Project "Consumer objects: The Significance of Things for Access to Epistemic and Situational Sexuality Knowledge" (BMBF)
Principal Investigator: Prof. Dr. Dominik Schrage
Research Associate: Dr. Tino Heim
The project, which ended in 2021, was part of the research network"Things and Sexuality. Production and Consumption in the 20th and 21st Centuries", in which the TU Dresden, the German Hygiene Museum and the Hannover Medical School were involved. It ran from November 2018 to October 2021.
Brief description
The use of objects plays an increasingly important role in contemporary sexual culture: sex toys, contraceptives and sexual enhancers are a constitutive element in the formation of contemporary sexuality. Sexuality is therefore not a natural need that lies hidden in body and soul. Rather, it is a mode of the production of bodies and subjects and a form of self and other management that has developed since 19th century and is individually appropriated and modified. Against this background, the interdisciplinary research network "Things and Sexuality" asks what role things and their use play in this process. Using the extensive sexual history collection of the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum and the museum holdings of the Schwules Museum*, the interrelationships between situated practices of object use and social orders of knowledge in the field of sexuality are examined. The interdisciplinary project thus closes a research gap, as studies on the history of sexuality have so far mainly focused on the doscourses of sexuality and their standardization.
In the project network, the DHMD's sexuality collection is being researched from the perspectives of consumption sociology (sub-project at TU Dresden), body history (sub-project at Hannover Medical School), cultural anthropology (sub-project at the DHMD) and queer studies (SMU*), while the SMU*'s museum collections are also being used as research sources. Three sub-projects have been formed for this purpose, which illustrate the necessity of interdisciplinary perspectives in relation to the connection of different academic subjects and also in relation to the possibilities for reflection of the research institutions university/college (identified in the theoretical approaches) and museum (identified in the research of material culture).
Following an initial phase of literature and archive research, the "Consumer Objects" sub-project (TU Dresden) worked closely with its partners to select the collection objects that would be the focus of the project work. At the beginning of the project, the focus was on research in a targeted manner and interviews with protagonists and experts to develop the knowledge and normative horizons of the objects as well as the practices of use. Since the second half of 2020, the data has been analyzed in close cooperation with the project partners. The sub-project took part in all cross-network events (project workshops, expert workshops), produced scientific publications and participated in the exhibition activities and public relations strategies of the network (project workshops, expert workshops).
public relations strategies of the network (website, publications, conferences).
From left to right: Anne-Sophie Hoffmeister, Tino Heim, Nora Molinari, Dominik Schrage