Sex-Life: A Critical Commentary on the History of Sexuality

'Desire, sexuality and biology appear to be inextricably linked. Not simply because we exist "as", "with" and "in" our bodies , but because our sexual feelings ... continue to be represented and understood as expressions of our biological constitution. Yet somehow the idea that sexuality is an "ideological imposition upon the body" - that is, a social construction - has taken firm root in the academy and among the political opponents of phallocentric sexuality. The dissonance between the theory of sexuality - the history of sexuality - and its lived practice continues unabated.'

In Sex Life, Don Milligan explores the variety of ways in which sexuality has been theorised in the twentieth century - from Freud to the modern critical theorists such as Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard and Lacan. He examines the conflicting claims of biological essentialism and social determinism, and argues, the the course of a lucid critical review of the history of ideas about sexuality, that the apparent contradiction between these two extremes is misleading, simplistic and ultimately unhelpful. 

Milligan's controversial and provocative study provides the grounding for new developments in the debates over sexuality.