PhD defence by Michał Narożniak
The thesis examines the production of sexual knowledge in the Habsburg province of Galicia at the turn of the twentieth century, specifically focusing on the capital city of Lviv, to examine the emergence of modern sexual culture in a region perceived as peripheral by both historical actors and later scholarship. Rather than concentrating on institutional agents, such as the military, Church, systems of education and healthcare, this thesis highlights the role of non-institutional actors in the process of knowledge creation. These actors are characterised as the 'intellectual proletariat', a term indigenous to Galicia to describe educated persons who lacked formal institutional affiliations with academia or public and private bureaucracies, but still had the capacity to influence sexual knowledge. Utilizing Ludwik Fleck’s methodology for analysing the collective nature of scientific production, particularly his concepts of thought style and collective mood, the thesis uncovers multiple dimensions of a peripheral knowledge culture, emphasising the populist dimensions of non-institutional sexual epistemologies. Populism here is defined by its style and object of study: disruptive and sensationalist truth-telling, professions of honesty, and a focus on the 'natural' sexual attitudes of the working-class, set against the repressive and exploitative regime of the middle classes. The thesis is divided into three parts, comprising nine chapters, which together trace the meanings of periphery and populism to reveal possible innovations arising from such a framework. The first part, drawing on ethnographic sources, naturalist novels, and the tabloid press, examines the creation of systematic categories in the social analysis of sexuality, such as ethnicity, gender and class. The second part turns to narratives of adolescence, shifting the analysis to the level of individual subjectivity formation through sexual education magazines and autobiographies. Finally, the third part investigates the epistemic role of sexual fantasy, highlighting its significance for the examination of non-normative behavior in both public discourse and intimate contexts.
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