This chapter contains sections titled: Erotica and Pornography: From the Romantic to the Vulgar Aesthetic Contemplation: The Romantic and the Beautiful Notes.

There were three broad categories of academic responses to Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Kinsey, Pomeroy and Martin, 1948): method; findings; and broader reflections on the book’s place in American social life and democracy. This article focuses primarily on archival academic responses to Kinsey’s work that appeared in the year following the book’s publication. Many academics agreed that some aspects of Kinsey’s method were flawed and that his interpretations sometimes overreached his raw data. Nonetheless, they also agreed (...) that no one else had gathered such a diverse sampling of interviewees whose behaviors Kinsey could use to create new interpretive models of human sexuality. As Kinsey’s research was deliberately interdisciplinary, his research and statistical methodologies began to catch on in the human sciences and to encourage academics and intellectuals to rethink their human science practices. As academics reflected on the volume’s larger meaning in American life, several of them thought it exemplified the worst American values (emphases on money and size) while others saw the very existence of the Male volume as an excellent example of the ability of free citizens to pursue and to publish research on any topic. While members of the American intelligentsia championed the Male volume and its findings as democratic, the reception of Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin and Gebhard, 1953), published at an intense moment of the cold war, was viewed as a communist threat to American security for revealing the sexual secrets of the public. (shrink)

Most people are familiar with Justice Stewart's now classic statement that while he cannot describe pornography, he certainly knows it when he sees it. We instantly identify with Justice Stewart. Pornography is not difficult to recognize, but it does elude description. This is because traditional attempts at description are attempts that seek to explain at either an abstract or empirical level rather than at the level that accounts for experience in its totality. Justice Stewart's lament represents the need to understand (...) the subjective experience of pornography and cease trying to explain it in purely objective terms. Much feminist literature in general and Catharine MacKinnon's work in particular seeks to do just this. MacKinnon argues that pornography should not be explained in familiar First Amendment freedom -of-expression terms, but rather in terms of the actual sexual abuse it constitutes in experience. Then, and only then, are we able to select the appropriate legal remedy. This essay suggests that MacKinnon's position not only needs the support of a non-traditional philosophical approach, but has one readily available in the phenomenology of philosopher Edmund Husserl. (shrink)

Most people are familiar with Justice Stewart's now classic statement that while he cannot describe pornography, he certainly knows it when he sees it. We instantly identify with Justice Stewart. Pornography is not difficult to recognize, but it does elude description. This is because traditional attempts at description are attempts that seek to explain at either an abstract or empirical level rather than at the level that accounts for experience in its totality. Justice Stewart's lament represents the need to understand (...) the subjective experience of pornography and cease trying to explain it in purely objective terms. Much feminist literature in general and Catharine MacKinnon's work in particular seeks to do just this. MacKinnon argues that pornography should not be explained in familiar First Amendment freedom-of-expression terms, but rather in terms of the actual sexual abuse it constitutes in experience. Then, and only then, are we able to select the appropriate legal remedy. This essay suggests that MacKinnon's position not only needs the support of a non-traditional philosophical approach, but has one readily available in the phenomenology of philosopher Edmund Husserl. (shrink)

