Making sense of the body: anarchism, nudism and subjective experience

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Notes

I. Burkitt, Bodies of Thought: Embodiment, Identity and Modernity (London: Sage, 1999). Studies on cyberspace have added fresh debate on the relation between the material body, virtuality and discourse. For arguments that remind the reader of the dangers of imagining the body as discursive or virtual alone, see A. R. Stone, ‘Will the Real Body Please Stand Up?: Boundary Stories about Virtual Cultures’, in Cyberspace: First Steps, ed. M. Benedikt (Cambridge, Mass./London: MIT Press, 1991), 81–118; and for a critique of the masculinist bias of some demands to lose the body see J. Squires, ‘Fabulous Feminist Futures and the Lure of Cyberculture’, in Fractal Dreams: New Media in Social Context, ed. J. Dovey (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1996), 194–216.

B. S. Turner, The Body and Society: Explanations in Social Theory (London: Sage, 1996), 26.

H. Rose, ‘Gay Brains, Gay Genes and Feminist Science Theory’, in Sexual Cultures: Communities, Values and Intimacy, ed. J. Weeks and J. Holland (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), 53–72 (p. 64).

The dangers of an essentialist scientific approach coupled to a ‘weak’ form of constructionism are discussed in A. J. Gordo López and R. M. Cleminson, ‘La ciencia marica’, in Er. Revista de Filosofía, XXVII (2000), 149–55.

V. Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (London/New York: Routledge, 1993), 41–68.

A. Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 20.

Rose, ‘Gay Brains, Gay Genes’, 64.

An interesting debate on the motivations behind writing ‘popular cultural history’ can be seen in G. Strauss, ‘Viewpoint: The Dilemma of Popular History’, Past and Present, No. 132 (1991), 130–49; and W. Beik, ‘Comment’ in ‘Debate: The Dilemma of Popular History’, Past and Present, No. 141 (1993), 207–15.

E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980), 12.

J. W. Scott, ‘The Evidence of Experience’, in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, ed. H. Abelove, M. A. Barale and D. Halperin (New York/London: Routledge, 1993), 397–415.

Ibid., 399.

Ibid., 401.

A good example of these concerns coming together is J. W. Scott's Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia U. P., 1999).

J. Uría, Una historia social del ocio: Asturias 1898–1914 (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Históricos-UGT, 1996), 7. An excellent overview of these debates can be read in J. Uría González, ‘La cultura popular y la historiografía española contemporánea: breve historia de un desencuentro’, in Movimientos sociales y estado en la España contemporánea, ed. M. Ortiz Heras, D. Ruiz González and I. Sánchez Sánchez (Cuenca: Univ. Castilla-La Mancha, 2001), 323–77.

D. Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality (New York/London: Routledge, 1990), 28–29.

This and the next paragraph draw on G. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Middle-Class Morality and Sexual Norms in Modern Europe (Madison/London: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 48–65.

Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality, 56.

M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 3 vols (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990), I, An Introduction, 139–40.

Ibid., 48, 107, 123.

Ibid., 124.

Spain: A History, ed. R. Carr (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 2000), 1.

See R. Cleminson, ‘The Review Sexualidad (1925–28), Social Hygiene and the Pathologisation of Male Homosexuality in Spain’, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, II (2000), 119–29 (esp. pp. 119–22); M. Suárez Cortina, El gorro frigio: Liberalismo, democracia y republicanismo en la Restauración (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva/Sociedad Menéndez Pelayo, 2000), esp. Chapter 10, ‘Regeneración nacional, eugenesia y socialismo utópico en las primeras décadas del siglo XX’, 333–60.

Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality, 62.

Eduard Masjuan, La ecología humana en el anarquismo ibérico (Barcelona/Madrid: Icaria/Fundación de Estudios Libertarios Anselmo Lorenzo, 2000), 435.

‘¿Qui són els ‘amics del sol?’, Amics del Sol, No. 1 (December 1922–January 1923), no page numbers. Also cited in Masjuan, La ecología humana, 438. Masjuan notes the enthusiasm of the Amics with respect to their 6.30 a.m. exercise practice in the University square, Barcelona (438).

