Aesthetic Sexuality
Subtitle: a Literary History of Sadomasochism
By: Romana Byrne
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2013
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 192
ISBN-13: 9781441100818
Subjects: Sex in literature; Sadomasochism in literature; LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory
Description: "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. In aesthetic sexuality, value and meaning are located within sexual practice and pleasure rather than in their underlying cause; sexuality's raison d'etre is tied to its aesthetic value, at surface level rather than beneath it. Aesthetic sexuality, Byrne shows, is a product of choice, a deliberate strategy of self-creation as well as a mode of social communication"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 177-189) and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note:; title: 1. Introduction - Aesthetic sexuality: a literary history of sadomasochism2. Universal perversion and the laws of judgment: the Marquis de Sade3. Brutal beauty: Swinburne's Poems and Ballads and Mirbeau's Le Jardin des supplices4. Tragic self-shattering I: Nietzsche's aesthetics5. Tragic self-shattering II: delirious materialism in Bataille's L'Erotisme and Histoire de l'uil. Tragic self-shattering III: mortifying metaphysics in Reage's Histoire d'O and Berg's L'image7. Sadomasochism as anti-aesthetic theatre8. Conclusion - Fashioning BDSM todayWorks CitedIndex.