Foucault thus advances our understanding of the birth of modern consciousness about sexual identity, finding in the concepts of the "heterosexual" and "homosexual" not only a construction of identity for the purposes of regulation, but also a starting point for subversion and resistance. As many theorists now argue, narrow notions of identity can be both confining and liberating.

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Foucault's influence on gay and lesbian studies, as well as on the recent trend of "queer theory," has been immense. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet, Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, and Jonathan Dollimore's Sexual Dissidence are just a few of the many works that draw on and respond to Foucault.

And as his work has become increasingly central to theories of sexual identity, Foucault's tumultuous life has also come under scrutiny. Although his sexual orientation was well known, and his death from AIDS in 1984 was covered widely in the press, the specific resonance of Foucault's own sexuality in his work was barely considered until James Miller's critical biography The Passion of Michel Foucault was published in 1993.

Although it has been condemned by some individuals as scandal-mongering and even , Miller's work does explore the tortured sense of self that resulted in Foucault's experimentations with hallucinogenic drugs and highly unsafe forms of sex, activities that continued even after his health was impaired and AIDS transmission routes were suspected.

Although far from perfect, The Passion of Michel Foucault attempts to make sense of a life and philosophical legacy in ways that previous critics had nervously avoided.

There is no more important body of philosophical work within the gay and lesbian literary heritage than that of Michel Foucault.

Although he is often (and rightly) criticized for being insensitive to women's issues and for being overly quick to pinpoint precise dates for dramatic alterations in human consciousness, Foucault himself was responsible for one such major change: in the way we perceive power and its use by and against individuals.

While evincing his own blindspots, he helped call attention to those that in fact define the political, medical, and literary establishments still working to categorize and condemn individuals today.

The French gay liberation movement was born during the early 1970s on the foundation of a courageous, if conservative, homophile movement and the thrust of a massive wave of social activism.

The contributions of gay men and lesbians to twentieth-century French literature have been closely intertwined with the course of mainstream literature.

In ancient Rome, the galli were castrated priests of Cybele, the Asian Mother Goddess, and of the Syrian goddess Atagartis; they were widely riducled for their effeminacy, cross-dressing, and sexual passivity.

The Gay Left refers to a cluster of positions on the political spectrum that has existed within the lesbian and gay rights movement at least since the Stonewall riots.

The theory that gender relations are socially constructed categories of meaning has opened up a number of new areas in lesbian, gay, and queer studies.

Although the question of homosexual identity is a complex one, it has polarized activists, theorists, and literary critics into two primary camps, essentialists and constructionists, both of which can contribute usefully to an understanding of the gay and lesbian literary heritage.

Although gay, lesbian, and queer theory are related practices, the three terms delineate separate emphases marked by different assumptions about the relationship between gender and sexuality.

French writer and public intellectual Jean-Paul Aron is widely credited for giving a human face to AIDS and thereby changing the public perception of the disease and those who suffered from it.

André Baudry, as leader of the French homophile movement from the early 1950s into the 1980s, was the principal spokesman for homosexuals in France before the rise of gay liberation in the 1970s.

The most notable law reformer in the English-speaking world, English philosopher, jurist, economist, and political scientist Jeremy Bentham argued for a tolerant attitude toward homosexuality in a series of papers first published in full in 1985.

Prolific French journalist and novelist Hervé Guibert achieved fame because of his last three books, which recounted in semi-fictionalized form his struggle with the HIV virus.

One of France's leading lesbian theorists and political activists, Geneviève Pastre is a writer and publisher who has made lesbian feminism the root of her political and literary work.