Aesthetic Sexuality: A Literary History of SadomasochismTo 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'être 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. |
Contents
1 Introduction | 1 |
the Marquis de Sade | 17 |
Swinburnes Poems and Ballads and Mirbeaus Le Jardin des supplices | 41 |
Nietzsches aesthetics | 75 |
delirious materialism in Batailles LÉrotisme and Histoire de Loeil | 89 |
mortifying metaphysics in Réages Histoire dO and Bergs Limage | 109 |
7 Sadomasochism as antiaesthetic theater | 127 |
fashioning BDSM today | 159 |
| 177 | |
| 190 | |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic experience aesthetic judgment aesthetic philosophy aesthetic sexuality aestheticism Apollo Apollonian and Dionysian Apollonian semblance artifice artistic Bataille Bataille’s Baudrillard BDSM beauty Birth of Tragedy body Burke Butler c’est Califia Clara’s concept constructed contemporary crime critics critique cultural d’une demonstrate desire Dionysian aesthetic Dionysus distinction erotic eroticism existence feminist fetish fetish clothing fetishist flowers gender Georges Bataille Histoire d’O Ibid identity individual instinctive Jardin des supplices Jean Juliette Kant Kant’s L’Érotisme L’image Lesbian libertine libertine sexuality lover Marius Marquis de Sade masochism metaphysical Mirbeau moral nature Nietzsche Nietzsche’s aesthetic notion novel object Octave Mirbeau one’s pain Pat Califia Poems and Ballads political postmodern practice produces qu’elle qu’il Réage reality realm Renaissance representation Roissy Sade’s sadism sadism and masochism sadomasochism sadomasochistic sadomasochistic power seduction Shaftesbury signifies style subcultural subjectivity suggests Swinburne Swinburne’s taste torture tout trans transgression trope truth University Press violent sexuality Walter Pater