PUBLICATION
Sexuality and Eroticism in a Post-pandemic World
Beyond the Biopolitics of the New Normal
Edited by Phil Shining and Jon Braddy
Brill, 2023
460 pages
Hardback
ISBN: 978-90-04-54936-4
Publication: 27 Sep 2023
E-Book ISBN: 978-90-04-54938-8
Publication: 20 Sep 2023
https://brill.com/display/title/63605
This collection explores the new cultural conditions of sex, relationships, gender awareness, and subjectivity after the COVID-19 pandemic through twelve interdisciplinary essays questioning the biopolitics of the new normal: the self-control regime of post-hedonistic societies.
The cultural change denominated as “the new normal” goes far beyond the adaptation to habits like physical distancing, limited person-to-person contact, teleworking, and self-isolation established with the COVID-19 pandemic. A series of significant transformations in human behavior spreads today in societies all around the world: physical intimacy decreases while virtual reality expands and alterity declines while artificial intelligence emerges, leading to structural reconfigurations of sex, relationships, gender awareness, and subjectivity. Sexuality and Eroticism in a Post-pandemic World explores this new cultural atmosphere through twelve interdisciplinary essays questioning global governmentality and challenging the biopolitics of the new normal
—the administration of self-control societies so politically correct that repressed desire for otherness only finds a simulation of its satisfaction with the forced abnormality, outrageousness, and violence of mainstream porn—, going from ars erotica to alternative pornography, from online dating to gender fluidity, from LGBTQI+ artivism to sex life cultivation, and more.
Sexuality and Eroticism in a Post-pandemic World presents a multidimensional panorama of today’s social production of desire, its interplay with the sources where pleasure is sought in the 2020s, and the upcoming—both promising and unsettling—cultural horizons for sex, relationships, gender awareness, and subjectivity, including uncharted forms of sensory experience, sexual exploration, gender empowerment, and self-transformation, but also new social media-driven processes of subjectification, automation governmentality regimes, self-care narcissism, and egocentric ways of life. Through diverse methodologies the contributors explore the ways in which sexuality and eroticism becomes reconfigured, depicting different types of social and individual experiences lived right before, during, and after the outbreak of the pandemic. The local stories portrayed and the case studies detailed in this collection take place in very different regions of the world, going from Malta to Serbia, from Spain to Australia, from Turkey to Canada, and from Cuba to Greece.
This book is especially recommended for readers interested in ars erotica, critical theory, cultural studies, feminism, gender studies, LGBTQIA+ rights, queer theory, sex education, sex positivity, sexology, Tantra, and visual arts.
Cover and back cover illustrations:
© Erika Lust
Table of contents
Foreword
Anne Worthington
Preface
Jon Braddy
List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
Introduction to the “New Normal”
Biopolitics, Sexuality and Eroticism in a Post-pandemic World
Phil Shining
Part 1
Beyond Repression: Defying the Moral Codes of 21st Century Authoritarianism
1.Transgressing the New Normal: Sexuality and Obscenity in a Post-pandemic Spain
Assumpta Sabuco Cantó
2. A Media Pandemic: Sexualized Right-Wing Populism and the Politics of Mis-sublimation
Sophia Kanaouti
3. A Room of Whose Own?: Pleasure and Privacy in Pre-and Post-pandemic Havana
Dara E. Goldman
Part 2
Beyond Sex: Embodying Pleasure and Sexuality in Times of Social Distancing
4. Pleasure in the Face of Death: Poetry and Self-realization
Rita Dirks
5. The Touch We Miss
Nebojsa Kujundzic
Part 3
Beyond Gender: Challenging Patriarchal and Heteronormative Sex Education through Alternative Pornography
6. Alt Porn as a New Sexual Script
Dionne van Reenen and Robert Scott Stewart
7. Sex & Love in the Time of Quarantine: Re-signifying Gender and Erotic Representations—Erika Lust-Style
Lily Martinez Evangelista and M. Emilia Barbosa
Part 4
Beyond the Senses: Immersing into Self-exploration through Visual and Plastic Arts
8. The Hunger for Touch: Fatih Akin’s Gegen die Wand (Head-On) and the Cinema of Sensation
Şebnem Nazlı Karalı and George Karpathakis
9. pros-thesis
Lawrence Buttigieg
10.Scream at Life: The Self as Erotic Figure
Jon Braddy
Part 5
Beyond the Ego: Embracing the Spiritual Possibilities of Desire
11.The Era of the Erotic: Understanding Epochal Change through Tantra and Christianity
John R. Dupuche
12. Sex Life Cultivation: Ars Erotica as an Alternative to Sex Education and Sex Therapy
Phil Shining
Index
Abstracts and keywords
Introduction to the “New Normal”
Biopolitics, Sexuality and Eroticism in a Post-pandemic World
Author: Phil Shining
Pages: 1–80
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004549388_002
Abstract:
The biopolitics of the new normal is the renovation of the processes of normalization in neoliberal democracies developed during the 2020s. It is initially introduced as a new set of habits established by governments according to the urgent challenges faced in the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic but, in reality, it constitutes an entire remodeling of the governmentality processes implemented by late capitalism’s system around the world. Moreover, it is a cultural change producing the transition from control societies to self-control societies and announcing a whole new governmentality regime, an automation regime lead by virtual reality and artificial intelligence. In this way, digital self-control societies are the final stage of late capitalism, a sort of post-climate change capitalism anticipating the upcoming regime of ultimate capitalism and automation. The new normality is the auto-isolation and the voluntary self-regulation of the individual in times of social media, an indicator of the post-hedonistic nature of late control societies; correlatively, post-pandemic governmentality is the administration of self-regulations determined by mainstream behavioral models of subjectification, diversification, and singularization. The new global sexual norm is all genders equal and all sexualities inclusive, instituting a status quo of sexual-political correctness centered on the pursuit of individuality through personal sovereignty. In the biopolitics of the new normal self-regulation is the habit while the goal is freedom and full-agency, consolidating egocentric cultures and individualistic ethics. Yet, even when neoliberal democracies promote diversity and the proliferation of multiple lifestyles, all differences become integrated into the same capitalist system of living.
Keywords:
AI (artificial intelligence) – alterity – automation – Baudrillard, Jean – biopolitics – capitalism – Deleuze, Gilles – democracy – egocentrism – ethics – Foucault, Michel – globalization – Guattari, Félix – inclusiveness – individualism – neoliberalism – normativity – political correctness – self – sexualization – societies of control – virtual reality
Part 1 Beyond Repression: Defying the Moral Codes of 21st Century Authoritarianism
Chapter 1
Transgressing the New Normal
Sexuality and Obscenity in a Post-pandemic Spain
Author: Assumpta Sabuco Cantó
Pages: 83–107
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004549388_003
Abstract:
The aim of this chapter is to propose an anthropological reflection focused on the experiences around the new normality, transgression and obscenity in Spain during the first years of the 2020s. With a historical perspective, we will analyze the patterns that have been forged as normative and also consider their disruptive alternatives. In the first part of the chapter we will characterize sexuality in Spain linked to Franco-Catholicism and changes in sexuality lived during the last five decades. Secondly, we look at the effects of COVID-19 during the period of confinement and the “new normality.” Finally, we examine transgressive performances in the post-pandemic Spain through the proposals of two musical artists: Rodrigo Cuevas and Samantha Hudson. Transgression and obscenity have clashed with the emergence of COVID-19 in both public and private spheres; the pandemic has pitted two political positions against each other, between right and left; also, the restrictions and vaccinations have caused confrontation over individual and collectives rights. This research traces the localized meanings and political potentials of body transgression as part of the new restrictions of a post-pandemic world.
Keywords:
activism – artivism – Catholicism – feminism – gender fluidity – LGBTQI+ – nonbinary – obscenity – performance – transgression
Chapter 2
A Media Pandemic
Sexualized Right-Wing Populism and the Politics of Mis-sublimation
Author: Sophia Kanaouti
Pages: 108–131
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004549388_004
Abstract:
This chapter examines the attacks on sexuality during the COVID-19 pandemic by mainstream right-wing populist Greek media, and theorizes on the social experience of “mis-sublimation.” These attacks constitute a vilification of the sexuality of young people and women—stripping both of them of sexuality as an emancipatory force—while their “hypersexuality” and their supposed lack of respect for social norms is ferociously criticized. First, the chapter presents the events taking place in Greece. Secondly, it examines the patriarchal sexualization of male politicians. Thirdly, it traces the experience of “desublimation” and “mis-sublimation” in today’s Greek society. While Sigmund Freud’s and Herbert Marcuse’s concepts of “sublimation” and “desublimation” remain highly relevant, the most recent cultural and political transformations demand new conceptual frameworks. As the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions are extended through uncertainty and political manipulation, I suggest that another type of transformation of sexual energy takes place: this is what I call “mis-sublimation,” the consequence of women’s and young people’s new efforts to become socially acceptable, when society is still withholding approval. This results not in aggression, but in new forms of political apathy and, moreover, in depression.