“Artworks are not being but a process of becoming” —Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory In the everyday use of the concept, saying that something is grotesque rarely implies anything other than saying that something is a bit outside of the normal structure of language or meaning – that something is a peculiarity. But in its historical use the concept has often had more far reaching connotations. In different phases of history the grotesque has manifested its forms as a means of (...) subversive resistance against society’s prevailing notions of form and power. What aids this impact and distinguishes two of its basic stylistic features is the grotesque’s dissolution of form and its hyperbole. Such grotesqueries, however, soon solidify into new forms, new structures of meaning, hierarchy and practice, and in this sense the history of the grotesque is, on one hand, a continual opposition and transgression of the prevailing notions of art as well as of God and humanity, while on the other hand it offers continual resistance to its own solidifying process. As such the grotesque will not and cannot be contained in form without it losing the very thing that makes it grotesque. Even though it is somewhat easy to point out certain stylistic features of the grotesque, the sum of those features tell us very little about what is at play within it. Definitions concerned with the grotesque’s content rather than its form faces similar difficulties. Throughout history, expressions relating to the grotesque have been used in defense of a whole host of different social and cultural discourse including, for instance, Catholicism (See Erhard Schön’s Der Teufel mit der Sackpfeife , 1536), Protestantism (See Lucas Cranach’s Der Papstesel , 1523), a material folk culture (see Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and his World , 1984) and an idealistic romantic structure of meaning (see Wolfgang Kayser’s The Grotesque in Art and Literature , 1957). Thus though the grotesque cannot be reduced to the expression of certain forms or meanings, in order to examine what the grotesque is about one has to try to see how it’s relationship to flow and process and how, by maintaining this relationship, it attempts to avoid solidifying into form and meaning. The process of the grotesque alluded to here revolves around a play between periphery and center, the marginalized and the dominant. Most often this is expressed as a direct negation of the center of power. In the medieval grotesque tradition of the carnival, for example, it is expressed by its emphasis on the nether regions of the body as the center of creation of meaning. Spirit does not come from above, but from the belly, buttocks and genitals, and there is, expressed in this manner, a mockery of the predominant Christian notion of truth and meaning. Such inversions of the sites of meaning most often explicitly express an increased interest in materiality instead of ideal content which comes to the fore through the play between periphery and center. Even in early grotesque Renaissance art (for example in the works of Raphael) the depiction of the mythological or ideal reveals an exploration of the possibilities of the material. The works of art thus explore their own boundaries rather than act as vessels of the divine and in this way the grotesque explores the limits of form and materiality. This in turn brings to the fore a metaphysical dimension in the workings of the grotesque: It is an immanent exploration of its own boundaries. Materiality and metaphysics are joined together, because it is through the awareness of itself as a structuring (dis)order that it places itself in opposition to the prevailing notions of form and power. This way the grotesque expresses an awareness of the division of sign and reality and a search for this reality. It implicitly expresses the awareness that meaning is not something God-given and static, but fluctuating and man-made. In modern explorations of the history of the grotesque it is commonly seen as a form of realism that manifests a shift from the ideal towards the material, freeing art from representing some hidden higher order and instead making the work of art the very site of creation and meaning. Going even further, the grotesque actively opposes the notions of the ideal by marking a shift from an ahistorical view of the world towards the historical. However, this also makes clear why the grotesque has a tendency to solidify into new static forms of meaning, for by establishing itself as a subversive counterforce there is an idea of transgression and emancipation. That is why the grotesque often historicizes and relativizes only to repeat the mistakes of that which it negates: putting itself in the king’s chair. The exploration of the material seems to create new forms and notions of the ideal. The representation of an otherness outside the prevailing notions of meaning and truth becomes a positive manifestation of this otherness as truth itself. Thus the historical “truths” of the grotesque are superseded by history itself. When the expressions of the grotesque solidify into static form and meaning, they become mere objects like anything else in the world. Instead of being this elusive thing of process and flow, it becomes tangible to the existing hierarchy of power as well as history itself. In this way the grotesque can be expunged, included or simply revealed as yet another false notion of truth, which is precisely what has happened with the grotesque throughout the course of history. If from the beginning the expression of the grotesque has not already been in the service of some structure of meaning and truth, it has quickly been included or has quickly included itself in such a structure. But by doing so it rejects its own basis: the tension between periphery and center is replaced by the attempt to create a new center, a new structure of meaning and truth. The doubleness, ambiguity and flow of the grotesque are then rejected by the grotesque itself. THE NON-FORM OF FORM In the critical thinking of Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69) the problem of art, caught between a reductive and prevalent notion of truth and meaning and a peripheral and alienated otherness, is reexamined and reformulated. For Adorno, the instrumental rationality of Enlightenment itself reverts into a new form of mythology which is every bit as static and exclusive as the hierarchies of religion it supersedes. All is excluded that is non-identical to the instrumental mastery of the objects of the world, "For the Enlightenment, anything which cannot be resolved into numbers, and ultimately into one, is illusion; modern positivism consigns it to poetry." 1 As such the non-identical has been banished from the realm of thought and action, and banished specifically to the realm of art. But the realm of art is not able to provide a decent home for it because even modern art is not something entirely autonomous. While it is excluded from the notions of truth and meaning provided by instrumental rationality, it still originates from society. Just like instrumental rationality art is about mastery, structuring and exclusion. Therefore, the problem for art is that it cannot directly provide a space for the non-identical because its mode of operation is similar to that of instrumental rationality. Even worse, art has very few possibilities to free itself from this. If it becomes l’art pour l’art it is at the same time reduced to the very thing instrumental rationality claims it to be: a subjective judgment of taste.expressionism also stands as an example of this. Conversely, art cannot work within the framework of the identity-thinking of society, because any notion of freedom or emancipation would reproduce the exclusive practices of instrumental rationality. For example: Explicit socialist literature may establish itself in opposition to instrumental rationality while at the same time reproducing it. Its language may seem different, but in reality it merely provides a different set of reductive schematics for human life and experience. The problem for the art of the grotesque was, as I mentioned earlier, that far too often it was merely a symbolic manifestation of a notion of otherness—not otherness itself. Because of this the subversive character of the grotesque ends up shaping and containing otherness instead of providing a space for it. According to Adorno the only way to avoid this is to radicalize the grotesque. In order to avoid solidifying into form the work of art has to be an object which cannot be contained in thought or form—a non-form of form. The work of art has to work in a way that it strives for autonomy but without entirely leaving a discernible reality. In other words, it has to pull in two directions at once. Thus the work of art is a paradox. It is autonomous in the sense that it closes itself off from everything outside of the work of art, trying to shy away from the contaminating influence of the identity thinking of instrumental rationality. At the same time though the work of art is heteronomous in the sense that it originates from a specific historical context and is bound to be what society is not. Autonomy and heteronomy are inseparably intertwined. Unable to display otherness itself, but still trying to be a refuge for it, there is only one option for art: It has to turn against itself and destroy its own logic of form, thereby demonstrating how any representation of otherness is impossible. Art becomes a lamentation of the victims of the identity thinking of instrumental rationality and shows the traces of the otherness that is unable to appear. Adorno’s pessimistic theory of art and history stages art as a negative dialectical process where the work of art closes itself off and rejects everything outside, while the individual elements in the work of art destroys its very own logic of form from within: Artworks synthetize ununifiable, nonidentical elements that grind away at each other; they truly seek the identity of the identical and nonidentical processually because even their unity is only an element and not the magical formula of the whole […]. The resistance to them of otherness, on which they are nevertheless dependent compels them to articulate their own formal language, to leave not the smallest unformed particle as remnant. This reciprocity constitutes art’s dynamic; it is an irresolvable antithesis that is never brought to rest in the state of being. 2 Relative to a traditional understanding of the grotesque, Adorno radicalizes the tension between center and periphery, autonomy and heteronomy. In the traditional understanding of the grotesque, as we find it for example in the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin, the grotesque establishes the display of otherness as a new center of meaning and truth. However Adorno rejects such notions and argues instead for a modernism of the grotesque in which both center and periphery are included in a negative dialectical process and continually synthesizing and destabilizing each other’s positions. A modernism of the grotesque works on the inside of the sign or the artwork, continually outlining and questioning the boundaries between materiality and form. This moves the focus away from the relation between the sign or work of art as a conceptual manifestation on one side and the object it refers to on the other side. Instead it implicitly points to the amorphous mass from which the signs and thereby meaning have been carved, the remnants that have been left behind. Modernism of the grotesque does not imply that it is emancipatory or that it reconciles man with nature, and does not represent a new position or a new ideology. It merely remembers and insists on the double nature of man and art: to write or paint yourself or an artwork whole by inscribing meaning in life or by applying form on a canvas is at the same time both creation and destruction. The very signs we use to center meaning in our lives carry its own alienation in them. Meaning surfaces only when process and flow comes to a halt—solidifying, but at the same time excluding parts that do not fit into that particular structure of meaning. NOTHING DONE AND NOTHING UNDONE It has always been difficult for art historians to find a suitable category for the works of the Danish artist Leif Lage (b. 1933). In his paintings the sensitive figuration seems so fragile that it is on the verge of turning into abstraction. Or conversely: the figurative emerges cautiously and hesitantly out of abstraction. As an art critic once wrote, he can almost paint things away. 3 Working in some undefinable space between abstraction and figuration, the Lage’s works shy away from the realm of words, and as a result few critics have been able to write anything meaningful about his works. In fact even fewer have been able to write more than one or two pages. The Danish author and art critic Leif Hjernøe is one of those few, but even he starts off by saying how impossible it is to write about Lage, confessing that his works exist both as process and in a field of in-between which words cannot reach. He writes: Always you find yourself in a place where nothing is done and nothing left undone, and where the elements of the work of art rest in a continuous motion. Always there is the open wound, where infection rather than surgical intervention is considered as an opportunity. And the conflict between matter and antimatter makes all diagnoses uncertain and allows conditions of uncertainty to spread in a place of raw presence. 4 The art works against the diagnosis and the certainty. Words are being eaten up by what is outside the realm of words: tension, process and doubleness. An approach to an understanding of the work of Lage could be to follow his connection to Samuel Beckett (1906-89). One can note, therefore, that Lage has illustrated several of the Danish translations of Beckett’s works. Though one is an author and the other a painter both seek a place where figuration, where the word, erodes. For both this entails an attempt to question and examine and so move in behind the façade of the surface in an exploration of that something or nothing that may be behind representation. At the same time even in the vanishing point of figuration or words, the meaningless words or the disjointed lines still stand as signs of human activity—signs of movement in emptiness. With very few exceptions Lage’s artworks revolve around one motif: Man—most often “en face.” But unlike traditional portraitures Lage’s people are found within. The artworks do not sense the reality of appearances, but rather the existential dimensions within man. As a seismograph they are sensitive to the utmost subjectivity in order to display an objective, sensuous depiction of the very problem of subjectivity. Instead of a static façade of a man, Lage’s “en face” shows the process-character of man. The people in Lage’s paintings are always in process—in the midst of becoming or dissolving. I will take a closer look in the following at the ways in which Lage establishes this sense of being in constant process, of being in-between modes or categories. THE DOUBLENESS OF THE STROKE Lage’s etchings attract attention in particular for the tension conveyed there between the material and the form. The material physically opposes the violence of the needle. But instead of embracing the violence of the needle and the victory over matter—instead of making the artistic creation and figuration express a heroic mastery of the background it is made out of—Lage uses the stroke to express the very tension between stroke and material, figuration and background. In the drypoint etching Untitled from 1983, which illustrated the Danish translation of Beckett’s Ill Seen, Ill Said , the needle tears up the material in long rough lines: Together, the primarily horizontal and vertical lines form a face. Thus the force needed to etch a line in the metal-plate draws attention to itself: It is there in the absence of curves and nuances. Man emerges on the metal-plate after great exertion and in a very simplistic form. This way Lage enhances the nature of the material, as the material’s resistance is not something to overcome. On the contrary the figuration is smitten by its very resistance and as such expresses the violence of its own becoming. Even more pronounced is the fact that the lines do not just show the violence of creation—it actively erases figuration in the same process that creates it. For example the mouth consists of 8-10 horizontal strokes, of which some seem to be connected to each other as if the mouth has been quickly scratched out. The mouth speaks of the inability to speak. In the same way, the eyes are black holes due to a large amount of criss-cross cuts, which together form a dark middle. Those lines, at the same time, form the eyes of the figuration and scratch out the eyes of the figuration. The extroverted aspects of the face—connected to speech and sight—are portrayed as introverted as well. Just as the etchings down into the metal-plate makes something appear. Leif Lage, Untitled , 1983 (etching) The figuration of the etching is connected to creation. It expresses that something is wrought into existence out of nothing by sheer artistic force. However, this force is at the same time presented as a violence of creation, which makes it impossible for form to truly emerge. Herein lies one of the basic principles of Lage’s art, namely that art cannot be that nothing or something behind the realm of words or signs. Without form, art would lose its ability to express anything at all. Form is a necessity if art is to avoid becoming as devoid of expression as the reality is that we cannot reach behind the appearance of things. On the other hand, art cannot raise itself above its own material in joyous celebration of the beauty of form. This would use the material in the manner of an instrument and thus would suppress the otherness it attempts to rescue. When art becomes mere form, any traces of otherness will have dissolved. Then art would be a question of technique, in no way different from the instrumental rationality of society. Therefore art works in a particular space between form and non-form. As Hjernøe says of the works of Lage, it is in the center of the event, in the in-between where things neither are nor are not, "And everything takes place just before it changes character. As the blood just before it coagulates, as the milk just before it separates, as fried egg just before it turns white […]." 5 The precise emphasis on the in-between of Lage’s art points in particular to the work of art as both outside of and in time. The work of art is a singular point in time, but at the same time it is continually in process. In the borderland between form and non-form, between creation and destruction, it shimmers like a fata morgana . The work is done but at the same time undone. It is only there as a cry in response to the inability to come into being. Akin to the etching is the drawing, but while both, of course, use the stroke or line as their main instrument, the paper does not resist the line in the same sense as the metal-plate of the etching. As a result in Lage’s drawings the stroke frolics in a space with almost no tension at all. There is nothing there to keep the pencil stroke at bay, but at the same time this means that there is nothing there to keep it together. One of the more expressive examples of this is found in an untitled drawing from Tegninger og Text ( Drawings and Text ) from 1999. The drawing consists of one unbroken pencil stroke. It is as if the stroke is confused—it darts around on the paper making doodles on the way or gathers itself in more straight lines in the center of the paper. It is in this manner that the semblance of a body is established. A couple of small circles serve as eyes and are the reason that the rest can be read as both face and body instead of pure abstraction. In fact the unbroken stroke serves as both abstraction and figuration as on the one hand it is the stroke that seemingly outlines the shape of a figure, while on the other hand the unbroken stroke dissolves any truly recognizable figuration by continuously, without end or aim, overflowing the boundaries of the figure. Seen again here is a doubleness to the stroke and the act of creation. In the etching it was all about the tension between the resistance of the material which created the doubleness. Here it is the opposite. It is the lack of tension. The stroke is free to do anything, but has no aim: without some kind of resistance, there is nothing to hold figuration together. It threatens to dissolve into nothingness. Conversely, the drawing can also be seen as a process of becoming. Like a form of automatic writing, the pencil darts around until it finds a point of densification. But even in such an interpretation of the drawing, the figuration appears artificial—it points to itself as the result of the artistic act of creation. The stroke is primarily stroke and only secondarily figuration. With its wild movement it calls attention to itself as stroke. Thus the figuration never becomes something in its own right. It points to the basic principle of creation: Someone has drawn me, I am the result of artistic endeavors, and therefore I am not for myself but always overflowing the boundaries that contain me. It is the stroke that in the very same movement creates figuration and dissolves it. Leif Lage, Untitled , 1999 (drawing) THE LIGHTNESS OF COLOR, THE DENSITY OF PAPER Often the watercolor is used as a precursor for larger paintings, because it has an immediacy in which one can quickly paint the main lines of a composition. However, Lage’s watercolors are not temporary points in a process leading to another final painting. They are not sketches, later to be filled with details in another material. For him watercolor is an end in itself. This also implies that he doesn’t try to work against the paper’s absorption of the water color and its tendency to absorb detail. On the contrary, he examines the possibilities inherent in this blurring of the line and absorption of color. As in the previous examples, there are of course recognizable shapes in Lage’s water colors. But these shapes are rarely separable from color, line or even paper. In other words: the figurative and the abstract more or less become one. One of the reasons for this is that Lage often works on wetted paper which means that the paper hungrily absorbs color into its fabric instead of it being on top of the paper. The paper becomes line because it is the absorption of the color which, together with the brush stroke itself, separates the colors from each other. The line is also color and the color is also line, because there is no separation between the different colors other than the colors themselves. At times this results in almost complete abstraction. In such cases Lage add lines with a pencil as if he wants to hold some sort of figuration together. At other times it is the other way around: the strokes of the pencil are a being dissolved by the water color blurring out the figuration. Untitled 1 from 1999 displays various tones of green. The contour of the colors appears unusually rough. Most of all it is reminiscent of a shoreline which has found its form through the work of thousands of years between water and land. Pockets of resistance surface as islands not yet drowned in color—as paper or color not yet consumed by the dominant color. The shape of the colors does not seem created by the hand of the artist, but rather by the inner workings of the watercolor: color against color over time has resulted in this very image, as if it is all a part of a natural process of change and decay. Despite the fact that there are no strong differences in color there seems to be a struggle taking place in the watercolor. For example, inexplicable holes in the dark color, which cover most of the right side of the watercolor, appear as if the underlying color is eating away the dark color, or that the dark color is in the process of covering up the underlying color. The small pockets of resistance demonstrate a process and development that, almost as a happy accident, evokes a couple of small eyes and a large mouth. Behind the colors a few slanted lines can be discerned, but the hand of the artist has long ago disappeared behind the life of the colors. Thus the watercolor seems to be held at precisely the point in time where figuration randomly appears. The small eyes and wide mouth seemingly express the realization of the figuration’s temporality. It is just a moment in time, soon to be consumed again in the life of the colors. The nature, the background it stems from and is part of, moves on undeterred, continuing its everlasting process of creation and decay. In this sense, the watercolor provides an experience of how neither artist nor man is able to transcend the materiality they consist of. The colors of man, the materials man consists of are “becoming” and “progress” but also “decay” and “disappearance”. The artist’s pencil strokes have been eaten up long ago, and the figuration is living on borrowed time. Human or artistic activity is about creating form, transcending mere matter by shaping and applying meaning to it. But Untitled 1 shows the doubleness of such creation: the transience and fragility of human life. Should the figuration come into being, should it rise and transcend the material, which binds it to its temporal existence, it would become nothing because its very existence is conditioned by the life and work of the colors. In the same sense man cannot escape his own temporality. He too, for better or worse, must accept a life in the volatility of sensation. Leif Lage, Untitled 1 , 1999 (watercolor) In most of Lage’s watercolors there seem to be a stronger artistic control than in Untitled 1 . Most often both the arrangement of colors and the technique in which they are painted express the hand of the artist. An example of this is Untitled 2 from 1999. While figuration in Untitled 1 seemed to appear as a happy accident, the figuration is much more “created” in Untitled 2 . Here the most important parts of the figuration, the eyes, the mouth and part of the skull, are colored black and painted on top of the background’s play of colors. The background primarily consists of blue and yellow tones. Only parts of the paper are covered in color, however, which yet again stresses the act of painting: There is a surface which is being filled by color by an artist. The blue tones are concentrated in the figuration, while the yellow tones surround it. All this means that the figuration stands out more clearly in this watercolor. This is also underlined by the fact that the blue and dark tones cover part of the yellow tones as spots here and there. Thus it is not a background which is in the process of consuming figuration, but rather the emerging figuration which blots out the background. Such an understanding is even suggested by how the mouth and eyes are placed in the larger blue color field. The eyes and mouth are in the center of the watercolor, while the blue color field is placed from center out towards the left side. This gives the impression of a face turned slightly to the right and slightly upwards, which again makes the mouth appear to emerge from the paper. It also helps that the mouth cuts the center axis of the watercolor. In other words, the arrangement of the blue and black colors create some depth and perspective which gives the illusion of a figuration, seen partially in profile, emerging from the background. Seen in profile, the eyes and mouth seem extroverted—they almost seem as if they are put on top of the face. But at the same time they are painted as black holes, sucking in the gaze of the onlooker. The watercolor is even more challenging if one follows what may be the faint outline of the skull, which, on the right side of the watercolor, no longer works together with the blue color, but rather alone postulates the outline of the skull. If not the blue color field, but this line, is the outline of the skull, then all of a sudden the face is not in profile but “en face”—staring directly towards the onlooker. Outline and color seemingly work against each other and establish two different expressions. Without the slightly upward tilted expression of the profile, the eyes and mouth do not seem to emerge from the paper. On the contrary, seen “en face,” the eyes and mouth are really gaping pits of darkness. In this sense Untitled 2 is at the same time surface and depth of perspective. The line gives form but at the same time it dissolves the form created by the colors, and vice versa. Leif Lage, Untitled 2 , 1999 (watercolor) As the last example of Lage’s artistic method, I have chosen another untitled work (as indeed nearly all of Lage’s artworks are)—this time from 2000. This is perhaps one of the most figurative watercolors Lage has created, though that doesn’t tell us too much. The painting depicts a human face in blue and green tones on a yellow toned background. The colors create a clear demarcation between the figure and the background, which compensate for the watercolor’s lack of outline. Beneath the face darker tones imply the beginning of the torso, and nuances of color even hint at something which could be a collar. The hair is in even darker tones and its structure is emphasized using pencil strokes on top of the water color. One eye is marked by a brown spot with a darker spot in the middle, while the other eye is added by pencil. The mouth is a round, red dot. In Untitled from 2000 the work between abstraction and figuration is much less pronounced than in the previous examples cited here. Nonetheless the watercolor has a delicacy to it which almost makes the figuration disappear, even as it appears. This has something to do with the fact that all the individual brush strokes have dissolved. The only outlines are those created by the clash of colors. Even the red mouth seems to be more paint than mouth—unable to be formed truly as anything other than a speck of color with some small semblance to a mouth. In contrast to the other watercolors, there is no movement, no progress or decay, just a vibrating standstill. The figure is not emerging or disappearing but embedded in and as surface, and as such it makes the figure seem stuck in its condition rather than freed by the act of giving form: mouth open as a wound. Pencil strokes add detail and life to the hair as an attempt to help the figure emerge. But all this does is create two levels in the watercolor: The pencil strokes are put on top of the figuration rather than being part of it. Thus they end up highlighting the endless distance between the movement and form-giving of the pencil strokes and the static and stuck figure behind these strokes. Leif Lage, Untitled , 2000 (watercolor) MAN AND THE VIEW OF THE ONLOOKER Lage’s works seem at the same time to be an examination of tensions between form and material in art and a display of an image of man full of the same tensions. This is because the people who are emerging in Lage’s images are not just in his works, They are his works. This means that man is not something emerging from a background but is part of this background and vice versa. The art of Lage inscribes man in its surroundings and background. Man is not the ruler of nature. Man does not rise above matter; there is no truly transcendent position for man to occupy in the art of Lage. Instead man is a part of the very matter, it, at the same time, tries to distance itself from in order to distinguish itself from its surroundings. Man emerges in an attempt not to be line, stroke, color. In an attempt to free itself of matter. Should it succeed in this, however, it would turn into nothing. On the other hand, if man fully accepted itself as mere matter it would disappear in it—in instincts, urges and lack of reflection. The appearance of man is thus subject to a state of being in-between. Only in the tension between material and its negation can the outlines of man be traced. However this also means that in the art of Lage man is never something in itself but always in process—on the way to its freedom and its loss. However, Lage’s art is not just about showing the tensions inherent in man but also about showing such tension on the verge of breaking point. In the moment before everything is done, or when nothing yet has been done, the delicate tension between form and material has been stretched to its utmost in such a way that man’s character of process emerges and is contained on the paper or canvas. Therefore, Lage’s art contain traces of human life. Not only is it an autonomous unity of tensions where man is stretched out between its singularity and the surroundings it is a part of. It is also this pulsation between figuration and material which brings about the traces of human endeavor and activity. Even when man almost seems to have disappeared into the material, strokes and lines are still there as a reminder of human activity and potential creative power—as a reminder that hope is still possible and that man is still there. The view of the onlooker seeks out forms and meaning. It seeks outlines and edges. But first and foremost it is the eyes in Lage’s works of art that allow the onlooker to decode the figuration at play. This creates a distinctive relationship between the onlooker and the artwork. The onlooker tries to wrest the enigma from the artwork, tries to reduce it to solid, meaningful form. But the very same moment that hints at such a possibility sees the view of the onlooker confronted with a gaze of its own. The eyes of the figure in the work of art are most often dark pits, as if they were an illustration of the violence committed against the eyes of the onlookers and their search for meaning. Or as if they were a dark reflection of the onlooker’s failed attempts to delineate the traces of life in the artwork to a solid meaningful form. Therefore, the gaze of the figuration speaks not only of its own powerlessness but also of the powerlessness of the onlooker. When the view or sight has trouble finding solid meaningful forms, it has something to do with the fact that the precondition for sight, light, no longer stems from something transcendent. In Lage’s art there is nothing outside the works of art, nothing outside of human life, and as such nothing to shed light on the works of art or human life and reveal solid meaningful forms. All light comes from within. In a western context, light as a medium for sight is central to the understanding of meaning. People speak of the clarity of thought, while knowledge is tied together with enlightenment, and so forth. But the light no longer originates from a divine point of view. It originates from man, who has created himself in the image of God. The problem with this is that light always covers up its own base. Light illuminates something but at the same time it hides itself. 6 While it was previously God who was unknowable, now it is man. It is also problematic that sight and the medium of sight stem from the same place. Following this thought one can posit two final problems. Firstly, the immediacy and presence established by light by making forms and objects accessible to sight is fake. Light is not some independent entity which present things in a neutral manner for the onlooker. It is inextricably tied together with the gaze’s desire after meaning. In other words: Light perverts the appearance of things because it doesn’t originate from some objective entity which allows them to appear as they are. Instead light is based upon and originates from the subject and its conquering gaze, seeking out meaning and form constantly. Secondly, the joining of sight and light makes introspection within human life impossible. Everything can be illuminated by its use value for the subject but only as long as it is separated from the subject, as long as it is an object. But the subject itself cannot be illuminated. Lage’s art tears down such a dividing line between subject and matter, but it does so without reestablishing a divine position from where the light emanates. Therefore, the light in Lage’s art may not illuminate very well. It may not have the certainty presented by modern science or the religions of yesterday. But it does show what such light tries to hide, namely, the subject as it is in its material reality—inscribed in time and death, which are the basic conditions of materiality, but at the same time also full of life in its joy and will to create. For the onlooker the meeting of the gaze in Lage’s works of art is thus also a destruction of the view of the onlooker. The ability to see is challenged in a radical way. Those outlines will not solidify into static form, as if the light was too dim to see. Just as in Lage’s figurations, the view of the onlooker turns to black: turns towards the onlooker in recognition and becoming—or disappearance. NOTES Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment . (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2002): 4-5. Theodor W. Adorno. Aesthetic Theory . (London & New York, 2002): 176. Carsten Bach-Nielsen. “Mere glæde end gru.” Kristeligt Dagblad . September 24, 2002. Leif Hjernøe. “Den yderliggående inderlighed.” LEIF LAGE—Retrospektiv udstilling 1983 . (Copenhagen: Brøndum, 1983): 18. Ibid. Maurice Blanchot. The Infinite Conversation . (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 162-163. (shrink)

