ABSTRACT
The objective of this chapter is to undertake an analysis of the emergence of this ‘homosexual’ in the law. First, consideration will be given to the Wolfenden Committee’s attempts both to formulate and to resolve the enigma of ‘homosexual offence’. While the committee offers a solution to the enigma in its definition of ‘homosexual offences’, the analysis will demonstrate the way in which this solution merely reformulates the enigma and sustains it. Thereafter, taking the material presented to the committee, the second half of the chapter, drawing upon Foucault’s insights into the historicity and materiality of sexuality (Foucault 1981 a), will seek to provide an alternative view of the meaning of the ‘homosexual’ that makes sense and nonsense of the phrase ‘homosexual offences’.