Keywords:
Castoriadis, Cornelius – creativity – desublimation – mainstream – mis- sublimation patriarchy – representational pleasure – sexualization – sexuality – sublimation
Chapter 3
A Room of Whose Own?
Pleasure and Privacy in Pre-and Post-pandemic Havana
Author: Dara E. Goldman
Pages: 132–150
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004549388_005
Abstract:
Cubans favor public gathering and socializing in common areas such as parks, squares/plazas, or along the malecón—the boulevard that traverses the sea wall along most of the length of the city. However, personal space is a commodity that only a select few can afford, and is often viewed with suspicion. This combination of cultural attitudes and political pressures created particular challenges for individuals and communities whose desires did not fit neatly into the prescribed norms. Queer subjects have had to carefully carve out spaces for clandestine encounters—whether sexual, social, or some combination thereof—for most of the last 60 years. This essay will examine how the landscape of non-normative sexuality is represented in major Cuban literary and cinematic works of the last decades. More specifically, it will focus on Ena Lucia Portela’s Cien Botellas en Una Pared, a work that delves into the complex world of non-normative desires that live beyond the facade of Central Havana. This analysis will then serve as a lens to explore how that landscape is being reshaped by the conditions of the pandemic and what they underscore about revolutionary ideals and the limitations of sexual normativity in 21st century Havana.
Keywords:
Cuba – desire – Havana – heterotopia – malecón – normativity – Portela, Ena Lucía – personal space – privacy – queer sexuality
Part 2 Beyond Sex: Embodying Pleasure and Sexuality in Times of Social Distancing
Chapter 4
Pleasure in the Face of Death
Poetry and Self-Realization
Author: Rita Dirks
Pages: 153–180
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004549388_006
Abstract:
With poetry sales and online readership increasing substantially in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, I began to make the connection between—the threat of—death, isolation and self-rediscovery aided by the act of reading poetry. In this chapter, I examine the effects of the pandemic strictures on the self through the potentially transformative power of reading poetry. The reading of poetry during this enforced pause from the “normal” offers in its sequestered space and solitude the freedom to be, freedom from external determining structures of identity. The seductive pleasure of reading leads to the pleasure of knowing—the self. To this end, I interview two people who report that in the face of possible death and loss and experienced solitude they reclaimed something that identified their true desire. Both speak to the space the pandemic had created to read and peel away false layers, to unmask the real self in terms of identity and desire—like discovering their sexual orientation and their own sexuality. Ironically, pandemic restrictions and the turn to poetry have allowed individuals to find the language to express and respond to poetry’s potentially transformative power.
Keywords:
COVID-19 – life & death – love – pandemic – pandemic poetry – poetry – sexuality – self- transformation – transgender – transition
Chapter 5
The Touch We Miss
Author: Nebojsa Kujundzic
Pages: 181–198
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004549388_007
Abstract:
This chapter explores the transformations of the human experience of touch taking place in today’s societies, accelerated with the global lockdowns and quarantines of the COVID-19 pandemic although, as it is expected, still in process of development in the forthcoming decades. In the first part of the chapter it is analyzed how close contact human relations decrease, and which are the social and ethical consequences of this new normalized situation. In the second part it is explored how the ICTs make possible the emergence of new experiences of tactile awareness supported in ground-breaking sensory inputs and new technologies like artificial intelligence, touchscreen electronic devices, and social media. In the third part it is inquired how sexual habits and erotic experiences are changing in today’s cultures of interactivity and sensory immersion. Finally, from a philosophical perspective, a discussion is opened focused on the future of moral agencies and intersubjectivity in these forthcoming societies.
