The Fourth Annual Sedgwick Lecture
Royall Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
was held on March 31, 2014
Our theories of the historical event tend to take the shape of trauma and catastrophe. What if we saw in sex the kind of event that structures our relation to history, intimacy, and sociality? Reading with Last Tango in Paris (Bertolucci, 1972), thinking about sexual revolution, and contesting the desexualization of so much queer theory, this lecture poses questions about where the sexual revolution went awry and what’s left for sexual optimism.