Date/Time
Thursday
24 Apr 2025
4:00 pm - 5:30 pm

Location
470 Stephens Hall

Event Type
Colloquium

William M. Burton
Assistant Professor, Department of French, UC Berkeley

It is notorious that Jean-Jacques Rousseau called for sexual segregation, women’s confinement to the domestic sphere, and their banishment from politics. His reasoning? Too much intercourse (in all senses) would lead to impotence, depopulation, and tyranny. Segregation, however, would allow men and women to see each other the right amount. This would lead to more robust and more fertile citizens, increased birthrates, and a more just government. It is easy to dismiss these ideas as after-the-fact justifications of patriarchal phobias. But Rousseau’s claims were neither outlandish nor irrational in the 18th century. Indeed, he was picking up on scientific research that found that overindulgence depleted the body’s store of seminal liquors, considered the cause of sexual differentiation. For Rousseau, this depletion would set off a chain reaction, ultimately causing civilizational collapse. By recreating Rousseau’s dialogue with biomedicine, I will try to
recover the (historical) plausibility of his antifeminist, pro-natalist arguments.

Image credit: Buffon, “Histoire naturelle”, vol. 2, gallica.bnf.fr