Book Review: Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns

Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns, Valerie Traub, 2015. University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia. 480 pages, 4 illustrations, $59.99. Hardcover. We live in a culture whereupon any mention of the word "sex" catches our immediate attention and so Valerie Traub's Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns, both in title and the provocative cover photograph of "The Seduction of Eve" at Notre Dame, does just that. And once she has our attention, she keeps it; Traub is a masterful writer who knows how to successfully guide her readers through what can be, at times, a dense discourse that simultaneously engages and challenges us. Simply stated, it is a great read. Her point of departure is clearly stated and she proves exactly what she aims to prove: that the making of sexual knowledge must be reconsidered by historians, feminists, literary critics and queer studies scholars so that we will come to terms with and employ the fact that sex is "unknowable" and therefore aids us in better understanding cultural epistemology and ideology. In her words, she discusses the "historicity" of sex and how that illuminates "how, when and why sex becomes history" (267). In this sense, sexuality is a way of knowing and a way of shaping the world rather than merely being reduced to simply an act or a desire. Traub's discussion is impressively thorough and erudite. She draws from many noted and important thinkers such as Alan Bray, Eve Sedgewick, Michel Foucault, Gayle Rubin and many others to situate her own ideas within a context that clearly shows the evolution of an intellectual approach to sex. More specifically, rather than simply utilizing the ideas of other scholars and theorists to bolster her own, she instead uses them to lay a nuanced and solid foundation from which she adroitly builds. She locates specific patterns and approaches to "thinking sex" which enables her to trace practices-past to present--that have attempted to (and sometimes failed at) theorizing the impact of sexuality upon our lives, our culture and our literature. Consequently, her argument is entirely convincing because she deftly takes part in a critical conversation that allows her to showcase the originality of her own views. In this book, Traub aims to "reframe" and "reorient" ways in which we approach the historicity of sex, which means that one of her primary objectives is to point out the missteps others have made along the way. And one of the things I most admire about her is the way in which she accomplishes this: she pushes against commonly embraced perspectives in such a cordial but firm way. It's as if she has invited a group of respected guests to her dinner table and by the dessert course, she has subtly but persuasively brought them around to her ways of thinking. Furthermore, Traub is careful to frequently sign-post for her readers, gently reiterating her central argument and also summarizing what she has accomplished up to that point in her discussion. One instance, of many, when she does this is when she states, "if the previous chapters considered how, when and why sex becomes history ... then the present chapter asks, conversely, how, when and why does sex become theory?" (267). In this sense, Traub's thoughtful and clear presentation will appeal to a vast range of readers, some of whom may not be entirely familiar with academic jargon. …