Resumen de Diskurs und Sexualpädagogik: Der deutschsprachige Onanie-Diskurs des späten 18. Jahrhunderts
This article treats the conflict-laden relation of discourse analysis and the history of sexuality on various levels: at first it is shown how discourse analysis has become relevant for the history of sexuality in the wake of the transformation Foucault initiated. Continuing this discussion, the author outlines the theoretical connection between discourse and sexual experience. He thereby relies on Norman Fairclough's �text-oriented discourse analysis�, a method that marries linguistic analysis and social theory, and thus facilitates research into the interactive kind of �sexuality�. The author deals with the linguistic, discursive and social practices of the German-language pedagogical onanism discourse of the late eighteenth century along its respective dimensions. The texts of the late eighteenth century were more strongly oriented towards pedagogy and medicine compared with the religious�transcendental direction of the seventeenth century. Autobiographically infused texts on onanism served to demonstrate �real� case and life histories of onanists. Since the onanist was considered to be completely determined by his disease, one of the first �sexual subjects� emerged. Letters of consultation show that to some extent the consumers frequently adopted the existing model of onanism, but they also produced interpretations of their own. Precisely, those texts by onanists make evident that neither the concept of a passive registration of sexual discourses nor that of a one-way communication can do justice to social reality. On the contrary, interplay between professionals and consumers developed. The �performance� of the texts could only succeed because scholars and onanists shared a common sociocultural �body� and could, therefore, understand, accept and sense within themselves the importance and meaning of onanism. The German-language onanism discourse was part of the educationalist discussion throughout Europe in the eighteenth century, and yielded to the professional interests of a discipline on the cusp of becoming established
