Towards a Posthuman Sexuality: Art, Sex and Evolution in Nietzsche, Williams and Mozart (original) (raw)
Related papers
Sexuality and/as Art, Power, and Reconciliation
Foucault Studies, 2021
Sexuality and/as Art, Power, and Reconciliation: Preface to Symposium on Richard Shusterman’s "Ars Erotica. Sex and Somaesthetics in the Classical Arts of Love". This article is the Introduction to a Symposium, edited by me, on Richard Shusterman’s recent book "Ars Erotica. Sex and Somaesthetics in the Classical Arts of Love" (2021). The symposium includes my Introduction, the papers of 3 scholars (Catherine Botha, Leonardo Distaso, Leszek Koczanowicz), and Shusterman's replies to these authors. In my Introduction to the symposium I first provide the readers of the journal "Foucault Studies" with a general overview of Shusterman's pragmatist aesthetics and its original development called somaesthetics, thus explaining how this broad, complex and interdisciplinary philosophical conception arrived to include also the domain of sexuality among its topics. Then, I offer some introductory remarks to Shusterman's last book, "Ars Erotica", its main contents, meaning and aims, and its relation to Michel Foucault's influential and ambitious project of a philosophical "History of Sexuality". Finally, I add some conclusive remarks that hint at a possible comparison between Shusterman's somaesthetic conception of love and sex, and the emphasis on the importance of the dimension of eros in such critical theorists of society as Theodor W. Adorno and Herbert Marcuse.
The (Queer) Science: Nietzsche, the Theatre of Sadomasochism, and Dionysian Eternal Recurrence
Given at the "Queer Modernism(s) II: Intersectional Identities" conference at University of Oxford, 12/5/18 For many readers, Nietzsche exists as a philosophical paradox – a classicist in his studies, his writing contributes to and comments upon the notion of a break from tradition establish him as one of the driving forces of the modernist era. And yet, the greatest appraisals and analyses of Nietzsche’s work are at the hands of postmodernists and poststructuralists, not least of all Deleuze, Foucault and Butler. Such a paradox may be paralleled in the very concept of a Queer Modernist inquiry, considering that, by many accounts, queer theory is itself all but entirely rooted in postmodernist thought. A solution to these paradoxes may be found through further investigation of the elements of Nietzsche’s philosophy that held such influence over postmodern theory: that of time. Between Deleuze’s reflections and elevation of Nietzsche’s proposition of eternal recurrence to the status a legitimate cosmological theory of the repetition of difference-in-itself and the continuation of generalities, and Foucault’s discussion of genealogy as analysis of the historical implications of incorporation, we break free from linearly chronological constraints. Similarly, Elizabeth Freeman argues, queer sexual interaction, through the medium of the historically “theatrical” roleplaying sadomasochistic encounter, “us[es] the body as an instrument to rearrange time, becom[ing] a kind of écriture historique,” creating sensational echoes of the results of penal discipline centuries before, now abstracted into pleasures of repetition, within and despite the cyclical recurrence of kyriarchal generality. Applying through queer performance and sexuality Nietzsche’s philosophy in relation to the body and time, as well as remarking on the distinct similarities between Nietzsche’s theory of incorporation and Butler’s work on gender performativity, Nietzsche’s relationship with dance and musicality on his own literature becomes reinvigorated from a queer perspective. We may ask how the drag balls of Paris is Burning up to today, with their eloquent investigation of the power relations inherent in gender expression, relate to the modernist ballet, according to Susan jones, deeply influenced by Nietzsche’s “rediscovery” of the Dionysian. Ultimately, we must ask: in a world of queer-historical erasure at the hands of cisheteropatriarchal hegemonic generality, how may we as queers understand differently the call for affirmation Nietzsche makes in relation to the supposed horror of eternal recurrence?
1650–1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, And Inquiries In The Early Modern Era
Toynbee, in A Study of History, defines “promiscuity” as “the uncritical acceptance of anything and everything, [exhibiting] an unfocused eclecticism and uncritical tolerance.” It seems only fitting that a paper purporting to define an aesthetic of eroticism is duty-bound to be “promiscuous” (without the attendant faults) in its method as well as in its discourse. My promiscuous borrowings from Burke, Kant, and Bataille are not random, however, as they provide an established critical lexicon whose recombination—I hope to prove—will result in a definition of the dynamic erotic which is roughly analogous to Kant’s definition of the dynamically sublime in Nature, to Burke’s notion of the sublime as a function of force, and to Bataille’s aesthetic of loss.
A History of Erotic Philosophy
Journal of Sex Research, 2009
The most striking distinction between the erotic life of antiquity and our own . . . [is] that the ancients laid the stress upon the instinct itself, whereas we emphasize its object. The ancients glorified the instinct and were prepared on its account to honour even an inferior object; while we despise the instinctual activity in itself, and find excuses for it only in the merits of the object.
DESIRE, PERFORMANCE, AND CLASSIFICATION: Critical Perspectives on the Erotic
In November 2011, artists, professors, students and scholars from around the world gathered in Prague, Czech Republic, to attempt to define what could be considered the erotic. The conference sought submissions that addressed interactions of the erotic with history, art, literature, practices, performances, pedagogy, and sexuality, among many others. This wide focus brought together an intellectually rich meeting that interrogated the boundaries between eroticism, sex, and desire. This volume represents a sampling of papers presented at the conference, and the diverse focuses within these papers are indicative of the inter- and trans-disciplinary work that was presented. Each work within this collection brings a fresh and unique approach to the erotic and, in its own way, tries to answer the question, ‘What is erotic?’