Dr Amílcar de Souza, ‘Una cruzada higiénica’, Helios, No. 80 (January 1923), 7–8. Helios was established in 1915 by Juan García Giner, according to Masjuan (La ecología humana, 446–47). It was the review of the Sociedad Vegetariana Naturista de Valencia.

Drs Gaston and Andrés Durville, ‘El Naturismo’, Helios, No. 169 (June 1930), 125.

José María Almela Rambla, ‘Sobre desnudismo’, Helios, No. 212 (January 1934), 25. The link between nudism and sexual desire was also discussed in the review Prometheuswhich promoted alternative forms of living such as nudism, vegetarianism and sun-bathing. Nudity was seen as part of a programme of sex education as well as a means of calming sexual desires, destroying sexual obsessions, pornography and shame of the genitals. See Un buscador, ‘Plática al Sol’, Prometheus, No. 3 (September 1930), 13. At the foot of the page, the following advice could be read: ‘El proceso sexual es necesario para la integridad de la raza, pero el hombre puede vivir en la abstinencia sin prejuicio para la salud’. Such a concern was shared by other naturist movements which also tried to discipline the body's sexual expression in order to avoid ‘excess’. In some American vegetarian circles, for example, meat eating was seen as a cause for masturbation and as a source for undue pressure on the male genitalia, which could only be satisfied by excessive sexual expression. Once male sexuality was placed under control, women could control sexuality and the number of births. In this way, we find ‘on the one hand vegetarianism evoked as the cure for uncontrollable male sexuality and on the other hand vegetarianism as the chosen diet of utopian communities that practiced modified forms of free love’ (C. J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist Vegetarian Critical Theory [New York: Continuum, 1990], 159).

Pentalfa was the review of the Escuela de Enseñanza Trofológica Naturista Pentalfa. An article indicative of its contents is N. Capo, ‘Eugenesia y desnudismo’, Pentalfa, No. 170 (31 May 1933), 5–6.

The linkages between inadequate diet, poor housing and disease were a much-debated issue in the Spanish social hygiene movement, as it was in the rest of Europe at the time. See, for example, C. Beadman, ‘The Politics of Health: Diagnosis and Cure for Social Disease in Early Twentieth-century Spain’, International Journal of Iberian Studies, XII, No. 3 (1999), 151–61.

N. Capo, ‘Eugenesia y desnudismo’, Pentalfa, No. 170 (31 May 1933), 5–6.

Anon., ‘Noticias y comentarios’, Pentalfa, Nos 9–10 (November–December 1926), no page numbers.

Front cover, Pentalfa, No. 174 (31 July 1933).

C. Luz García, ‘Mujeres’, Pentalfa, No. 6 (September 1926), 6.

Gert Hekma notes that Myriam Everard, in a study of eighteenth-century lesbianism, suggested that it was not so much the object of desire but desire's measure that mattered before 1800. If desire was seen as more plastic, it could be directed towards excessive heterosexual contact, as in the case of fops and ‘effeminate’ (ladies’) men, or sodomitical practices. It was only in the mid-nineteenth century that object choice seems to have solidified to form discernible sexual personages such as the homosexual whose sexuality was not put down to ‘vice’ but to some psychic deficiency. In naturist publications we see the retention of the association of sexual excess with deviant sexuality which, by the early twentieth century in Spain, was associated in turn with sexual inversion. See G. Hekma, ‘Same-sex Relations among Men in Europe, 1700–1990’, in Sexual Cultures in Europe: Themes in Sexuality, ed. F. X. Eder, L. Hall and G. Hekma (Manchester: Manchester U. P., 1999), 79–103 (p. 81).

J. R. Mintz, The Anarchists of Casas Viejas (Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana U. P., 1994), 87–88.

M. Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years 1868–1936(Edinburgh/San Francisco: AK Press, 1998), 192.

Ibid., 270.

Masjuan, La ecología humana, 433. On these two anarchists, who edited the naturist review La Nouvelle Humanité. L’Etat Naturel from 1895–98, see J. Maitron, Le Mouvement Anarchiste en France, 2 vols (Paris: François Maspero, 1983), I, Des origines a 1914, 380.

