Karl Ulrichs's studies of sexual diversity galvanized the burgeoning field of sexual science in the nineteenth century. But in the years since, his groundbreaking activism has overshadowed his scholarly achievements. Ulrichs publicly defied Prussian law to agitate for gay equality and marriage, and founded the world's first organization dedicated to the legal and social emancipation of homosexuals. Ralph M. Leck returns Ulrichs to his place as the inventor of the science of sexual heterogeneity. Leck's analysis situates sexual science in a context that includes politics, aesthetics, the languages of science, and the ethics of gender. Although he was the greatest nineteenth-century scholar of sexual heterogeneity, Ulrichs retained certain traditional conjectures about gender. Leck recognizes these subtleties and employs the analytical concepts of modernist vita sexualis and traditional psychopathia sexualis to articulate philosophical and cultural differences among sexologists. Original and audacious, Vita Sexualis uses a bedrock figure's scientific and political innovations to open new insights into the history of sexual science, legal systems, and Western amatory codes.| Cover Title Copyright Contents Preface. Post-Victorians and Sexual Science Acknowledgments 1. Motifs in Sexual Science 2. Inventing Sexual Liberalism 3. The Epistemic Politics of Nature 4. The Science of Agape 5. Sexual Degeneration and Bourgeois Culture 6. Normalizing the Marquis de Sade Afterword. Ulrichs Street and Epistemic Politics Notes Bibliography Index | "This book is a unique historical-to-contemporary overview of insurrectionary currents and a welcome contribution to contemporary anarchist studies." —European History Quarterly
"[Vita Sexualis] provides a strikingly affirmative alternative to much recent postmodern discourse. . . . For any student of gay history and liberation, this refreshing work will prove instructive and will, I predict, be viewed as a key text pointing toward a new literature on the revolutionary nature of gay identity arising after three decades of nihilistic post-modernism."—Gay & Lesbian Review

"This book includes interesting concepts and theories about a long-forgotten person of interest in Western Sexology."—ISIS
|Ralph M. Leck has taught for many years in the University Honors Program at Indiana State University. He is the former director of Peace and Justice Studies at Marian University, Indianapolis. He is the author of Georg Simmel and Avant-Garde Sociology: The Birth of Modernity, 1880–1920.