In contrast to [Susan] Sontag, who used the tools of literary criticism to evaluate sexually explicit fiction, I will use the conventions of pornography to interpret a dramatic monologue in which an expected sexual encounter fails to take place. In analyzing Rossetti’s “Jenny,” I will employ an interpretive model based on the work of [Steven] Marcus, [Susan] Griffin, and [Andrea] Dworkin. Despite different assumptions about sexuality—Marcus is a Freudian, Griffin believes in a mystical eros residing in the psyche and (...) waiting to be rediscovered, Dworkin regards heterosexuality as a construct for subjugating women and masking men’s homoerotic drive—they share several ideas applicable to “Jenny.” Although pornography features, and indeed perpetuates, various kinds of masculine power, especially the powers of money, class, and culture, it purports to be ahistorical in order to obscure its status as ideology. It depicts male sexuality as fear-laden aggression resulting in very little pleasure; thus it is not liberating on either a political or a personal basis. Pornography does not include “others.” Women are present only to be silenced, objectified, treated as screens on which a man projects his fantasies. Marcus, Griffin, and Dworkin are all concerned with what Suleiman calls “the representational or fantasmatic content” of pornography and “the political implications of that content.” The risks of emphasizing the representational—most especially, the denigration of language and style that result from Dworkin’s approach—can, as Suleiman says, be mitigated by careful attention to a particular text .In Rossetti’s poem, a young man attempts to purchase a night’s pleasure with a London prostitute named Jenny. After she thwarts his plans by falling asleep, he spends the night meditating about her beauty, speculating about her past, present, and future, and thinking about the causes of prostitution. Although Rossetti’s subject matter is consistent with the etymological definition of pornography as “writing about prostitutes,” he avoids the explicit depiction of sexual activity which has been the common element in most modern accounts of the genre. Indeed, the only physical contact between the narrator and Jenny occurs at daybreak when he places coins in her hair and gives her a parting kiss. Robin Sheets is associate professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. She has written on Thackeray, George Eliot, and other Victorian writers and is coauthor of The Woman Question: Society and Literature in Britain and American, 1837-1883. (shrink)

I argue that the consumption of illegally shared pornography is often morally problematic. My argument is not based on any general condemnation of pornography or even illegal content sharing as such. Instead, my argument emphasizes that commercial pornography that is illegally shared risks violating the consent and thus the dignity of its performers. In this way, illegally shared pornography is akin to ‘revenge porn’, involving the non-consensual distribution and consumption of sexually intimate images or videos. The idea is that if (...) viewing sexually explicit content shared without the permission of the people featured within it is unethical, then the same is often true of the consumption of commercial pornographic content that has been shared illegally. My primary focus is on the commercial pornography produced and distributed by the performers themselves, but I also consider the moral status of more traditional forms of pornographic content. (shrink)

Suppose we agree to reject the view that privacy has narrow scope and consequently is irrelevant to the constitutional privacy cases. We then have (at least) these two options: (1) We might further emphasize and draw out similarities between tort and constitutional privacy claims in order to develop a notion of privacy fundamental to informational and Fourth Amendment privacy concerns as well as the constitutional cases. We can cite examples indicating this is a promising position. Consider consenting homosexuality conducted in (...) one's home, for instance. We view it as a private matter, whether the state is seeking to regulate the behavior, or if others are attempting to gain or exploit information about it. I believe basic conceptual similarities between tort and constitutional interests can be identified by showing that there is a range of similar reasons for protecting both tort and constitutional privacy concerns. We might worry, however, that a comprehensive concept of privacy may be too general to be very useful, given that privacy violations can be so diverse, and can arise, for example, from misuse of confidential information, from conduct that is intrusive even if no information is gained or disclosed, from disturbance of an intimate relationship, or from disruption of various other important aspects of one's life.(2) We could concede that whatever “privacy” means in the tort and Fourth Amendment cases, it means something different in the constitutional cases. Nevertheless, we might take that “something else” seriously as a distinct but legitimate use of the term which is not “spurious” but is reflected in our ordinary language. This appears to me to be a fruitful alternative. After all, contrary to Henkin's view that tort privacy is “what most people mean by privacy,” the term is often used in contexts beyond informational privacy and clearly related to the interests at stake in the constitutional cases. Thus, for example, in a pamphlet explaining how to protect children by teaching them how to say “No!” to strangers without making them paranoid or antisocial, parents and teachers are told, Children have a right to privacy. Teach it. Reinforce it. One of the ways to help children prevent sexual assault is to encourage them to develop a sense of physical integrity. A sense that they have a right to their own body space and privacy. Just as we allow them to close the door when they use the bathroom, we must allow them to say no to any unwanted physical affection and touch. Flora Calao and Tamar Hosansky, “The Key to Having Fun is Being Safe: Teaching Personal Safety to Children,” The Safety and Fitness Exchange, 1123 Broadway, N.Y., N.Y. 10010. Unfortunately, the most obvious starting point for identifying the sense of private relevant to the constitutional cases is extremely worrisome. The Court itself has said ... only personal rights that can be deemed “fundamental”...are included in this guarantee of personal privacy...the right has some extension to activities relating to marriage...procreation...contraception...family relationships... and child rearing and education.Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).The difficulty, of course, is that little more is offered by way of explanation of which rights are “personal” or “fundamental” or both. Focusing on marriage makes Roe v. Wade difficult to understand given that Ms. Roe was unmarried, and attending only to family issues does not help us make sense of the Stanley case protecting one's right to view pornography in one's home. It is perhaps more problematic that decisions such as what color shoes to wear are reasonably viewed as personal, yet are far from fundamental enough to warrant protection. And regulations governing the draft and employment, for example, are not viewed as privacy invasions although they might be said to interfere with matters of one's life that are both fundamental and personal in the vague sense described.Before we give up in frustration, however, I would urge that we recall that even in tort law the notion of privacy has been evolving through a constellation of judgments. Although there is no fixed way of using the term which we then proceed to analyze, the concept of privacy has not in those cases been taken to be meaningless or empty. Similarly, there is reason to believe that the scope of a “personal and fundamental” notion of privacy relevant to the constitutional cases can be further delineated through a consideration of cases, especially since it seems to me that in many cases application of the term is clear and unproblematic. A decision to have a vasectomy, for example, can uncontroversially be said to be a personal and fundamental one, and it is in that sense private. We fail to acknowledge the personal significance in an individual's life of forcing or refusing him the operation if we deny that this important sense of privacy is relevant to such a decision merely because an interest in determining for oneself what one ought to do is also at risk.Of course, once it is settled that something is a private matter, it is a separate issue to decide whether or not, in some social context, an invasion of it can be justified. Thus, I would claim, a mandatory sterilization program for male recidivists or for those in a country suffering grave poverty and overpopulation does invade privacy, and the social or legal question is whether or not the invasion can, in the particular circumstances, be justified. Although all will agree that both individual and social interests must be balanced by moral philosophers as well as the courts, in conflicts we will not always agree on the weight to be accorded individual claims.I have not provided a constitutional defense for citing privacy as one right at stake in the constitutional privacy cases. Nor have I attempted to enter the debate about how strictly to interpret the Constitution. But if I am correct, then we can agree there is an important interest in privacy at issue in those cases without merely conflating privacy and autonomy or liberty, and can continue the process of marking out its boundaries. If we reach such agreement, we will have made considerable progress. Moreover, the implications of this view are significant. Current constitutional standards, controversial though they may be, require “strict scrutiny” for cases concerning “fundamental values,” and privacy has been judged to be one such value. Thus these privacy claims have a greater chance of being protected when they conflict with other rights or general interests than they would have if only liberty, or freedom from governmental interference, were involved. (shrink)

One striking feature of pornographic images is that they emphasize what is depicted and underplay the way it is depicted: the experience of pornography rarely involves awareness of the picture’s composition or of visual rhyme. There are various ways of making this distinction between what is depicted in a picture and the way the depicted object is depicted in it. Following Richard Wollheim, I call these two aspects, the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of pictorial representation ‘recognitional’ and ‘configurational’, respectively. Some pictures (...) emphasize one of these aspects while underplaying the other. Pornographic pictures try to trigger as little attention to the ‘configurational’ aspect as possible. Instead of examining pornography, where the ‘configurational’ aspect of experience is underplayed, I focus on a historical attempt to create images of the female body where the ‘recognigional’ element is the one that is underplayed and the ‘configurational’ elements of the picture form an essential part of our experience. The pictures I have in mind are André Kertész’s series of photographs from 1933, called Distortions. I argue that Kertész’s Distortions are in this respect the counterpoint of pornography: they may be the least pornographic representations of the female nude. Instead of ignoring the ‘configurational aspects of the picture, making the picture transparent and fully at the service of showing the female body and thus to trigger arousal, Kertész aims to achieve the exact opposite. His photographs strip the female body of all its sexual connotations and draw our attention to the formal features of the picture – which is quite a feat in the light of the subject matter of these pictures that normally draw our attention away from the formal features of pictures. (shrink)

The term “pornographic” is a purely descriptive word referring to sexually explicit writing and pictures designed to induce sexual excitement in the reader or observer. To use the terms “obscene” and “pornographic” interchangeably, as if they referred to the same thing, is to beg the question of whether any or all pornographic materials are obscene. Whether any given acknowledged form of pornography is really obscene is an open question to be settled by argument and not by definitional fiat. The following (...) subjects are discussed: the contrast between pornographic writing and literature and drama; artful pornography; pornographic pictorial art, poetry, and program music; how sex can be obscene; the feminist case against pornography; and violent pornography. (shrink)