The Human Erotic in Nietzsche and Lorde
2010 Mid-Western Regional AAR: "Religion, Sex, and the Body" What follows is an attempt to lay a groundwork for future inquiry into the way that the erotic, as human creative will, can generate claims for justified oppression, and how these claims, seated in ethics, are dangerous. I will proceed with an examination of the feminine erotic in Audre Lorde’s essay Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power and it’s relation to the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. In the analysis of Nietzsche’s thought, I have relied heavily on secondary sources in order to synthesize a coherent link between Lorde’s feminine erotic and Nietzsche’s myriad discussions of the will to power, the eternal recurrence, and the abyss. Here, I will establish that these connections indicate a human erotic that compels one to ethical action in the face of oppression, but that this subjective perception of oppression is ethically dangerous in that it demonstrates the potential to constitute new forms of oppression.
Foucault Studies, 2021
Love and sex are central notions in all reflection on humanity. And for obvious reasons, too. These notions defy any simple definition because they connote and reference an almost innumerable multitude of things. Moreover, these notions are highly amenable to social factors and have always been enmeshed in plentiful limitations, prohibitions, and precepts. Consequently, when pondering them, thinkers inevitably find themselves speaking from particular political and cultural discourses and cannot possibly retain a neutral distance to their object of research. Another noteworthy thing is that all considerations of sexual life provoke questions about modernity and postmodernity in this respect. The profound changes that have swept across this sphere of human life over the last 150 years prompt historical-or, to use Michel Foucault's term, genealogical-research aimed at establishing what factors made them possible or, even, what brought them about. In his Ars Erotica: Sex and Somaesthetics in the Classical Arts of Love, Richard Shusterman addresses an extremely fraught and intricate theme which requires not only a thorough knowledge of the issue itself but also a proficient scrutiny of all the related factors mentioned above. In focusing on the art of love, Shusterman inexorably had to confront, on the one hand, Michel Foucault's groundbreaking The History of Sexuality and, on the other, the vast tradition of psychoanalytical writings on sexuality with their fundamental premise of repression, that is, of the problem being expunged from the consciousness of individuals. In this paper, I argue that Shusterman's perspective on ars erotica represents an original alternative to these two towering frameworks. Shusterman's immense erudition in his explorations of the discourse on eroticism in various cultures is strictly subordinated to his theoretical design, which stems from his conception of somaesthetics.
This paper explores how a non-reductionist account of Nietzsche’s influence on Michel Foucault can enrich our understanding of key concepts in singular works of both philosophers. I assess this exegetical strategy by looking at the two dichotomies Apollonian/Dionysian and ars erotica/scientia sexualis in The Birth of Tragedy and The History of Sexuality Volume I, respectively. After exploring the relation between these two dichotomies, I link the science of sexuality to the Apollonian art instinct via the existence of Socratic culture, and argue against the "pleasure of analysis" as a sublated form of (Dionysian) ars erotica. These considerations lead to the notions of history in Nietzsche’s and Foucault’s philosophies that result in situating the polyvalent ‘Ursprung’ of Greek tragedy and the descent of ars erotica and scientia sexualis in an antimetaphysical and nonteleological picture of historical development.
Ideological implications of representations of prostitution in French art and literature 1860-1885
In this dissertation I consider the ideological implications of representations of courtesan culture in Émile Zola’s Nana, and assert the validity and value of this analytic approach to the naturalist text. The date range I have chosen (1860-1885) encompasses the rise of fall of the Second Empire, from its pinnacle at the Exposition Universelle in 1867, to Napoleon III’s surrender to Prussia at the Battle of Sedan in 1870. French terms are referenced throughout this dissertation so I have included a glossary of translations after the concluding chapter. The chapters of my dissertation develop a Zolaesque framework, forming concentric circles that push out from the novel’s central theme: the sexual body. Briefly summarised, Chapter One explores the body observed: the body as myth, the body as spectacle, and the body in (and evading) the narrative field of vision. Chapter Two addresses the ‘crisis of the nude,’ structures of marginality, and the degradation of the social and political body of Second Empire high society. Chapter Three is concerned with the function of environment in the novel, particularly spaces of modernity and how they operate on gender. Nana is, once again, the centre of the hurricane; the focal point of sexual frenzy, the sexual narrative, and of its analysis; a site for the inscription of moral, political and social ideological commentary to which all symbolism returns. Accompanying each chapter is an analysis of Édouard Manet’s realist paintings Nana (1877), Olympia (1863) and Bar at the Folies-Bergére (1882), opening a wider commentary on literature and art as communicating forms of ideological discourse. Contrary to dominant academic criticism—which I will both cite and scrutinise throughout this dissertation—I posit that Zola’s moralising intention is not at odds with his naturalistic literary aim. Rather, the naturalist novel anticipates the immobilisation of its excessive commitment to descriptive realism; it signals the significance of its apparent contradictions as crucial to the topos with which it is engaged; its calls attention to formal and thematic dissonance, and in turn, the historical circumstances it seeks to expose. The irruption of the natural in the naturalist novel observes the ironies of man-made deformations of the natural world, and through ideological commentary on the body and its environment, Zola condemns the conditions of the Second Empire as the fall of man — posing naturalism as its redemption. Both Zola and Manet’s texts develop around a disparate historical, social and political context, and it is in their aberrations that they come the closest to observable truth.