Keywords:
AI (artificial intelligence) – ICT – interactivity – intersubjectivity – live streaming – sensory immersion – mindful touch – social media – synesthesia – tactile awareness
Part 3 Beyond Gender: Challenging Patriarchal and Heteronormative Sex Education through Alternative Pornography
Chapter 6
Alt Porn as a New Sexual Script
Authors: Dionne van Reenen and Robert Scott Stewart
Pages: 201–226
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004549388_008
Abstract:
At least since the 1990s, there has been a notable rise in pro-sex movements, and theorists, alike. They advocate strongly for personal sovereignty, focussing more deliberately on the pleasure, transgression and experimentation aspects of sex. Pornography, or mediated sex, can be seen as yet another site to reproduce society’s obsession with all things sexual and falsely present its passive audience with singular narratives that influence the formation of sexual subjects. In this paper, we argue that alternative pornography may offer a respite from this sort of critique. Whereas mainstream pornography proliferates and predominates in the adult entertainment market, it can be unimaginative, repetitive, and artificial, as opposed to a more creative, radical, and authentic alternative pornography. Technological expansions, online accessibility and participatory global cultures have not only provided individuals a way in which to bypass the mainstream, but also, to gain relatively easy admittance to a previously obscure form of erotic life. While normalized mainstream pornography offers us a narrow sexual script that objectifies its performers and straightjackets its audience, alternative pornography acts as a form of resistance to mainstream and societal limitations, hence offering sexual subjects and objects an opportunity for greater freedom and agency.
Keywords:
alternative pornography – ethics – feminism – Foucault, Michel – freedom – power – resistance – sexual scripting – sexuality – subjectification
Chapter 7
Sex and Love in the Time of Quarantine
Re-signifying Gender and Erotic Representations—Erika Lust-Style
Authors: Lily Martinez Evangelista and M. Emilia Barbosa
Pages: 227–266
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004549388_009
Abstract:
The feminist indie porn film director Erika Lust is revamping the ways in which pornography is constructed during the time of quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Sex and Love in the Time of Quarantine is an indie porn documentary which compiles the experiences of six individuals in Barcelona, New York, Los Angeles and Florida in the year 2020. This chapter introduces Erika Lust, her website, the feminist pornography industry, and a questionnaire filled out by Erika Lust on the production of Sex & Love in the Time of Quarantine and the future of pornography. In addition, we explore how the erotic power within everyone becomes the force with which to alter traditional views on gender, sex, and sexuality, and, as a result, the erotic empowers the individual even during the COVID-19 pandemic, when pornography directors and performers recreate cinematographic outlets to author their own performances and continue to inspire viewers to rethink their sexual possibilities and desires.
Keywords:
consumer responsibility – consumerism –Lust, Erika – erotic empowerment – eroticism – feminism – gender – indie porn – quarantine – sexual awareness
Part 4 Beyond the Senses: Immersing into Self-Exploration through Visual and Plastic Art
Chapter 8
The Hunger for Touch
Fatih Akin’s Gegen die Wand (Head-On) and the Cinema of Sensation
Authors: Şebnem Nazlı Karalı and George Karpathakis
Pages: 269–295
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004549388_010
Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic has furthered the experience and awareness of cinematic sensations as the restrictions redefine our relation to eros. Selecting Fatih Akin’s 2004 film titled Gegen die Wand (Head-On), this chapter explores the use of the sensory, the affect, and the erotic in the film’s cinematography and how it is relevant to our time. Akin encourages embodied affective responses in the viewer, bypassing the potential socio-political fallout as he presents a love story between unlikely lovers. The selected scenes examine Akin’s filmmaking techniques, which give the viewer an experience of sensation beyond what is seen, placing Head-On in the cinema of sensation. The social and cultural repression, and the emotional responses raised in the film are not only still present and amplified, but are now coupled with the pressures of the pandemic. Thinking along the new normal, the analysis suggests that the pandemic, having suppressed intimacy, has increased the hunger for touch, the longing for interpersonal and intimate touch, making us aware of the absence of eros. The cinema of sensation is rekindled in the time of COVID-19, leaving its mark on the ongoing future of cinema.