The article addresses the critical strategy of profanation in the philosophy of Giorgio Agamben, focusing on the example of pornography. Agamben’s references to pornography as a site of radical political transformation have recently been criticized as abstruse, vacuous or absurd. Moreover, his own work on the concentration camps in the Homo Sacer series has been disparagingly referred to as ‘pornography of horror’. This article ventures to refute these accusations by interpreting Agamben’s paradigmatic use of pornography in the context of his (...) wider project of profanation, understood as the overcoming of all social separations and the return of objects of social praxis to free use. Read in this context, pornography is grasped as the paradigmatic site of the constitution of the unprofanable, the epitome of the late capitalist ‘society of the spectacle’ and thus the primary target of profanatory criticism. In the remainder of the article we elucidate the logic of Agamben’s profanatory strategy and conclude that, far from being politically irrelevant, profanation constitutes the condition of the actualization of Agamben’s messianic ideal of a generic and non-exclusive community. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Work of Alterity: Bataille and LacanJean Dragon (bio)The topic of alterity may appear at first to be beyond the scope of Bataille’s work, but it is from such questioning that his practice of writing takes its full contours and questions the renewal of literary textuality.Strangely, Bataille fights against writing, an attitude that shows a will to disappear in order to reach sovereignty. Writing, in such a context, supports (...) not only certain useful figures for his particularly heterogeneous works but also the presence of alterity. Feminine imagos, set as the literary equivalent of the eradication of meaning and words, act as levers from which a character produces itself or rather disarticulates and vanishes.Bataille’s fight against writing shows strong similarities to some Lacanian notions: the subject, pleasure (“jouissance”), and, of course, woman. Before trying to map out this perilous comparison—there is no possible perfect transition between the two—we must first extract the significant elements that make it possible. To this end, we propose some reflections on Bataille’s concepts of Oedipus and castration. In so doing, we will be in a better situation to link Lacan and Bataille’s works but also to understand where Lacan has been inspired by Bataille and how Lacan distinguishes himself in his interpretation of the imaginary, the symbolic, the Law, and feminine imagos—especially in the way Lacan, contrary to Bataille, “eradicates” alterity.These questions are necessary steps in opening up a reflection inspired by the work of Bataille and in our desire to actualize purposes yet also extend unresolved polemic effects which this paper can only partially address. To present the necessity of such polemical reflections fits Bataille’s thought as well, which refuses to conclude and takes its meaning from throwing away all possible speech.Feminine imagos are an essential leitmotif in Bataille’s narratives and, more importantly, a cohesion factor for his thought that transcends all domains of writing to give a foundation to the works. 1 With themes such as transgression, subversion, and the [End Page 31] renewal of the Law, we reach an aporia not only of Bataille’s text but also, as Susan Rubin-Suleiman puts it, of literary modernity:What does appear to me certain is that there will be no genuine renewal, either in a theory of the avant-garde or in its practices, as long as every drama, whether textual or sexual, continues to be envisaged—as in Bataille’s pornography and in Harold Bloom’s theory of poetry—in terms of a confrontation between an all-powerful father and a traumatized son, a confrontation staged across and over the body of the mother.[86–87] 2Indeed, if we look at the autofictional purposes and the literary production of Bataille, we must underline an “aporia” in the subversive nature of his texts. This challenge to Bataille generally focuses on his literary works without considering his theoretical works beyond some “canonical” titles. Nevertheless, the lesser-known texts may offer another reading of Bataille’s eroticism and defuse criticism strictly centered on the supposedly pornographic and phallocentric content of novels like L’histoire de l’oeil and Madame Edwarda.Before branding the works of Bataille as “sexist,” we must consider that he was one of the first male authors of his generation to denounce the “castration” dominating society and individuals. Mario Perniola, discussing a text of Georges Bataille, 3 emphasizes his condemnation of imperialism behind the use of many terms: “the imperialist image of the eagle, even when it presents itself with the attributes of revolution, unsuccessfully hides its Promethean and Icarian pretensions.” 4 This interpretation finds an echo in another text of Bataille, “L’oeil pinéal,” where Bataille directly links the castration to the myth of Prometheus: “the legend of Prometheus is linked to the castration complex,” 5 says Bataille. Perniola’s words point directly to the patriarchal order upon which this imperialism lies, disguising itself as revolution; they show Bataille’s profound disagreement with such a social and individual foundation.It is also difficult to affirm the predominance of a phallocentric stance in Bataille. The oedipal figures, for example, are much too paradoxical in their modes... (shrink)

The evolution of nonconceptive sexuality in bonobos and chimpanzees is discussed from a functional perspective. Bonobos and chimpanzees have three functions of sexual activity in common (paternity confusion, practice sex, and exchange for favors), but only bonobos use sex purely for communication about social relationships. Bonobo hypersexuality appears closely linked to the evolution of female-female alliances. I suggest that these alliances were made possible by relaxed feeding competition, that they were favored through their effect on reducing sexual coercion, and (...) that they are ultimately responsible for the relaxed social conditions that allowed the evolution of “communication sex.”. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider how digital technologies have changed the conceptual landscape by forcing us to reconsider three core concepts at the heart of the category of child pornography: (i) what it means to be an image; (ii) what it means to be an image of a child; and (iii) what it means to be a sexual image of a child. I demonstrate that we might need to radically reconceive these concepts and I point to some policy implications of (...) doing so. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:(P)rescription Narratives: Feminist Medical Fiction and the Failure of American Censorship. by Stephanie Peebles TaveraEtta M. MaddenStephanie Peebles Tavera. (P)rescription Narratives: Feminist Medical Fiction and the Failure of American Censorship. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022. Hardback, xii + 220 pp. ISBN 978-1-4744-9319-2.Utopian Studies readers first saw Stephanie Peebles Tavera’s work in print in her 2018 essay on reproductive health in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland. More recently, in (P)rescription (...) Narratives, she gives readers a view of the much broader historical scope of her scholarship in literary and cultural studies. Tavera’s analysis of what she labels “feminist medical fiction” considers not only novels and short stories but also literary reviews, dramas, and documentary films, many of which will be unfamiliar to readers of utopian and dystopian literature. Yet the book contextualizes the ways in which these works capture the “utopian possibilities” of women writers who pushed for breaking the boundaries of the dystopian strictures of embodied life. The literary works “rescript” what had been prescribed by others as “normalized behavior,” from the latter-nineteenth century through the Progressive Era (5, 37). As Tavera illustrates through her detailed analysis, these women’s narratives provide “interventions that... interrupt the dissemination of false [End Page 612] narratives of the female body” and “alter the course of cultural development toward greater inclusivity” (5).To establish the temporal boundaries for the project, Tavera emphasizes the Comstock Law, established in 1873, and the death of its author Anthony Comstock in 1915. While Comstock’s work often has been understood as restricting pornography, she explains the Comstock Law as more than merely that. Comstock sought to control what he and others saw as sexual deviation, which included birth control in any form. Tavera also bookends the project with lawsuits associated with Victoria Woodhull and Margaret Sanger, both women who advocated for abortion and birth control as means of allowing women to avoid the strictures over their bodies. Additionally, she explains, Comstock’s racism caused him to completely overlook Black women, ironically allowing a space in which Black women’s feminist medical fiction especially rescripts “normalized behavior” (37)—a topic she pursues in two parts of the book.The book follows a roughly chronological path as it examines four topics related to women’s health, brilliantly organized into “(p)rescriptions,” indicated by Rx, rather than chapters with numbers. Rx1, “Crip Medicine,” illustrates how authors such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman pointed to the socially constructed status of “hysteria” in a patriarchal culture that saw women as deviant by nature. Instead, these authors advocated for a more holistic examination of women’s health, impacted by the environments in which they lived. Drawing from Lyman Tower Sargent’s widely accepted view of utopianism as dreaming of a place “considerably better than the society in which the author lived,” she underscores “the utopian impulse underlies much of the work of feminist medical fiction” (39). In particular, writers of feminist medical fiction were “driven by failure.”Perhaps most familiar to illustrate this point is Gilman’s work, such as “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which illustrated how the culture failed certain characters. The narrator of that story suffers postpartum depression and is made worse by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell’s rest cure. Consequently, Gilman proceeded to write other works, such as Moving the Mountain (1911) and then Herland (1915), which push readers to envision “alternative societies” without such destructive patriarchal medical practices (39). But Tavera also explains how Louisa May Alcott’s Eight Cousins, or the Aunt-Hill (1875) critiques contemporary culture by providing a “domestic utopia” in the female domain of Aunt-Hill, wherein the male Dr. Alec Campbell demonstrates “a better way... of caring for the female body” (55). And another key example is Rebecca Harding [End Page 613] Davis’s Kitty’s Choice: A Story of Berrytown (1875). Berrytown is described as “the Utopia in actual laths, orchards, and bushel-measures of the advance guard of the reform party in the United States” (qtd. in Tavera 55). Through its two physicians, Dr. Muller and Dr. McCall, who represent homeopathic and allopathic practitioners, readers see that the society... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Embracing the Other: The Transformative Spirit of Love by Grace Ji-Sun KimKrista StevensEmbracing the Other: The Transformative Spirit of Love Grace Ji-Sun Kim GRAND RAPIDS, MI: EERDMANS, 2015. 182 PP. $25.00In Embracing the Other: The Transformative Spirit of Love, Grace Ji-Sun Kim places herself in an important line of voices using theology as a platform to speak out against racism and sexism. Kim's identity as an Asian immigrant (...) to Canada and as a theologian provides her with a unique background from which to address the particular perils that Asian immigrant women face. As such, this book makes a distinctive contribution to the fields of theological ethics and contextual theologies.At the heart of Embracing the Other lies Kim's challenge to Christians to "critically engage the problem of Euro-American racism and sexism" (4). To build her argument, Kim moves from the historical to the constructive, insightfully presenting the biblical and theological roots of racism and sexism, the experience of Asian immigrant women in North America, and the trajectories of white and Asian feminist theology before moving to her proposal of a theological reconstruction of the Spirit as an approach to combating racism and sexism.Kim offers a compelling look at the parallels between treatment of foreign women in the Hebrew Bible and treatment of Asian American immigrant women in the West. She describes much of the Hebrew Bible as a world of patriarchy and fear of the other, a reality that forced many women to live disconnected from society. Their treatment reflects what Kim describes as "the gendering of language and ultimately of God" that gives rise to patriarchy and emphasizes God's "maleness" (16). While Kim's analysis of Hebrew Scripture may not be radically new, her point is foundational for her work—gendering language of God has helped shape the way many people continue to view women, and especially foreign women. Societies that perpetuate racism and sexism often have deep roots in centuries of theological patriarchy.Kim's most interesting work comes in her concluding chapters when she presents a reconstruction of the Spirit as God, as a way to reimagine God as not the white, dominant, male so stereotypical of Western theology and colonialism but as a God who is more closely identified with those on the margins—women and people of color. What distinguishes Kim from other feminist theologians is her connection between the Asian concept of Chi and biblical calls for justice as a way to reimagine Spirit God to overcome divisions. Chi, the "life-giving power of all created things," can also be understood by Christians as "the one Spirit God" (133). [End Page 211]Although Kim does not address potential complications of enculturation (a move that might help non-Asian audiences more easily make the jump from Spirit to Chi), her argument opens the door for a more robust understanding of Spirit as vibrant and justice oriented—a "transformative spirit of love." This Spirit of Love is transformative because it allows us to unlock our erotic power, which, for Kim, goes beyond sexual desire and is more rightly understood as a "life energy that gives us spiritual strength to love God, love our neighbor, and love all of creation" (140). The erotic encompasses raw, primal, human feelings of beauty, energy, and passion. By brilliantly freeing the erotic from its usual connection to lust, Kim reveals the profound, life-giving power of the Spirit that moves us to compassion and does not allow us to ignore feelings of hate or realities of suffering. This approach provides readers with a prophetic and unique understanding of Spirit as transformer of society.Krista StevensMarquette UniversityCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

This paper examines the vulnerability of boys and young men to trafficking and sexual abuse/exploitation globally as an often-hidden problem. Exploration of the story of Joseph in Genesis and how he was trafficked to Egypt by his brothers and then sexually harassed by Potiphar’s wife will challenge a number of assumptions about vulnerability. The research that has been conducted in Cambodia and the Asia region demonstrates that boys and young men are indeed vulnerable and require our attention. Awareness and response (...) must go beyond stereotypes of what boys should be like to understanding their real context and needs. The paper will emphasize the importance of the Church and Christian faith-based organizations being driven not by donors or current political correctness, but instead focusing on a biblical mandate to work with the most marginalized. Further research is needed to identify exploited populations better, including diverse persons of age, gender, ethnicity disability/ability or sexuality. In addition, the paper will describe the importance of encouraging men in the church towards an authentic biblical masculinity where there is transparency and a deep respect for females and sex. It also promotes the idea of a community where boys and men, in and outside the church, can experience prevention and long-term healing. The restoration of men is needed in relation to buying sex, sexual abuse, pornography and other addictions, which drive the demand for exploitation and trafficking. This includes models of genuine father figures in the church and examples of Christian faith-based organizations that are seeking to challenge men to be better husbands, fathers and brothers. (shrink)

This article is a study of three major metaphors organizing nationalistic discourse about Cyprus in two online forums for Turkish university students. The analysis suggests that discussants symbolically warranted their constructions of the future of Cyprus and Turkish Cypriots with metaphors of blood and heroism that emphasized their personal and collective memory of sacrifice. Sports metaphors were used predominantly to convey a sense of the strategic importance of Cyprus. In addition, discussants employed gender and sexual metaphors to structure the tension (...) between nationalist feelings associated with motherland Turkey as a pure, virgin female, and the geopolitical demands of the nation-state, portrayed as a father faced with uneasy choices. (shrink)

