Herculine Barbin revisited – Klassifikationen geschlechtlicher Variationen aus dem Geist der Moderne

Krämer, Dennis

Abstract

In an essay published in 1980, Michel Foucault argues drawing on the life story of Herculi ne Barbin – a French hermaphrodite who grew up in a girls’ boarding school in the mid-nineteenth century, maintained romantic relationships with women, and was later compelled by the medico- juridical system to assume the male sex – that the search for a ›true sex‹ represents a project of nity. What remains unclear to date is the role that classifications played in this search. This article therefore recenters Barbin’s biography and argues that the contemporary determination of her sex rested on the enforcement of a new medico-juridical classificatory regime that is characteristic of the modern treatment of hermaphroditism. Building on Foucault’s reflections as well as ry sources, this claim is developed from three perspectives: (1) the classification of living beings, (2) the classification of hermaphroditism, and (3) resistance to gender-binary classifications. The le concludes by sketching the implications of the classification of sex variations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.