Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe was published by Howard Fertig in 1985, and it opened a field of study that has since become central to the history of nationalism and gender: the relationship between national identity and sexual norms.
Mosse’s argument is that modern nationalism did not merely concern itself with territory, language, and political institutions but constructed an elaborate system of sexual norms — what he calls “respectability” — that defined who belonged to the nation and who was excluded from it. The respectable national body was heterosexual, monogamous, disciplined, and reproductively oriented; those who deviated from these norms (homosexuals, prostitutes, the sexually “excessive”) were defined as enemies of the nation — their deviance was not merely personal but political.
This analysis applies with particular force to the history of antisemitism and homophobia: Jews and homosexuals were both defined as sexually deviant — as threats to the nation’s reproductive health and moral integrity — in ways that drew on the same imagery and the same logic. The Nazi persecution of both groups, Mosse argues, was not separate from but integral to the nationalist project: racial purity and sexual purity were aspects of the same obsession.
Collecting Nationalism and Sexuality
First edition (Howard Fertig, New York, 1985): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $20–$60
- Without jacket: $8–$15