In this article human-posthuman ruptures and disconnections both in comprehension and in practices, as well as the possibility of epistemological contingency contemporaneously are investigated. This means that an epistemological ruptures and an ontological disconnections of sexuality both differ from one another, and also join together. Since ancient times both sensitive and sensible practices of sexuality were considered the best mode to concern to sexual care of self. It has shown that, in relation to sexuality, a correlation of (...) epistemological discontinuity and continuity is possible. Sexuality, which is actualized with the help of both natural, vital and death, annihilative drives, fits into the context of onticology as a posthuman ontology. Being connected with the thermodynamics of infinitesimal vital parts, anonymous strange strangers, singularities, it turns out to be especially awesome. Such a mode of sexuality is not necessarily reproductive; rather, it unfolds in the fluid space of non-presence and at the same time determines this space. It emphasizes that that the cos mo‑illogical becoming of posthuman leads to negentropy or extropy as vitality. Following this position, the foucaultian conception of the care of self mirrors lacanian graphs of sexuation in a context of object-oriented ontologies in comparison with philosophies of presence. It is recognized that this is the sexuality of the productive disconnection and the pleasure cosmic dissolution. This article concludes by illustrating that the mode of sexuality of Speculative Posthumanism is contingent with the Libidinal Materialism or Vital Posthumanism in a context in which the sexuality of Wide Human Descendants is thought to be oriented to that which is pleasure and is differentiated. (shrink)

This dissertation has two principle aims: To show that current arguments from proponents and opponents of the regulation of sexually explicit Internet content are unsound and to construct an argument against content regulation that avoids the failures of current arguments. ;The dissertation is organized into seven chapters. In Chapter One I provide background information on attempts to regulate sexually explicit materials and briefly outline the development of the Internet. Chapter Two examines the current regulation of obscenity on the Internet. Chapter (...) Three investigates the claim that the Internet should not be regulated due to the value of free speech. In this chapter I examine the claims that opponents of Internet regulation make and the applicability of the First Amendment to Internet speech. I argue that proponents' claims, which are often based on the arguments originally expounded by John Stuart Mill, fall short and are not sound. The next three chapters investigate arguments in support of regulation. These arguments include claims that an unregulated Internet can harm children, women and societal morals. I examine each of the arguments proponents give in support of regulatory action and argue that they are defective. Given the faulted nature of proponents' arguments, it is my conclusion that the arguments fail to justify Internet content regulation. ;Drawing on the conclusions offered in previous chapters, in the final chapter I offer a consequentialist argument against the regulation of sexually explicit Internet materials. Given that, as concluded in previous chapters, the arguments provided to prove that sexually explicit materials on the Internet are harmful fail, there will be little utility gained by regulation. In addition, in this chapter I outline the harm that will be produced by regulating the Internet and conclude that, overall, disutility will ensue if such materials are regulated. (shrink)

Since 1991 government has harnessed mass media resources to tackle the problem of physical and sexual abuse, aiming its media messages specifically at men as potential perpetrators. This article examines the ways this new state responsibility has taken shape. The central theme here is the role played by women's studies as intermediary between feminist action and government policy. It looks at how physical and sexual abuse became part of the parliamentary political agenda and how a political and policy basis was (...) created. A guiding role was played by representative research commissioned by government on sexual abuse of girls and violence in heterosexual relationships. Data on the extent of the problem generated surprise and concern among the general public and downright disbelief in the press. Yet, government continued to pursue policy development, supported by the clearly demonstrated extensive physical and sexual abuse. One decisive result of the representative research – the relationships or family dynamics interwoven with violence – remained less easy to tackle through government policy. The more precise questions subsequently posed by women's studies on specific relationships and situations in which women can be affected by violence are re ected in government policy aimed at groups of women at risk. Those elements which apply to potential victims also apply to potential perpetrators. Here again, sociopsychological research among perpetrators has been initiated whereby sexual violence as an element of everyday reality becomes more transparent. These studies emphasize the significance of a dominant heterosexual pattern and the relationship dynamic this implies, and as such re ects the first representative studies. This concept has ultimately been incorporated into the mass media information programmes initiated by government. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kant and the Capacity to Judge; Sensibility and Discursivity in the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason by Beatrice LonguenesseMichelle GreerBeatrice Longuenesse. Kant and the Capacity to Judge; Sensibility and Discursivity in the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason. Translation by Charles T. Wolfe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. Pp. xv + 420. Cloth, $59.50.Kant and the Capacity to Judge is (...) a translation of Longuenesse’s Kant et Pouvoir de juger, although Longuenesse has revised and added to the original version. The central argument seeks to demonstrate the essential role played by the logical forms of judgment in the arguments of Kant’s first Critique. Longuenesse emphasizes straight away Kant’s efforts (in the Metaphysical Deduction) to deduce a set of pure concepts from the logical forms of judgment. Against many standard readings, she aims to reveal the very “tight” connection between this attempt and subsequent arguments in the Transcendental [End Page 372] Analytic. That Kant takes the functions of judgment to be relevant to these arguments is hardly a novel claim. The originality of Longuenesse’s work, however, stems both from the central and pervasive role she assigns to the logical forms of judgment, and from the impressive, painstaking effort she makes to sustain the close connection between these forms and Kant’s subsequent arguments. According to Longuenesse, any proper understanding of the arguments of the Transcendental Analytic absolutely depends upon relating these “down to the minutest details of their proofs,” to the role of the logical forms (5).These minute details do not escape Longuenesse in her subsequent elaboration on this original thesis. Given the length and detail of her work, I can only highlight a few of the central points and strategies. One should note from the outset, however, that the detail and the scholarship evinced to support her claims constitute much of what is of value in the book. Many of these “supporting arguments” and discussions, which include efforts to trace Kantian conceptions back to their historical/philosophical origins, stand in their own right as independent contributions to Kant scholarship and interpretation.The work is divided into three parts. The first part is essentially propaedeutic. Longuenesse begins by drawing a distinction between the potential or capacity to judge and judgement itself (i.e., the “actualization” of this judgmental capacity under [externally grounded] sensory stimulation) (7). Taking this distinction as her cue, Longuenesse seeks to reveal the way in which the line of argumentation in the transcendental analytic presents an extended investigation into the formal capacity (ibid). The centrality of the logical forms of judgment is secured early on by assigning them a substantive role in the very presentation of something in intuition “as” an “object.” Insofar as she assigns this role to the logical forms themselves, her account clearly undercuts the primary function of the categories in this regard. Relevant here is Longuenesse’s construal of “appearances” as the intentional correlates of our representational capacities and activities (cf. 20–21). Given this, the problem now motivating the transcendental deduction is how to make sense of the relation between this “internalized” object of (indeterminate) empirical intuition (the appearance) and the object corresponding to intuition which concepts allow one to think in a determinate way (the phenomenon). This ability to think the object in a determinate fashion appears to be the essential contribution made by judgement.These preliminary considerations ground Longuenesse’s efforts (in Part Two) to isolate and examine the discursive activity of judgment. Longuenesse stresses the reflective (and not simply the determinative) role of judgment and its forms. Indeed, she suggests that concepts (not merely empirical concepts, but also the pure concepts of the understanding themselves) are formed by reflecting (through acts of comparison, reflection, and abstraction) on the “sensible given.” Drawing extensively from the Logic, she interestingly argues that the form of judgment itself carries with it some inherent claim to objectivity. Thus, objectivity is folded into the formal activity of judging by being identified as a “normative propensity” inherent in every judgment by virtue of its form alone (87–88). Longuenesse accordingly eschews efforts to downplay the role of the logical use of the... (shrink)

Theories of sexuality, culture and modern personhood rarely take account of differences in the construction of sexuality between advanced industrial nations. This article reveals different conceptions and management of adolescent sexuality among white, middle-class American and Dutch parents of teenagers. The American parents describe adolescent sexuality as a biologically driven, individually based activity which causes disruption to the teenager as well as to the family. The Dutch parents, by contrast, emphasize the love relationships and social responsibility (...) of teenagers which make their sexuality a `normal' phenomenon. The American parents exclude the sexuality of teenagers from conversation and the family while the Dutch parents accommodate culturally prescribed forms of teenage sexuality within the home. The article demonstrates how the two constructions of adolescent sexuality, and the conceptions of personhood and social life that engender them, constitute fundamentally different cultural logics. Without denying variations within the two countries, or overlaps between them, it suggests that different dominant understandings of sexuality and the individual have prevailed in the USA and the Netherlands. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The role of philosophy in the problem of sexual differences is considered, in the light of what sexual differences can be seen as (i) purely contingent or (ii) logically tied to (non‐negotiable) sexual features. Some candidates for causes of sexual difference are reviewed, including evolution, physical make‐up, and social conditioning. The problem of initial descriptions of sexual interaction is highlighted, and the need for a clearer set of categories for possible causes demonstrated. The argument in general is that, because (...) of lack of clarity about which issues are empirical and which conceptual, and because of uncertainty about what evidence is relevant, we cannot as yet be clear about what apparent differences are (even in principle) alterable, and what are given. (shrink)

This paper addresses cases of social situations that can be identified as sexual harassment in Russian healthcare. Drawing on the intersectional approach and some prerequisites of the sociology of professions, the article reveals several dimensions of power asymmetry in the context of medical professions and organizations, and analyzes their synergistic effects. In particular, it examines the symbolic inequalities of different medical professions, emphasizing their gendered character. The paper draws on mixed-method data consisting of 20 in-depth semi-structured interviews with nursing (...) staff and 23 interviews with those medical professionals who agreed to share their experiences of sexual harassment. Additionally, results of an online survey (560 responses) on workplace interactions is drawn upon in the analysis. Focusing on the emotional experiences of the research participants, the paper demonstrates that some health professionals find themselves in a vulnerable position on multiple grounds: gender, specialization, position in the professional hierarchy, age (generation), and others. Some local features of Russian healthcare and specific organizational cultures further amplify the effects of structural inequalities, reproducing additional — and mostly informal — dimensions of power. Under such conditions, the experience of sexual harassment is most often silenced both in the organizational context and in the public, yet remains emotionally sensitive for the victims. The article analyzes effects such as the privatization of personal experience, which renders the issue of sexual harassment in medicine methodologically and epistemologically uninvestigable, and in practice — unsolvable. (shrink)

BackgroundThe sustained rise in negative mental health reports among university students is a source of continued global concern, and investigation continues into potential contributors to this rise. This includes the increased prevalence of risky sexual behaviors. Related is the increased prevalence of pornography use. Our study sought to explore the potential relationship between compulsive use of pornography and mental health in university students.MethodsOur sample consisted of university students from Franciscan University of Steubenville, Steubenville, Ohio. An anonymous survey was sent to (...) all students at the university over the age of 18. The survey was comprised of the following: demographic questions, questions on pornography use and perception, a modified version of the Compulsive Internet Use Scale assessing various factors associated with compulsive internet pornography use, questions assessing emotional and sexual states relative to pornography use, and the 21-question version of the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale.ResultsOur results indicate that 56.6% of those surveyed reported lifetime pornography use, with a significantly higher proportion of males than females reporting such use. The majority of students reported accessing pornography through internet-related technologies. Additionally, 17.0, 20.4, and 13.5% of students reported severe or extremely severe levels of depression, anxiety and stress, respectively, with compulsive pornography use significantly affecting all three mental health parameters in both sexes. Exploratory Factor Analysis identified three factors suggesting emotional coping, dependence and preoccupation for the mCIUS items and three factors reflecting interoceptive, impotent, and extrinsic characteristics for the EmSS items. Regression analysis indicated that various demographics, items pertaining to reduced control and social impairment, and other variables pertaining to pornography use predicted mental health outcomes. Faith, morals and personal motivation were the primary variables reported to help reduce pornography use.ConclusionOur analyses indicate a significant relationship between mental health and pornography use, including behaviors reflecting behavioral addictions, highlighting the necessity for a better understanding and consideration of the potential contribution of internet pornography to negative mental health among university students. (shrink)

Analyzing two harm reduction comics campaigns—one early in the AIDS crisis and one more recent, I explore tensions between queer safer sexual erotics and national discourses of sexual norms/deviation raised by Cindy Patton and William Haver at the height of AIDS discourse theory in 1996, approximately halfway between the comics. Using these theorists’ reflections on the history of AIDS activism/representation as a hinge, I explore the manifestation/transformation a decade later of the ethical, educational, and erotic issues they raise. Both foreground (...) the ways that HIV, safer sex, and/or eroticism pose difficulties for systems of linguistic and visual representation. Combining text and image, comics—a common harm reduction medium—epitomize this representational issue. While the GMHC addresses an immediate need for information about safer sex, Alex attempts to tackle the unrepresentability/unthinkability of safer and/or seropositive sex. Safer Sex Comix, while largely prioritizing directness above formal experimentation, employ strategies of transgressing the borders of the comics panel to emphasize a plethora of lower-risk sexual acts. The most visually inventive moments in Alex represent Alex’s feelings of unintelligbility post-diagnosis, but the comic restricts its representation of sex only to anal intercourse, and it proves unable to visualize alternative formulations of the erotic, turning to more normative narratives and images as earlier, visually explicit unsafe sexual encounters are replaced with more a/illusive representations post-conversion, literalizing the unrepresentability of seropositive erotic life. (shrink)

