Aesthetic Sexuality: A Literary History of Sadomasochism
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.28 (587 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1501308696 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 200 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-06-03 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Christopher Michaels said strikingly insightful. This analysis of the meaning of sex and its role in who we think we are, our identity, uses the literary representations of Sadomasichism as a way of arguing with Forcault and others. It suggests sexuality maybe an essential part of our nature but its expession is an aesthetic practice, an ar
The result subtly subverts the demand we speak our sexuality as truth, and offers the pleasure of sexuality as aesthetic self-creation."Aesthetic Sexuality" reads against the grain of standard readings of the "scientia sexualis" versus "ars erotica" distinction Foucault made famous in his" History of Sexuality." From Sade to Nietzsche to contemporary fetish fashion, Byrne brilliantly uses the aesthetics of sadomasochism to reconceptualize sexuality itself. Tracking the connections between sadomasochism and aesthetic philosophy, from Kant to Baudrillard, Byrne deftly negotiates the pleasures and paradoxes of sexuality on the surface - sex as a matter of practices, games, and fleeting intensities. A tour de force! . Romana Byrne's philosophical, historical, and literary reflections on 'aesthetic sexuality', or pleasure as a form of self- and other-creation, provides us with a radical al
. Romana Byrne is an independent scholar based in France. She has published in Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts and Papers on Language & Literature. Formerly, she was a Research Fellow at The University of Melbourne, Australia, where she lectured in the history of queer theory, pornography and aesthetics, and sadomasochism in cinema
To understand why the concept of aesthetic sexuality is important, we must consider the influence of the first volume of Foucault's seminal The History of Sexuality. Arguing against Foucault's assertions that only scientia sexualis has operated in modern Western culture while ars erotica belongs to Eastern and ancient societies, Byrne suggests that modern Western culture has indeed witnessed a form of ars erotica, encompassed in what she calls 'aesthetic sexuality'.To argue for the existence of aesthetic sexuality, Byrne examines mainly works of literature to show how, within these texts, sexual practice and pleasure are constructed as having aesthetic value, a quality that marks these experiences as forms of art. Aesthetic sexuality, Byrne shows, is a product of choice, a deliberate strategy of self-creation as well as a mode of social communication.. In aesthetic sexuality, value and meaning are located within sexual practice and pleasure rather than in their underlying cause; sexuality's raison d'être is tied to its aesthetic value, at surface level rather than beneath it