Keywords:
Akin , Fatih – affect – cinema of sensation – eroticism – hapticity – intimacy – Head-On – migration – multisensorial – touch
Chapter 9
pros-thesis
Author: Lawrence Buttigieg
Pages: 296–324
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004549388_011
Abstract:
pros-thesis is a short experimental research film inspired by the plastic arts project SACRUM (2017-unfinished), a three-dimensional, mixed-media, body-themed box-assemblage. pros-thesis intimates how SACRUM is the exteriorization of the sentient consciousnesses of the model and the artist, and the capacity to re-invent themselves through self-replication. The film reveals how mutual affection not only engenders convergence but nurtures an autonomous existence, while it hints at the sensations elicited through body casting, which makes possible the exact facsimiles of their intimate parts. As model and artist create a prosthesis of their paired bodies, the film pros-thesis shows that the materialization of SACRUM brings them closer; they are together in a process which involves the subjective objectification of themselves through each other. SACRUM is all about coming together to mutually enrich each other’s embodiments. Via its own reticulation, pros-thesis highlights the experience of pluralization, whose correlation with otherness is evocative of Luce Irigaray’s observation that woman—as other—is essentially always two rather than one, on account of her two labia which continuously caress each other.
Keywords:
artifact – artist – body-casting – eroticism – fetish – gaze – genitalia – otherness – pluralization – self- replication
Chapter 10
Scream at Life
The Self as Erotic Figure
Author: Jon Braddy
Pages: 325–360
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004549388_012
Abstract:
In the Logic of Sensation, Gilles Deleuze applies his philosophy on aesthetics to the painted figures of the artist Francis Bacon, with particular focus on the sensation of “the scream”: a human cry embodied as a fall, where people “find themselves,” even when selfhood dissolves for a moment. This chapter uses the concepts, percepts and affects of a Deleuzian scream to study three heterogeneous aesthetic experiences. First, Danko Stante’s film Consequences, a pioneer LGBTQI+ movie from Slovenia, is discussed highlighting the logics of powers exerted on an individual, ultimately resulting in a cinematic expression of a scream. Next, the short film pros-thesis, directed by Lawrence Buttigieg, is explored seeking how a scream gets encoded into moving images from the perspective of a painter. Lastly, the sensation of a scream is applied to explore masochistic experiences founded on the social media website of financial domination (#Findom). In this way, the chapter is constructed as a triptych, indicating the trajectory of the erotic in contemporary societies. Today, new forms of scream are experienced after the COVID-19 pandemic. Tracing the signs of the times, this research reveals a “new normal” of artistic expression in the 21st century: the self as erotic figure.
Keywords:
aesthetics – androphilia – #cashmaster – Gilles Deleuze – #Findom – LGBTQI+ – BDSM – pros-thesis – sensation – queer theory
Part 5 Beyond the Ego: Embracing the Spiritual Possibilities of Desire
Chapter 11
The Era of the Erotic
Understanding Epochal Change through Tantra and Christianity
Author: John R. Dupuche
Pages: 363–392
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004549388_013
Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic is only one of the many pandemics that have led to a profound change. This chapter surveys not only the problems that arise in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, such as confinement, lockdown, isolation, fear, boredom, or income-loss, but also the issues of which the pandemic is the symptom: environmental degradation, population growth and the place of human sexuality. To help respond to these matters, this chapter first reviews the shifting attitudes towards eros and then draws on two contrasting religious traditions: the Tantra of Kashmir Shaivism and Christianity. Tantra proposes the paradoxical interplay of pleasure and asceticism, horror and eroticism, an interplay which leads to the highest form of consciousness and bliss. This chapter also draws on elements within Christianity that are traditional but have not been highlighted. It is explained how inner strengths can lead to unimaginably intense pleasures, and how the interplay of life and death is in fact highly erotic. Finally, seven present-day issues and their possible solutions are examined. In this manner, these two traditions, as expounded in this chapter, show the way forward to an epochal change and enable the forms required for this process to take place successfully.