This essay provides a critical analysis of early-20th-century American postcards, focusing on the portrayal of black and white children as an aesthetic tool of white supremacy and pedophilic racist pleasures. These representations not only reflected but also perpetuated colonial ideologies and racial stereotypes, directly influencing educational practices and policies, and contributing to a social environment where discrimination and sexualization of children was normalized. The article begins with the contrast in the depiction of white and black children, revealing a pattern in (...) which white children were often fetishized as embodiments of innocence and purity, while black children were subjected to pornified portrayals that reinforced negative stereotypes and sought to ensure the continued intergenerational subjugation of African Americans in the afterlife of slavery. A significant aspect of this analysis delves into the role of the zealous purity crusader Anthony Comstock in shaping societal views on childhood innocence and obscenity during the Progressive Era. As a U.S. postal inspector, Comstock wielded influence over public discourse and policy, particularly through his campaigns against the distribution of what he considered morally objectionable representations. This examination extends to the racial implications of Comstock’s adult-centric actions, exploring how they contributed to the differential treatment of black and white children in both media representations and broader societal contexts. The article argues that these images were not merely passive reflections of societal beliefs; rather, they were active tools used to shape and influence the educational and socialization processes of children, and they contributed to the perpetuation of Jim Crow violence, which was manifested through the sexual assault, castration, and lynching of black youth. Furthermore, this essay examines the broader socio-historical context in which racist and pedophilic images were produced and circulated. These postcards are still trafficked today under the false designation of ‘Black Memorabilia,’ reaching significant prices as vintage collector’s items, but the article reframes them as a genre of child pornography. This perspective critically challenges prevailing narratives that may sanitize or downplay the exploitative and violent nature of these images. This essay urges a reconsideration of these consumer items’ historical significance as instruments intricately complicit in sustaining colonial structures and ideologies surrounding childhood innocence in North America. Within this analytical framework, the dehumanization of black children through pedophilic pornography reflects a long heritage of anti-child violence in Western traditions and the colonial strategy of exploiting children of color as a lucrative mechanism for profit and libidinal pleasure. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Erotic Art and Pornographic PicturesJerrold LevinsonOnly in primitive art, with its urgent need to evoke the sources of fertility, are the phallus and the vulva emphasized, as it were innocently. By ancient Greek and Roman times there already existed the special category of the pornographic—graphic art or writing supposed, like a harlot, or porne, to sexually stimulate.1IAS REGARDS PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS of the opposition between the erotic and the pornographic, (...) there are a number of reasonable goals one might have: to preserve as many considered intuitions about the opposition as possible; to present the opposition in a clearer light than it enjoys when casually invoked; to modestly "sharpen" the standard opposition that either accounts for our experience in this domain more fully, or allows us to organize our thinking about the domain more perspicuously. I hope in this paper to make progress toward some of those goals. Though the scope of the erotic/pornographic opposition goes beyond the visual, my focus here will be the opposition as it exists in the visual sphere, and even more narrowly, in the sphere of images. In addition to preserving and clarifying a distinction between erotic art and pornography, I hope also to make an intelligible place for erotica, as something intermediate between the other two.Here, then, are some intuitions on the erotic and the pornographic: [End Page 228]1. the erotic and the pornographic are both concerned with sexual stimulation or arousal.2. while the term "erotic" is neutral or even approving, the term "pornographic" is pejorative or disapproving.3. while "erotic art" is a familiar, if somewhat problematic, notion, "pornographic art" seems an almost oxymoronic one.4. whereas pornography has a paramount aim, namely, the sexual satisfaction of the viewer, erotic art, even if it also aims at sexual satisfaction on some level, includes other aims of significance.5. whereas we appreciate (or relish) erotic art, we consume (or use) pornography. In other words, our interactions with erotic art and pornography are fundamentally different in character, as reflected in the verbs most appropriate to the respective engagements.In what follows I try to accommodate all of those intuitions. As I will need a distinction invoked in the first of them (between sexual stimulation and sexual arousal) let me spell that out before proceeding. By sexual stimulation I will mean the inducing of sexual thoughts, feelings, imaginings, or desires that would generally be regarded as pleasant in themselves. By sexual arousal I mean the physiological state that is prelude and prerequisite to sexual release, involving in the male, at least, some degree of erection. And by sexual release I mean something that I take it needs no spelling out.How to differentiate erotic art from pornography, and from erotica as well, is of course not the only important philosophical question about erotic art. Here are two others: 1) How is the erotic aspect of erotic art compatible with the disinterested or distanced frame of mind that seems required for aesthetic engagement with or appreciation of a work of visual art? 2) How is the degree of eroticness of a work of erotic art related to its artistic value? I will briefly address those two questions toward the end of the paper, but most of my effort will be devoted to the prior question, that of the differentiation of erotic art, erotica, and pornography.IIHow, then, to effect that differentiation in the domain of visual images to which I have restricted my inquiry? One possibility would [End Page 229] concern the specific kind of response aimed at. Thus, erotic art might be said to involve images intended to sexually stimulate, but also to reward artistic interest; erotica to involve images intended to sexually stimulate but not to reward artistic interest; pornography to involve images intended to sexually arouse in the interests of sexual release. Another possibility would be by the character of the sexual representation involved, so that pornography would involve sexually explicit images, erotic art would involve sexually inexplicit images, and erotica images would be intermediate in their explicitness, irrespective of the ends for which the images were fashioned. A third possibility would be by... (shrink)

This work aims to analyze the action of the poetic or inventive imaginative faculty (Dichtungsvermögen) in the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories, in the first edition of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781), and to examine the emphasis that this author attributes to it in his Anthropology. This work defends the thesis that this capacity of the imaginative faculty would have a fundamental role in the development of the subjective deduction presented by Kant in the first edition of his (...) Critique of pure reason, indicating, as it would make it possible to consider from its functioning a theory of psychological judgments, however, we will emphasize that such a possibility would be limited in the Critique, a fact that we consider to add its field of action and investigation to Anthropology, which would characterize this last work as a fertile field for psychological action and investigation. (shrink)

"The location of the author’s investigations, the body itself rather than the sphere of subjective representations of self and of function in cultures, is wholly new.... I believe this work will be a landmark in future feminist thinking." —Alphonso Lingis "This is a text of rare erudition and intellectual force. It will not only introduce feminists to an enriching set of theoretical perspectives but sets a high critical standard for feminist dialogues on the status of the body." —Judith Butler Volatile (...) Bodies demonstrates that the sexually specific body is socially constructed: biology or nature is not opposed to or in conflict with culture. Human biology is inherently social and has no pure or natural "origin" outside of culture. Being the raw material of social and cultural organization, it is "incomplete" and thus subject to the endless rewriting and social inscription that constitute all sign systems. Examining the theories of Freud, Lacan, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, etc. on the subject of the body, Elizabeth Grosz concludes that the body they theorize is male. These thinkers are not providing an account of "human" corporeality but of male corporeality. Grosz then turns to corporeal experiences unique to women—menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, menopause. Her examination of female experience lays the groundwork for developing theories of sexed corporeality rather than merely rectifying flawed models of male theorists. (shrink)

Sexual consent is advocated around the world to reduce sexual assault. The widespread affirmative consent model emphasizes a need for unambiguous consent. In this paper, we contribute to a deeper understanding of how ambiguities in the initiations of sexual activities are routinely solved to achieve consent. Drawing on conversation analytic research on joint decision-making, and a dataset of 80 cases of sexual initiation in contemporary TV-series and movies, we investigate the interactional practices by which sexual activities are presented as consensual (...) and how consent is achieved across sequences of interaction. We found there to be social advantages of synchronous initiation, compared to sequential verbal initiations, which were associated with various social vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities could however be circumvented by two practices, each of which made use of a distinct combination of verbal and embodied resources. While ambiguities exist, our results oppose the idea of sexual consent as a practically hopeless and awkward endeavor. Instead, consent consists of joint action that is achieved through recognizable and systematic ways. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Decline of Literary CriticismRichard A. PosnerRónán McDonald, a lecturer in literature at the University of Reading, has written a short, engaging book the theme of which is evident from the title: The Death of the Critic. Although there is plenty of both academic and journalistic writing about literature, less and less is well described by the term "literary criticism." The literary critics of the first two-thirds or so (...) of the twentieth century, now dead, including poets and other creative writers, such as T. S. Eliot, journalists such as Edmund Wilson, and academic literary critics, as distinct from literary scholars, such as F. R. Leavis in England and Cleanth Brooks in the United States, have so few successors that the very genre, if not yet dead, is moribund.1 McDonald deplores the decline of literary criticism and seeks to explain its causes.In place of literary criticism, McDonald (and many others, such as John Ellis) argue, we have postmodern literary theory, an animal of quite a different color from literary criticism.2 "Texts... are interpreted and analysed with a view to unlocking the social norms and attitudes encoded therein, not assessed or evaluated as integral, self-contained creations" (McDonald, p. 21). "The 'best' [is regarded] as a politically dubious category, with selections made in its name often nurturing hidden and hierarchical agendas"(p. ix). "In a comparatively short time, [End Page 385] academic literary criticism has been transformed. Many [literary critics] now regard social activism as the major purpose of literary criticism." And "people who write about literature now write in a prose thick with impenetrable jargon," which erects a barrier between literary theory and literature.3 The well documented decline in the reading of literature has many causes but one may be the obscurantist and politicized style of teaching literature that is in vogue in many colleges.4But something deeper is involved. After all, most literary teachers are not postmodernists. What has happened is the professionalization, in not altogether a good sense, of literary studies. Let me illustrate. More than half a century ago, Cleanth Brooks published what became a famous book of literary criticism, consisting of close readings of famous poems.5 The New Critics were much taken with the metaphysical poets, the most prominent of whom was John Donne, and the high point of Brooks's book was his brilliant close reading of "Canonization," one of Donne's most famous love poems. Just this year (2008) a professor of literature named Ramie Targoff published John Donne, Soul and Body, which has an extensive treatment of Donne's love poetry, though it does not mention "Canonization." As far as I can judge, Targoff's book is a fine scholarly achievement—well written (and not defaced by jargon), thoroughly researched, thoughtful, imaginative. She argues that contrary to some scholars who have regarded Donne as a Neoplatonist who therefore believed that the highest love is purely spiritual (as it was for Plato), he was, throughout his career—even when he became a fiercely devout Anglican cleric writing fervid religious verse—a believer that body and soul were one in all activities, including sexual love; hence the religious imagery in "Canonization," emphasized by Cleanth Brooks, who would I think have found Targoff's analysis congenial. Her book is I would guess a model of modern literary scholarship.But here is the difference between Brooks's book, and specifically his discussion of Donne's poem, and Targoff's. Brooks, who though a distinguished Yale English professor did not have a Ph.D., wrote for a mixed audience—academics, students, the general reader—and he made the nonacademic members of that audience want to read Donne, or read more Donne, or re-read Donne with greater understanding and enjoyment. Targoff writes for other scholars of early modern English literature. Someone else who chances on the book (like me) may read it and think well of it, but unless one has esoteric religious or philosophical interests the experience of reading her book will not quicken one's [End Page 386] interest in reading Donne's poetry—which is a great shame, given the state of the literary culture... (shrink)

Hooking up is a term commonly used in contemporary American society to refer to sexual activity between two people who are not in a committed romantic relationship. Data show that although many college students are engaging in hookups, there is no consensus on how to define a hookup. The author uses the concept of “strategic ambiguity” to explore the intentionality and usefulness of the vagueness of this term. Specific to hookups, strategic ambiguity is when individuals use the term “hookup” to (...) describe their sexual activities rather than give details about their sexual activities as an impression management strategy to protect their sexual and social identities. Analyzing data gathered through interviews with heterosexual students at a mid-sized public university in the South, this article addresses the normative character and the myriad definitions of hookups; addresses the underlying heterosexist bias in the definitions of hookups; and analyzes how the ambiguity of the term “hookup” serves women and men in different ways and both reinforces and challenges the current gender order, allowing men to conform to and preserve components of hegemonic masculinity and women to conform to and preserve components of emphasized femininity. (shrink)

BackgroundProblematic pornography use is considered an addictive behavior, which is an important clinical issue. Despite considerable research interest in problematic pornography use worldwide, to the best of our knowledge, there are no extant studies on the subject in Japan. Therefore, despite the fact that many people in Japan use pornography, the difference between problematic and non-problematic users among Japanese people is not known.ObjectiveThis study aimed to identify the characteristics of problematic pornography use among Japanese students, to the best of our (...) knowledge. Specifically, we examined general psychopathological symptoms, sexual compulsivity, depression, anxiety, and low effortful control.MethodsThe participants were 150 college students aged 20–26 years at a university in midland Japan. An online questionnaire was administered that included items on pornography usage patterns, impaired control of pornography use, sexual compulsivity, depression, anxiety, and effortful control.ResultsMost men and approximately one-third of women used pornography at least once in the past month. Some users reported significant daily-life problems due to difficulty in controlling pornography use. Participants with impaired control of pornography use had higher depression, anxiety, and sexual compulsivity, and lower effortful control than pornography users without impaired control.ConclusionSome Japanese students reported significant daily-life problems due to impaired control of pornography use. The characteristics of individuals with impaired control are consistent with previous studies. The results of this study suggest that individuals with impaired control may have poor mental health, and that there is need for further research and development of treatment systems to manage this issue in Japan. Further research exploring a more varied sample in Japan is required to effectively examine problematic pornography use. (shrink)

In 2014, a large archive of hacked nude photos of female celebrities was released on 4chan and organized and discussed primarily on Reddit. This paper explores the ethical implications of this celebrity nude photo leak within a frame of gendered privacy violations. I analyze a selection of a mass capture of 5143 posts and 94,602 comments from /thefappening subreddit, as well as editorials written by female celebrities, feminists, and journalists. Redditors justify the photo leak by arguing the subjects are privileged (...) because they are celebrities; that the celebrities are at fault for failing to appropriately protect their information; and that the only person ethically responsible for the leak is the hacker. The popular press primarily took a feminist perspective, linking the photo leak to institutionalized sexism and misogyny. I argue that the Reddit participants frame the privacy violations within a context of geek masculinity, in which references to masturbation and pornography and casually misogynist language are used to signify a normative masculine self. Privacy violations are de-emphasized when the victims are women and gender or feminist concerns are rejected. Entitlement to viewing women’s bodies and male sexual desire are prioritized over ethical concerns over privacy violations. The paper contributes to understanding how privacy violations are normatively gendered and reinforced by gender inequality. (shrink)