Masjuan claims his book is an examination of Iberian naturism. It rarely, however, goes beyond Catalonia, Valencia and Madrid, with some sections on Latin America.

An exception would be ‘Estudio elemental del cuerpo humano’, Generación Consciente, No. 1 (June 1923).

A. Girón, ‘Metáforas finiseculares del declive biológico: degeneración y revolución en el anarquismo español (1872–1914)’, Asclepio, LI, No. 1 (1999), 247–73.

See, for example, the series of articles by anarchist naturist H. Noja Ruiz. The first was ‘Alrededor del amor’, Estudios, No. 77 (January 1930), 24–26.

Estudios was the successor to Generación Consciente, and was published in Valencia. For more details on the content, circulation and authors who wrote in its pages, see R. Cleminson, Anarchism, Science and Sex: Eugenics in Eastern Spain, 1900–1937(Oxford: Peter Lang, 2000), 169–72; F. J. Navarro Fernández, ‘El paraíso de la razón’: la revista ‘Estudios’ (1928–1937) y el mundo cultural anarquista (Valencia: Edicions Alfons el Magnànim, 1997).

A. Maymón, ‘Maternidad y sexualismo’, Estudios, No. 92 (April 1931), 34–35.

I. Puente, ‘Maternidad y sexualismo’, Estudios, No. 92 (April 1931), 2–3. This issue was printed as the April 1931 issue but actually corresponded to May 1931.

The most complete single work on Iniciales is X. Díez, Utopia sexual a la premsa anarquista de Catalunya: la revista ‘Etica-Iniciales’ (1927–1937) (Lleida: Pagès Editors, 2001).

Front cover of Iniciales, No. 4 (April 1932). This description altered considerably throughout the publication's life.

Quoted in Díez, Utopia sexual, 37.

Ibid.

Ibid., 41, quoting Iniciales from October 1932.

V. Margueritte, ‘Educación sexual’, Iniciales, No. 4 (April 1932), 4, where we read ‘y no podemos por menos que extrañarnos de esa aberración católica que, durante tantísimo tiempo, hizo considerar como partes vergonzosas los sagrados órgano[s] de la generación’; see also G. de Lacace [sic] Duthiers, ‘Los prejuicios en materia sexual’, Iniciales, No. 5 (May 1932), 2.

Díez, Utopia sexual, 158, quoting Gallardo from May 1934.

For example, the Civil Governor of Granada imposed a 50 pesetas fine on kiosquerosin the city if they were found to be selling Iniciales or any other ‘pornographic review’. See the news section in Iniciales, No. 10 (October 1932), 10. Cf. Juan Tusquets’ railing against naturism and nudism as harbingers of the ruin of civilization in the mid-1930s (Masjuan, La ecología humana, 464).

Díez, Utopia sexual, 149, quoting Dr Martínez Novella from Iniciales, April 1930. A similar line of argument is seen in the review Orto, which despite its more political and economic emphasis also published extensively on population questions and matters relating to sexuality. See A. Haburu, ‘En el país de los Vandervoegel. El desnudismo y la nueva moral’, Orto, No. 4 (June 1932), 27–31.

Díez, Utopia sexual, 152, quoting an anonymous author in Iniciales, January 1930.

M. Gallardo, ‘Libertad sexual y naturismo’, Iniciales, No. 10 (October 1934), 7–8. The quotations in this and the next paragraph come from this article by Gallardo.

E. Armand, ‘El Nudismo’, Iniciales, No. 6 (June 1932), 5–6, emphasis in original. A similar argument, which also criticizes some anarchists for their prudishness with respect to naturist sexuality, can be found in A. G. Llauradó, ‘Por el sensualismo’, Estudios, No. 134 (October 1934), 15–17.

C. Shilling, The Body and Social Theory (London: Sage, 1993), 5.

Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body, 20.

H. Graham and J. Labanyi, ‘Introduction. Culture and Modernity: the Case of Spain’, in Spanish Cultural Studies ed. H. Graham and J. Labanyi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 1–19 (p. 16).