexual parent,