Ghost Stories

This chapter proposes ways in which cases studies about same-sex marriage might be “usable” or lend itself to meaningful appropriation in the present. It brings the evidence from Renaissance Rome into dialogue with the issue of same-sex marriage from the perspectives of LGBT politics and queer politics. It also develops lines of reflection concerning forms of desire and resistance, including memory, loss, and place, sexual and social dissidence, creative and transformative appropriation, alternative temporalities, and histories yet unknown. The chapter reviews intimate information concerning the sex lives of a group of men from the sixteenth century, which is considered important for the history of sexuality. It explores the extent to which it was possible in early modern Europe to conceive of a marriage between two masculinities or two femininities.