Sexualities, Ahead of Print.
In recent years, sexual field theory has emerged as the cutting edge of the sociology of sexuality. This paper turns Bourdieu’s own formulation of field back upon sexual field theory to investigate sites where sexual field theorists break from Bourdieu and what questions these sites of divergence raise. I pinpoint two unresolved issues in sexual field theory: (1) the ambiguous boundaries of sexual fields and (2) the obfuscation of power. Both points relate to the autonomy of sexual life, which sexual field theorists may overstate. This paper recommends new lines of analysis which may advance field theory more broadly, the sociology of sexuality, and the feminist reinvention of Bourdieu.