What's in a name? Homosexuality, reputation and the sexual contract in England and America, 1895--1925 (Ireland, Oscar Wilde)

I investigate the historical emergence of crimes of information in England in the United States from 1895--1925, and the shifting relationship between the culture of information and power structures in the period regarded as modernism. My contention is that the rise of libel and blackmail reflects a new social contract in which a person's sexual preferences and/or identity began to be perceived as politically and socially relevant. Chapter One offers a history of social contract theory and history of contract law in England, and argues that the rise of libel in the latter half of the nineteenth century, which often invoked the revelation of personal, embarrassing, or sexual information, reflected a shift in structures of capitalism from propriety to monopoly capitalism, wherein personal reputation and specifically sexual knowledge, were treated as commodities, things that could be purloined, damaged, or otherwise compromised. Chapter Two examines the 1895 trials of Irish playwright Oscar Wilde from the standpoint of contract and private blackmail. Wilde's prosecution for "gross indecency" as a result of his libel suit against an aristocrat resulted from his refusal to accept a coercive sexual contract with his antagonist. Chapter Three examines the 1918 Pemberton-Billing libel trial, and explores the way in which a libel lawsuit became the vehicle for working out nationalist anxieties about English identity during World War I. Chapter Four looks at the 1924 murder and trial of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb who formed a sexual contract to commit a crime, and focuses not only on American law during this period, but on the expressive dimensions of contract used to form notions of identity.