Keywords:
Bataille, Georges – Christianity – ecological crisis – eroticism – Kashmir Shaivism – Kula – mysticism – pleasure – Tantra – Trika
Chapter 12
Sex Life Cultivation
Ars Erotica as an Alternative to Sex Education and Sex Therapy
Author: Phil Shining
Pages: 393–452
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004549388_014
Abstract:
While sexual abuse, sex addiction, sexual indifference, and sexual dissatisfaction remain present in our societies, people depend on medical/clinical treatments that don’t prevent any of its causes. Sex, sexuality, and sex life are a matter of art much more than of science. Sex is about stylization: stylizing the body, the sexual act, the couple relationship, subjectivity, and the use of freedom: ethics. In times of sexual self-regulation and the biopolitics of self-management, when pornography replaces sex education and online sex work replaces intimate relationship, sex life cultivation emerges as a recovery of the knowledge focused on the sexual practice itself. It is a new model in the field of ars erotica, grounded on the historical archive of teachings composed by both Eastern and Western arts of living. Sex life cultivation assembles the techniques and the spiritual perspective of traditions like Taoism, Yoga, Tantra, Buddhism, Stoicism or Epicureanism, plus cutting-edge critical thinking regarding gender equality and sexual orientation, to generate alternative sexual knowledge about the development of erotic skills; the exploration of pleasure techniques; the physical cultivation of vitality, health and wellbeing; emotional self-mastery in the relationships; and, finally, sexual ethics. Critical selflessness and selfless sexualities are the key for an ethical transformation.
Keywords:
arts of living – biopolitics – coitus reservatus – inner cultivation – self- care – sexual empowerment – sexual ethics – self- management – sexual wellbeing – spiritual exercises
Index
Pages: 453-460
https://brill.com/display/book/9789004549388/back-1.xml
Exploring Sexuality and Spirituality
An Introduction to an Interdisciplinary Field
Edited by Phil Shining and Nicol Michelle Epple
Brill, 2020
405 pages
Paperback
ISBN: 978-90-04-43079-2
Publication: 22 Oct 2020
E-Book ISBN: 978-90-04-43786-9
Publication: 20 Oct 2020
https://brill.com/display/title/57104
The physical and emotional well-being potential of embodied experiences like bliss, ecstasy, and eroticism delineates the territories to explore by practitioners and scholars linked to a new interdisciplinary academic field quite different from the conventional religious and gender field of studies: the sexuality and spirituality field of research.
The wide spectrum of links and interrelations found amongst the diversity of human sexual expressions and spiritual practices all across the globe constitutes one of the most fruitful grounds of scholarly research today. Exploring Sexuality and Spirituality introduces an emerging academic field of studies focused on the historical problematizations intersecting the two human dimensions referenced in the title: eroticism, ecstasy, mysticism, and inner cultivation. This book helps to understand what makes this field different from the Religion, Sexuality and Gender field of studies, while it also exposes some of its shared inquiries, like the research on intimate relationships or gender empowerment. As a collection of essays, the book addresses subjects such as prehistoric art, queer theology, BDSM, Tantra, the Song of Songs, ‘la petite mort’, asceticism, feminist artivism, and sexually-charged landscapes, among others. Its varied methodologies and state-of-the-art interdisciplinary approaches, but also the experimentation in its writing, make this volume highly useful for readers engaged in self-managed inner cultivation. Historical backgrounds supporting the reading of ancient arts of living texts, and the use of philosophical models to shape the basic concepts put in practice through spiritual exercises, are examples of the forms in which this book assembles scholarly sources and practical knowledge.
Exploring Sexuality and Spirituality explains how, what is normally recognized now as two independent and autonomous ‘spheres’ or ‘dimensions’ of human life, was actually a single and integrated experience during thousands of years, accessible to any human being; the differentiation between ‘sexual’ and ‘spiritual’ domains is a modern historical process determining the life possibilities of human cultures—up until today. This collection traces the interconnections, overlappings, and commonalities between sexuality and spirituality, going from ancient scriptures interpretation to empirical experimentation; from revision of literature to direct fieldwork research; and from in-depth interviews or news reports analysis to personal diaries. While the Religion, Sexuality and Gender field of studies is centered on the social construction of identity, the Sexuality and Spirituality field of research is focused on the embodiment and the biocultural growing of well-being, selflessness, and bliss. From the sacred rapture of Saint Teresa of Ávila to the profane mystical ecstasy lived in Georges Bataille’s erotic stories, from consecrated celibates and consensual sadomasochists to Tantric sex practitioners, Exploring Sexuality and Spirituality initiates a conversation bridging Western and Eastern perspectives in the middle of a dialogue between traditional religious spirituality and present-day non-religious spirituality.
This book is especially recommended for readers interested in ars erotica, arts of living, asceticism, BDSM, feminism, gender studies, history of sexuality, mysticism, religious studies, prehistoric art, spiritual but not religious, and Tantra.
