ABSTRACT

You'd better ®nd somebody to love, sang Jefferson Airplane in 1967. May 1968 followed soon after. An opportunity to speak at a conference to mark the fortieth anniversary of those events enabled all of us who were around then to re¯ect on the personal and political trajectories of our lives and to discuss it all with younger colleagues. I chose to present on Promiscuity ± Then and Now and used the moment to work up re¯ections on sexuality and social critique in a historical framework. In the event, the paper itself was less confessional and personal than it might have seemed ± but the responses it evoked were highly charged as memories, many of them doubtless held in the body, played into the current positions and preoccupations of the audience.