Abstrakt
According to Michel Foucault's History of sexuality, the sexuality is not an empiric fact that could be simply found among the other natural objects, independent of any view or interpretation. On the contrary, it cannot be perceived but through interpretations, through work of discourses, because sexuality is nothing but the verbal sum of everything that was said about it.
Foucault called this phenomenon a dispositive. What shape would take a science that would establish itself on such a liquid conception? In my paper, I will follow the emergence and development of such science - the sexology.
Focusing on Czechoslovak context from late 19th century to late 20th century, I will concentrate on sexological popularizing textbooks and observe their methodological shifts all over the period of one century. Aspiring to become an exact science, sexology is adopting the latest methods of research, shifting from a mere ethics to Darwinism or anthropological surveys and offering different narratives on human sexuality, while its outcomes remain rather stable: it persist on the sexually active and dominant men on one hand and on sexually passive and submissive women on the other, while the only purpose of coition should be procreation and its only source and excuse should be love.
These 19th century stereotypes are revived with every newly published sexological textbook, disguised in always more contemporary method. My paper will follow these changes and trace how science was used for the sake of moral prejudices.