The primary purpose of depictive works of pornography, we take it, is sexual arousal through sexually explicit representations; what we callprototypical pornography satisfies those aims through the adoption of a ceteris paribus maximally realistic depictive style. Given that the purpose of sexual arousal seems best fulfilled by establishing the most robust connections between the viewer and the depictive subject, we find it curious that not all works of pornography aspire to prototypical status. Accordingly, we target for philosophical scrutiny several non-standard (...) but putatively pornographic forms: Tijuana Bibles, hentai manga, and slash-fiction. We find that works of these genres possess certain depictively or fictively oriented properties that appear at least prima facie incompatible with prototypical pornography, and thereby to pose two pressing questions that anyprima facie viable analysis of pornography must answer: the depiction question and the fiction question. By answering these questions, we can not only arrive at a deeper understanding of the aims of pornography and the reasons for which significant sub-genres of pornography might diverge from the prototypical ideal, but also perhaps better understand what lies at pornography’s edge, and so better understand the ways in which pornography might relate to what lies beyond. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Some More Reflections on Emotions, Thoughts, and TherapyDemian Whiting (bio)Keywordsdepression, pedophilia, phenomenology, noncognitive, treatmentThe primary objective of my paper was to show that where a person's representations of the world are eliciting the wrong emotions then treatment of those problems in emotion cannot be about treating the eliciting representations. And it is worth clarifying two points about my claim here. First, although I take my claim to apply to (...) cases where accurate representations are eliciting the wrong emotions, the same point does, I believe, just as well apply to cases where distorted representations are eliciting the wrong emotion. So, for instance, even if the pedophile mistakenly took an adult to be a child and was aroused by that perception, I think that we would still want to claim that there is here—in addition to a possible disturbance in cognition—a problem in emotion. This is because representations of young children should not elicit feelings of sexual arousal, however distorted those representations may themselves be. Second, it is important to emphasize that the kinds of cases that I have in mind are not cases where a person's emotions contradict the thoughts that the person has about the world. The pedophile's arousal at the thought of young children does not contradict any thoughts that the pedophile has about children. Neither does the person who has a propensity to feel anxious have any thoughts that contradict his anxiety. In fact, I believe that emotions cannot contradict our thoughts, because that would require emotion to have the representational character of thought, and emotions being affective states, or types of feelings, do not have that character of thought. Problems in emotion then have to be described in other ways, such as in terms of an emotion's violation of a moral norm or in terms of an emotion's likely adverse effects on the person's behavior or rationality, and certainly it was in these other ways that I intended the cases that I described to be taken.Now, there are to be found in my paper three ways in which someone may reply to my argument (although only two of these ways take the form of actual responses in the paper). To begin with, it might be claimed that amending problems in emotion must be about altering cognitions, as emotions themselves consist of cognitions. I describe in a note to my paper a number of reasons why I think we should reject cognitive accounts of emotions. I also state in the introduction that a purely affective (and, thereby, noncognitive) account of emotion successfully describes the phenomenology, or experience [End Page 255], of emotion. And I would also want to (therefore) resist David Pugmire's suggestion that sometimes a "person's portrayal of an emotionally charged situation is actually prefigured in their emotion"—if by that Pugmire means that emotions sometimes consist of such thoughts. "Black thoughts" may be "despair's footholds," but I would argue that this means nothing more than the fact that such thoughts often act as a nonconstitutive cause of depression. Finally, I should remark that I do not intend my claim that to evaluate oneself negatively may just consist in feeling low about oneself to be a concession to the cognitive theorist of emotion. This is because the purpose of that claim is not to (confusingly) suggest that our cognitive evaluations may consist of noncognitive emotions, but rather to suggest that it is a mistake to think of our evaluations as being cognitive in nature. According to the noncognitivist project in meta-ethics our evaluations are properly seen as being expressions of our noncognitive attitudes.The second way of responding to my argument is to concede that emotions are noncognitive in nature, but to argue that each particular emotion is triggered by its own special kind of thought (e.g., fear might be thought to be necessarily triggered by perceived dangers, anger by perceived slights). On the face of it, however, the claim that our emotions are necessarily triggered by certain kinds of thoughts looks simply false. Our own observation of how emotions originate, together with the empirical studies that I... (shrink)

1施莱尔玛赫 contribution to the development施莱尔玛赫for hermeneutics in the development of Historically hermeneutics In order to make a decisive turn when he made ​​the future "general hermeneutics" , hermeneutics will be applied to all text interpretation. When the traditional hermeneutics contains In order to understand, description and application,施莱尔玛赫the attention is hermeneutics as "the art of understanding." 施莱尔玛赫also introduced the interpretation of psychology, can penetrate the text by means of its author's individuality and flexibility soul. He wanted to become a systematic hermeneutics, (...) and criticism of previous hermeneutics is "the rules of the merger," and the lack of coherence. Wu Ning speaking, they deal with different issues is a combination of methods. 施莱尔玛赫hermeneutics points to avoid misunderstanding of the text. This part is up to the final discussion of施莱尔玛赫criticism of the United States. 2. Dilthey contribution to the philosophical hermeneutics of Dilthey on施莱尔玛赫In order to write the thesis, including In order to Protestant hermeneutics history, from the Reformation to the future as a second reference books. He was a learned scholar and has been on many topics regardless above. For our purposes, Dilthey is a philosopher with a passion for life, he was placed In order to humanities and social sciences and natural sciences in an established full equality of points, by the foundation on the hermeneutics In order to develop a basic methodology. But in the science competition, he was seeking "Allgemeingultigkeit", a universal validity, to do so In order to give him too much towards the foundation to the scientific methods of thought. He is still a major development of the character of philosophical hermeneutics. 3 Heidegger before and on philosophical hermeneutics, "and there is time" contribution to the development of philosophical hermeneutics is the decisive shift in Heidegger, born with the future, there are original philosopher The early works. He Freiburg Hu plugs Seoul assistant, and in the phenomenological Hu stopper Seoul In order to create a useful set up beyond the traditional methods of philosophy, but he is still too dependent on science Hu stopper Marco effectiveness. Part I: description of the evolution of the early Heidegger: "ontology - the fact of hermeneutics," the book published after the death of Heidegger was published in 1999, English translation, Heidegger in this series by the fact that the ontology of hermeneutics In order to give us a hermeneutic understanding of his meaning. In order to avoid the traditional hermeneutics of his meaning, In order to return to the ancient hope臘hermeneueinc and hermeneia idiom. He attempts to go beyond the limits of contemporary objects, through the period of return to the ancient hope臘general language idioms. Hermeneutic encounter with the interpretation of Homer's description of the mouth, publish, translate and interpret. His description of historical hermeneutics in the pull-down maps and sub ​​Lane Park after a groundbreaking Aristotle hope臘idioms in the loss of richness and decline. But the hermeneutics of Heidegger speaking the method is close to something, such as early speech hermeneutics In order to approach closer to the truth of it is understandable the former interpretation of this domain as there face life. For this last hermeneutics as the method of self-understanding, but in a letter to his students Engelbert Kerbs letter, Heidegger also emphasizes the history In order to recognize the character. Us from our understanding of historical context, our understanding of the structure is formed by shaping the concept of history and even our language. In Dilthey's hermeneutics, he also stressed that understanding the historical basis. From Dilthey to Heidegger this view. Heidegger in his speech defines hermeneutics as "the fact of participation, close, and descriptions of the same interrogation methods." Hermeneutics is the interpretation of not only understanding knowledge as a negative process, but active participation, interrogation and close. Fact of itself is interpreted, it is through understanding the questions and answers something. Heidegger back to the necessary conditions for our understanding of factors, understanding of "the former structure." He describes some part of the former, is awareness and understanding of nature, we understand something "to" something, and we understand it in a specific historical context. Further more, we expect to understand it in the presence of a sight, not a determining sexual arousal by the sight, by the basic problems of the future horizon, it is "the possibility of there," the sight, for there is a special special possible time horizon. These early works of Heidegger has been found there the possibility of meaning. We all都leadership to a new concept of the humanities. In addition, as a rational animal, as Aristotle said sub-Lane, who is of a future there may not be included, including the timing of there. People are looking to understand their own there. Instructions to Heidegger, hermeneutics offers a new concept for the person's point of view. Part II: there and time hermeneutics is first mentioned in the "there and the time," Section VII, Heidegger phenomenology has been interpreted as if it is. In order that he found "the meaning of phenomenological description as a way to rely on hermeneutics, phenomenology of this and some of the logos have hermeneuein the characteristics of this phenomenology is to use some basic meaning of the word hermeneutics, it indicates the work In order to interpret . "In the second sense, Heidegger found in hermeneutics裡are there for the meaning of this method of exposing the shield. The third meaning is the interpretation of this promising continuous manner so that its future is possible, it's future there. Section 31 of hermeneutics is important, because there is some understanding that is. Understanding the process is the center of human existence, in Section 32 entitled "interpretation and understanding," understanding the interpretation built on. Visit the world around it and understand things as this or that, always never as pure consciousness. As Heidegger said, "always had to watch as the ability to understand and interpret", in other words, there is no precedence in the interpretation of pure consciousness, there is always ask questions and interpretation of the visual field. Section 44, regardless Heidegger also true about management, in its modern form as a true statement, is always carried a deeper understanding and interpretation of the export process. But the really right is defined as the management there has been an associate of knot, so it access to basic ontology of sight. It is obvious that there's open, this hole is to guide him toward the police point of view of the artistic part of the next lecture will be discussed. This lecture primarily presents the two early works of Heidegger in which hermeneutics plays a definitive role. As background, the contributions of Schleiermacher and Dilthey are presented briefly before going into Heidegger's contribution. Ⅰ. Schleiermacher's Contribution to the Development of a Philosophical Hermeneutics Schleiermacher made a decisive turn in the history of hermeneutics when he proposed a "Universal Hermeneutics," a hermeneutics that would apply to all kinds of text interpretation. While traditional hermeneutics included moments of understanding, explication and application, Schleiermacher focused on hermeneutics as the "art of understanding . "Schleiermacher also introduced psychological interpretation whereby one tried to penetrate the individuality and soul of the author of a text. He wanted hermeneutics to be systematic, and he criticized previous hermeneutics for being only an" amalgam of rules "and lacking systematic coherence. Rather , they were methods for dealing with an array of different kinds of problems. Schleiermacher's hermeneutics was directed at avoiding misunderstanding of the text. At the end of this section Gadamer's criticisms of Schleiermacher will be discussed. Ⅱ. Dilthey's Contribution to Philosophical Hermeneutics Dilthey wrote his dissertation on Schleiermacher and included a history of Protestant hermeneutics since the Reformation as a second companion volume. He was a broadly educated professor and wrote on many topics. For our purposes, Dilthey was a life-philosopher with a passion for placing the Humanities and Social Sciences on an equal footing with the Natural Sciences by developing a basic methodology for them based on hermeneutics. But in competing with the sciences, he sought an "Allgemeingultigkeit," a universal validity, and in doing so he tended to give too much ground to the way of thinking in the sciences. Still, he is a major figure in the development of philosophical hermeneutics. Ⅲ. The Contribution of Martin Heidegger to Philosophical Hermeneutics before and in Being and Time The decisive turn in the development of a philosophical hermeneutics came in the early writings of Martin Heidegger, a radical and original philosopher. He was in Freiburg an assistant to Husserl and found in Husserl's phenomenology a useful way of overcoming traditional philosophy, but he still found Husserl too preoccupied with scientific validity. Part Ⅰ: Heidegger's Early Lectures: Ontology-the Hermeneutics of Facticity A posthumously published and translated set of Heidegger's lectures on ontology in terms of a hermeneutics of facticity gives us a sense of his understanding of hermeneutics. He bypassed the traditional sense of hermeneutics and went back to the Greek usage of hermeneuein and hermeneia. He attempted to overcome the limitations of modern objectivity by returning to the usages current in ordinary language in ancient Greece. There hermeneutics meant orally interpreting Homer, announcing, translating, and explaining. His account of the history of hermeneutics after Plato and Aristotle is a history of decline and loss of the richness found in Greek usage. But hermeneutics for Heidegger meant a means of access to something, and in these early lectures hermeneutics became an interpretive means of access to facticity, to the realm of pre-interpretive understanding as Dasein faces life. Ultimately hermeneutics became a means for the self-understanding for Dasein. But in a letter to his student, Engelbert Krebs, Heidegger also emphasizes the historical character of cognition. We understand from our situation in history, and our understanding is structured by historically shaped concepts and even our language. Dilthey, too, emphasized the historical matrix for understanding in his hermeneutics, and Heidegger took this up from Dilthey. Heidegger defined hermeneutics in the opening lines of the lectures as "the unified manner of the engaging, approaching, accessing, interrogating, and explication of facticity." Hermeneutics as interpretation is not just understanding as a passive process of cognition but an active engaging, interrogating, and accessing. Facticity itself is interpretive in that it sees what something is through question and answer. Heidegger is stepping back into the factors that precondition our understanding, the "forestructure" of understanding. This forehaving, he says, belongs to the very nature of knowing and understanding. We see something "as "something, and we see it in a specific historical situation. Furthermore, we see it in an existential horizon of expectation, a horizon haunted by uncertainty, by the" fundamental questionability of the future, that is of "possible being," of what is possible for this particular being at this particular time and place. Already in these early works Heidegger finds in the sense of what is possible being, a sense of "ontic questionability, care, restlessness, anxiety, temporality." All of this leads to a new conception of humanity. Instead of being an animal endowed with reason, as in Aristotle, a human being is a being with a possible future, a being with temporality. Humans are beings seeking to know themselves. Hermeneutics, Heidegger says, offers the standpoint for a new conception of the human being. Part Ⅱ: Being and Time The first mention of hermeneutics is in section 7 of Being and Time, where Heidegger is already interpreting phenomenology as letting what is show itself. He finds that " the meaning of phenomenological description as a method lies in interpretation. The logos of the phenomenology of Dasein has the character of hermēneúein. The phenomenology of Dasein is a hermeneutic in the original signification of the word, where it designates the work of interpreting. "In a second sense, Heidegger finds in hermeneutics a means of uncovering the meaning of being for Dasein. And the third sense is the interpretation Dasein as continually making its future possibilities, its future being. Section 31 is important to hermeneutics because there the being of Dasein is said to be understanding. Understanding is the central process of an existing human being. In section 32, titled "Understanding and Interpretation," interpretation builds on understanding. It looks around at the surrounding world and sees things as this or that, always already , never as pure perception. As Heidegger puts it, "The seeing of this sight is always already understanding and interpreting." In other words, there is no pure perception prior to interpretation; there is always the horizon of questioning and interpreting. In section 44, Heidegger argues that truth, too, in its modern forms as statements which are true, is derivative from the deeper processes of understanding and interpreting that are always already going on. But when truth is rightfully defined in connection with being, then it moves into the horizon of fundamental ontology. It is the disclosure of being. This insight is part of what leads him to his view of art, which we will discuss in the next lectur. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Animals in the World: Five Essays on Aristotle’s Biology by Pierre PellegrinChristopher LutzPELLEGRIN, Pierre. Animals in the World: Five Essays on Aristotle’s Biology. Translated by Anthony Preus. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2023. vi + 324 pp. Cloth, $95.00; paper, $35.95This book explores two broad questions that have for decades been driving Pierre Pellegrin’s contributions to the so-called biological turn in Aristotle studies: whether and in (...) what sense Aristotle actually has a biology; the degree to which Aristotle’s teleological commitments lead him to characterize living things and the world that they inhabit as perfect. By analyzing various interplays that the zoological treatises posit between, on the one hand, the form and end of each species and, on the other hand, its material and efficient causes, Pellegrin reveals the astounding depth of Aristotle’s affinity with modern biology.In consideration of the millennia-spanning distance between Aristotle and the emergence of modern biology in the nineteenth century, Pellegrin first of all seeks to establish that he may call Aristotle a biologist without committing anachronism. Chapter 1 identifies two teleological notions that connect Parts of Animals and Generation of Animals to nineteenth-century conceptions of biology: Using organic function as the primary organizational principle in comparative anatomy relates Aristotle to Cuvier, and the concept of adaptation relates Aristotle to Darwin. Citing the profound influence of History of Animals on Cuvier (and thus on nineteenth-century biology), Pellegrin argues that its chief biological [End Page 357] innovation lies in the suggestion that observation is epistemically useful even when we are unable to explain that which we have observed.Chapter 2 emphasizes the role that mechanistic (that is, material and efficient) causality plays within the teleological explanations in Aristotle’s studies of animals. After a lengthy discussion of hypothetical necessity, Pellegrin uses PA 1.1’s distinction between formal nature and material nature to suggest that Aristotle recognizes an “ontological autonomy” of material nature, by which he seems to mean that matter has certain properties independent of any form. Linking Aristotle to Darwin, he argues that for Aristotle the perfection of each species consists in its fitness for (everlasting) survival. The end-directed formal nature of the species must negotiate with its autonomous material nature in order to secure for it an advantageous condition that guarantees its permanence but inevitably comes at the expense of certain disadvantages. For example, birds have no ears because they need extra matter for feathers (see PA 2.12).Shifting the focus to a crucial difference between Aristotle and modern biology, chapter 3 investigates the unity of Aristotelian natural science and biology’s place within it. Pellegrin finds analogies between Aristotle’s explanations of sexual reproduction, spontaneous generation, and Meteorology ’s account of the formation of inanimate homoiomerous matter (for example, metals, minerals). Sexual reproduction (clearly involving a material, formal, efficient, and final cause) is more causally complex than spontaneous generation (which according to Pellegrin has no preexisting final cause and only a quasi-formal cause), yet we understand spontaneous generation only by analogy with sexual reproduction, which is for Aristotle explanatorily prior. Spontaneous generation, in turn, is marginally more complex than the formation of homoiomerous matter (which also has only a quasi-formal cause and, further, no final cause at all), yet we understand the latter only by analogy with spontaneous generation and sexual reproduction. Pellegrin concludes that all natural science is united insofar as “material-efficient causality concerns all natural realities,” living and nonliving alike; however, because Aristotle in each case explains the less complex by analogy with the more complex, the teleological study of fully developed living things is explanatorily primary within his natural science. In this way, Aristotle stands in stark contrast to modern natural science, in which biology is explanatorily posterior to chemistry and physics.Chapter 4 qualifies the explanatory priority of complex organisms by challenging any notion of an Aristotelian scala naturae. Pellegrin works to show that the recognition of irreducible diversity is present in Aristotle’s very definition of an animal, arguing that in animals the nutritive faculty is neither ontologically nor developmentally prior to the sensitive and motive... (shrink)

