Abstract

Foucault’s ars erotica, one of the most enigmatic concepts in history-of-sexuality studies, has been largely overshadowed by the examination of scientia sexualis and its creation: sexuality constructed as a natural, inborn and permanent function of the body subject to acquired or congenital pathologies. With sexuality, a truth to be discovered and analysed, sexual acts and desires became involuntary manifestations of a fixed biological cause. Foucault argues that only scientia sexualis has operated in modern Western culture whilst ars erotica belongs to Eastern and ancient societies, although in his late essays he suggests that invoking ‘sex as aesthetics’ may be a useful political strategy for marginalised sexualities. Ars erotica, then, is framed as preceding sexuality and as a possible replacement for it. In this thesis, I suggest that modern Western culture has indeed witnessed a form of ars erotica, encompassed in what I term ‘aesthetic sexuality’, which I argue has existed since the eighteenth century