Cover and back cover illustrations:
© Dennis Alan Winter
Table of contents
Foreword
Anne Worthington
Preface
Jon Braddy
List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
Notes on Contributors
Introduction to the Sexuality and Spirituality Field of Research
Phil Shining
Part I
Natural Instincts
1. Spirituality of the Sexually Charged Landscap
Dennis Alan Winters
2. A Spirituality and Sexuality in Prehistoric Art
Richard Alan Northover
Part II
Religious Rapture
3. A Spirituality of Pleasure: The ‘Thousand-Year’ Intercourse of Śiva and Śakti
John R. Dupuche
4. Experiencing yada: Holistic Encounters of Spiritual Bliss between Christian Believer and God
Nicol Michelle Epple
Part III
Alternative Ecstasy
5. Oscar Wilde’s Spirituality: The Erotics of Queer Theology
Rita Dirks
6. The Holy Rebellious Pussy: New Feminist Demands and Religious Confrontations
Assumpta Sabuco Cantó and Ana Álvarez Borrero
Part IV
Taboo Challenges
7. The (In)compatibility Between Spirituality and Sexuality: Contemporary Chinese Case Studies
Huai Bao
8. Sex Education and Tantra
Pavel Hlavinka
Part V
Limit-Experience Embodiments
9. The Abandoned Self: Excess and Inner Experience in Sadomasochism
Catherine Papadopoullos
10. Embodying ‘The Little Death’ of Orgasm: An Interdisciplinary Research on Sexual Trance
Phil Shining
Index
Abstracts and keywords
Introduction to the Sexuality and Spirituality Field of Research
Author: Phil Shining
Pages: 1–54
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004437869_002
Abstract:
The Sexuality and Spirituality field of research is focused on the physical and emotional well-being potential of embodied experiences like bliss, ecstasy, and eroticism as, also, the ethical potential of the ars erotica, the arts of living, and the millenary spiritual traditions that have generated the knowledge required to responsibly cultivate these liberating experiences. The Sexuality and Spirituality field of studies delineates the territories to explore by scholars interested in the historical intersecting problematizations: eroticism, ecstasy, mysticism, and inner cultivation. Although the Sexuality and Spirituality field of studies shares some of the same problematizations of the Religion, Sexuality and Gender field—like inquiring on love, intimate relationships, gender empowerment, or subjectivity construction—, it constitutes an independent field on its own; while the latter is centered on gender and identity, the former is focused on ecstasy and selflessness. The history of the interrelations between sexuality and spirituality reveals how fundamental this interaction has been in the evolution of human societies. Each culture reveals its own particularities, but the big-picture history of sexuality indicates five different eras: 1) the sex/life/death biocultural continuum of Upper Paleolithic societies; 2) the sacred/profane division introduced in archaic societies; 3) the stylizations of sexual conducts introduced by Axial Age cultures; 4) the restrictive religious moral codes and the division between pleasure and divinity introduced in medieval societies; and 5) the generalized sexualization of hyper-modern cultures accentuating the division between sex and spirituality due to the hegemony of self-centered cultures in capitalist societies. A new countercultural reintegration of sex and spirituality takes place in the 21st century, recovering sex as a medium to access the divine, while also reconfiguring feminine/masculine polarity.
Keywords:
ars erotica – arts of living – Axial Age – bliss – divinity – ecstasy – eroticism – ethics – feminine/masculine polarity – gender empowerment – Hatha Yoga – history of sexuality – inner cultivation – intimate relationship – love – mysticism – pleasure – selflessness – sex –subjectivity – Tantra – Tao – Vajrayāna – Yoga – well-being
Part I Natural Instincts: Exploring the Nature of Sexual Expressions
Chapter 1
Spirituality of the Sexually Charged Landscape
Author: Dennis Alan Winters
Pages: 57–105
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004437869_003
Abstract:
Divinity might be in nature all around us. Even so, not all landscape is created equally. Among the wide spectrum of spiritual traditions, landscapes endowed with sexuality are among the most honoured of pilgrimage destinations. Uniquely appearing as a distinct form in space, or a distinct space surrounded by form, the sexually charged landscape offers opportunities for highly charged transactions with spirituality; the physical features and natural processes that mark their spiritual significance also stand as prime examples of excellence in design. This chapter is not an investigation on the Mother Earth metaphor. Neither is it a manifesto. Rather, it’s an inquiry into the grounding and depth of the multi-layered relationship between people and the sexually charged landscape. Its methodology is interdisciplinary, interconnecting psychology with geomorphology, modern art, and Vajrayana Buddhism, among other sources of artistic practice and spiritual knowledge. The intent is to make visible the continuum between mind and sex; sex and landscape; landscape and divinity; and divinity and sex. Guaranteed, you’ll never look at landscape the same way again.
