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After the History of Sexuality: German Genealogies With and Beyond Foucault. Edited by Scott Spector, Helmut Puff, and Dagmar Herzog. New York: Berghahn Books, 2012. Pp. 310. Cloth $95.00. ISBN 978-0857453730.
This book is required reading for any student entering the terrain of Foucauldian sexuality studies and for any scholar already engaged with the intricacies of Michel Foucault's work. For the first type of reader in particular, it provides an accessible introduction; two opening chapters by Helmut Puff and Merry Wiesner-Hanks detailing concise and provocative literature reviews of the responses to Foucault's History of Sexuality (the first volume of which was published in English translation in 1978); various models for applying Foucault's methods within different disciplinary contexts; and an invaluable bibliography. For the latter, the volume presents a series of intriguingly detailed case studies that respond to some of the key criticisms leveled at Foucault's work. For all readers, the volume lays down the challenge of defining "the future of our history of sexuality" (12).
The volume comprises sixteen short but concise chapters, in addition to an introduction, postscript, and select bibliography. As coeditor Scott Spector writes, the contributors' aim was to assess "where the histories of...