The Dominant and the Dominated. Power Relations and Intimate Authorities in the Personal Diary of the Jurist Eugène Wilhelm (1885–1951)

Abstract

The Franco-German lawyer Eugene Wilhelm (1866–1951) examines in his diary how he conceives of his masculinity and his sexual relations with men and women. Attracted by partners of low condition, he experienced his sexuality through a set of oppositions between public life and private life, professional life and personal life. A number of relationships of mutual dependency he describes between dominant and dominated men help us to examine both the hierarchy of masculinities and the nature of the process of domination in a group that shares the same sexual orientation. This unique source and its analysis constitutes a contribution to the research on intimate authority and also on the construction of a homosexual subculture between the late nineteen century and the early twentieth century.