“Pure science” and “applied science” have peculiar histories in the United States. Both terms were in use in the early part of the nineteenth century, but it was only in the last decades that they took on new meanings and became commonplace in the discourse of American scientists. The rise in their currency reflected an acute concern about the corruption of character and the real possibilities of commercializing scientific knowledge. “Pure” was the preference of scientists who wanted to (...) emphasize their nonpecuniary motives and their distance from the marketplace. “Applied” was the choice of scientists who accepted patents and profits as other possible returns on their research. In general, the frequent conjoining of “pure” and “applied” bespoke the inseparable relations of science and capitalism in the Gilded Age. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 40.2 (2006) 105-117 [Access article in PDF] Art and Failure Daniel A. Siedell Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden The Genius Decision: The Extraordinary and the Postmodern Condition, by Klaus Ottmann. Putnam, CT: Spring Publications, 2004, 181 pp., $18.50 paperback. Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-Avant-Garde, by Branden Joseph. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003, 450 pp., $34.95 hardcover. The most optimistic ethics (...) have all begun by emphasizing the element of failure involved in the condition of man; without failure, no ethics. Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity1Failure is an inescapable part of the human condition. It is also an inescapable part of extraordinary human achievement. In fact, it is because failure is woven so deeply into their fabric that makes certain endeavors, like the arts, philosophy, science, and even sports, so extraordinary, so compelling, and ultimately so meaningful. There is therefore a close—but often underexamined—connection between extraordinary achievement and failure in the history of the arts and culture in the West. Two very different books, one a work of philosophy and the other a work of art history, converge on the presence of failure in extraordinary human achievement. New York-based art critic and independent curator Klaus Ottmann offers a philosophical study of genius from a postmodern perspective entitled The Genius Decision: The Extraordinary and the Postmodern Condition. Art historian Branden Joseph, who is assistant professor at the University of California-Irvine, offers a revisionist interpretation of Robert Rauschenberg's aesthetic project in Random Order: Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-Avant-Garde. The Genius Decision offers an illuminating philosophical framework within which to read Random Order.Ottmann begins his study with the following question: "How does one account for those extraordinary and exceptional works of art and literature that set one artist apart from the others; works that most artists, however skilled, would never be able to produce; that exert great influence on others" (13). Ottmann answers this question by interpreting the work of Franz Kafka, [End Page 105] Spinoza, Søren Kierkegaard, Friederich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Martin Heidegger through a postmodernist lens provided in part by Jean-François Lyotard, Julia Kristeva, and other theorists. For example, he reads Kafka through Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari; Spinoza's Ethics through Deleuze; Kierkegaard through Adorno; Nietzsche through Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Heidegger; and Wittgenstein through P. M. S. Hacker. Foundational for Ottmann's thesis is theorist Julia Kristeva's concept of the Abject and its relationship to Jouissance—meaning "enjoyment," often connoting a sensual, even sexual pleasure—which has entered philosophical discourse via literary theorist Roland Barthes and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. For Kristeva, the Abject is the pressing of the "Unrepresentable" that requires a "sacrifice" of Jouissance; that is, a leap toward or a response to the inability to represent or give adequate form to this primordial ground of pure experiential bliss. For Ottmann, extraordinary achievement in art and philosophy consists of intentional and absolute leaps into certain failure in giving representation to what cannot be represented—despite its impossibility. This is what Ottmann calls the "Genius Decision." In contrast to passive explanations of extraordinary achievement, such as "accidental genius" and "physical genius," in which the individual can claim fortuitous circumstances or innate talent, the Genius Decision involves intentionality; it is a "decision" of some kind. But what kind of decision is it? Ottmann argues that it is an "active-passive" one. He then analyzes each of these influential thinkers as offering unique manifestations of the Genius Decision in their attempt to represent the Unrepresentable.Key to the Abject-Jouissance relationship is Ottmann's understanding of postmodernism. Rather than viewing it as a historical movement, Ottmann, following Jean-François Lyotard, regards it as a "condition," that is, as a nascent state within modernism. Ottmann characterizes the modern as recognizing and dwelling in the Abject, while the postmodern leaves the ambiguity of the Abject behind for the "certainty of failure" (49). The Genius Decision, then, comes out of a postmodern awareness of the impossibility of its... (shrink)

This accessible book is invaluable to anyone coming to social and political philosophy for the first time. It provides a broad survey of key social and political questions in modern society, as well as clear discussions of the philosophical issues central to those questions and to political thought more generally. Unique among books of this kind is a sustained treatment of specifically social philosophy, including topics such as epistemic injustice, pornography, marriage, sexuality and the family. The relation between such (...) social questions and specifically political topics is discussed, topics which include: political authority, economic justice, the limits of tolerance, considerations of community, race, gender, and culture in questions of justice, and radical critiques of current political theories. Updates to the Second Edition emphasize the non-statist areas of the subject and include two brand new chapters on social philosophy and transnational justice. This Second Edition also includes revisions throughout and coverage of recent theoretical discussions and world events. (shrink)

While pornography addiction currently circulates as a comprehensible, diagnosable, and describable way to make sense of some people’s ostensibly problematic relationship with pornography, such a comprehensive description of this relationship has only recently been made possible. The current analysis makes visible pornography addiction as situated within a varied history of concerns about pornography, masturbation, fantasy, and technology in an effort to bring to bear a conceptual critique of the modern concept of pornography addiction. Such a critique in turn works to (...) offer an alternative to treating the study of pornography addiction as the discovery of a new disease, instead conceiving it as the propagation of old forms of knowledge under a new moniker. (shrink)

Sexology emerged as a discipline during a period of keen concern about the social effects of sexually explicit media. In this context, sex researchers and their allies took pains to establish the respectability of their work, a process that often involved positioning sexual science in opposition to erotic literature and images. This article argues that this presentation of sexual science obfuscated sex researchers’ complex relationship with erotic print culture, which during the late 19th and early 20th centuries provided sexual scientists (...) with access to explicit material that served as evidence for theories about human sexuality, facilitated transnational exchanges of sexual-scientific thought by bringing sex research across borders, and introduced sex research to wider audiences. Erotic print culture can thus be seen as one of several fields that contributed to the interdisciplinary development of sexology and facilitated the diffusion of sexual-scientific theories. Sex researchers’ shifting, often ambivalent relationship with erotic print and its producers emphasizes that while the boundaries of sexology were extremely porous, they were also heavily policed: Working to establish a modern, respectable new branch of science, sexual scientists reframed the output of other fields of enquiry as products of their own, blotted their reliance on these sources from the historical record, and denigrated them in public writing. (shrink)

Recent technological innovation has made video doctoring increasingly accessible. This has given rise to Deepfake Pornography, an emerging phenomenon in which Deep Learning algorithms are used to superimpose a person’s face onto a pornographic video. Although to most people, Deepfake Pornography is intuitively unethical, it seems difficult to justify this intuition without simultaneously condemning other actions that we do not ordinarily find morally objectionable, such as sexual fantasies. In the present article, I refer to this contradiction as the pervert’s dilemma. (...) I propose that the method of Levels of Abstraction, a philosophical mode of enquiry inspired by Formal Methods in computer science, can be employed to formulate at least one possible solution to the dilemma. From this perspective, the permissibility of some actions appears to depend on the degree to which they are abstracted from their natural context. I conclude that the dilemma can only be solved when considered at low levels of abstractions, when Deepfakes are situated in the macro-context of gender inequality. (shrink)

This essay's central concern is the need for a new, practical dimension in the humanities, emphasizing their constructive rather than purely scholarly aspects. An analysis is offered of various types of inventions in the fields of linguistics, philosophy, art, and literature, such as new disciplines, genres, cultural practices, and intellectual movements. An invention is not the production of a given work, however great, but rather a principle or technique that can be applied to the production of many works by (...) others. Following Francis Bacon's call for the invention of new arts and sciences, the essay outlines new disciplines: technohumanities, which would study humans as a part of the technosphere; pathohumanities, which would investigate the self-destructive mechanisms of civilization; and scriptorics, which would focus on Homo scriptor, who has survived “the death of the author.” A research and educational program, uniting major fields of the humanities, is proposed: PILLAR would be a transdisciplinary strategy complementary to STEM, integrating scholarship and inventorship. (shrink)

It has long been remarked by historians of sexuality that sodomy is an incoherent category. Michel Foucault has insisted on the concept's “utterly confused” status; Jonathan Goldberg has mediated between highlighting sodomy's categorical confusions in Renaissance England and deployments of the category in modern contexts that continue to be precarious; Alan Bray has emphasized how sodomy emerges into visibility only through discursive performance, on the bodies of those who disrupt social and religious stability; and Mark Jordan has traced the (...) category's development in the moral theology of the Church and draws attention to its incoherences and illogicalities, even at the moment of its invention. Yet impossible as it might seem, under the circumstances, to pin it down to particular bodies and pleasures, scholars continue to be drawn to the question of sodomy's relationship to what we now call homosexuality, whether as a distinct identity or as a variety of erotic practice. This article considers a cluster of images in a set of medieval illuminated manuscripts that expose what is at stake when we address such issues with reference to visual as well as textual examples. (shrink)