Keywords:
Landscape – geomorphology – ecology – sexuality – sexual differentiation – eroticism – divinity – nature – spirituality – Vajrayāna Buddhism
Chapter 2
Spirituality and Sexuality in Prehistoric Art
Author: Richard Alan Northover
Pages: 106–128
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004437869_004
Abstract:
This study considers what can be known about prehistoric spirituality and sexuality based on select art and artefacts that have survived time. In the chapter, I examine the very different approaches of Georges Bataille’s philosophical method and anthropological interpretation, and David Lewis-Williams’s ethnographical and empirical research, which includes cognitive neuroscience’s inputs. Specifically, I consider the possible sexual basis of Lewis-Williams’s concept of supernatural potency, which he claims shamans attempted to acquire in order to achieve various purposes, while in altered states of consciousness, including transcosmological forays into the spirit world. I also explore Bataille’s views on tools, taboo, violence, transgression, art, excess, death, and eroticism, which he applied to the cave art of Lascaux, describing it as the cradle of humanity. Despite their differences, both approaches emphasize the connections between animality, sexuality, spirituality, and death, and both presuppose a common human nature connecting modern humans to our Homo sapiens forebears. While Lewis-Williams would contest Bataille’s use of terms such as the ‘sacred’, both thinkers would presumably agree that prehistoric spirituality involved immanence rather than transcendence, an embracing rather than a rejection of our animal nature, even while, paradoxically, expressing a human desire to endure beyond death.
Keywords:
prehistoric – shamanism – eroticism – transgression – death – altered states of consciousness – animality – immanence – Lewis-Williams, David – Bataille, Georges
Part II Religious Rapture: Exploring Sacred Scriptures’ Views on Sexual Mysticism
Chapter 3
A Spirituality of Pleasure:
The ‘Thousand-Year’ Intercourse of Śiva and Śakti
Author: John R. Dupuche
Pages: 131–162
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004437869_005
Abstract:
The Kula ritual, as described by Abhinavagupta, is the most extreme form of Tantra. Its paradoxical path, said to lead most effectively and rapidly to the highest bliss, is reflected in the Purāṇic episode of the ‘thousand-year’ intercourse of Śiva and Śakti, united in an eternal and blissful embrace. It involves a spirituality of pleasure, which has been problematic and seemingly opposed to the ascetical path, so often favored by Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. Yet, the modern interest in Tantra, as evidenced in the Internet, indicates a paradigmatic shift away from the opposition between spirituality and pleasure towards their identification. This article describes the long-lasting thought patterns of the ancient Mediterranean world that opposed flesh and spirit, and its influence in modern Western thought. Secondly, it touches on Abhinavagupta’s reinterpretation—in terms of the Trika school of Kashmir Shaivism—of the ancestral Kula ritual, an interpretation suggesting the means to attain the ‘thousand-year’ intercourse. Finally, it shows how this spirituality of pleasure opens up aspects of the Christian tradition worthy of further consideration.
Keywords:
Kashmir Shaivism – Tantra – Divinity – bliss – eroticism – Christianity – agape – transfiguration – morality – asceticism
Chapter 4
Experiencing yadaʿ:
Holistic Encounters of Spiritual Bliss between Christian Believer and God
Author: Nicol Michelle Epple
Pages: 163–194
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004437869_006
Abstract:
This article makes a bold claim, that Christians can come to ‘know’ God more deeply and intimately by embracing the connection between spirituality and sexuality. I show that key passages in the Song of Songs reveal God’s intent and emphasis on the joy and ecstasy of love, showing sex is used—and was created by God—as a metaphor for His desired intimacy with His believers. Yet, contemporary Christian discourses generally ignore the topic of sexuality or, worse, denigrate it as immoral and impure. I offer a counterpoint to this traditional view by discussing how Christians can experience holistic sensual encounters with Jesus Christ through God’s Spirit. Building on scriptural evidence of this intimacy between believers and God, I then situate such experiences historically using testimony of medieval mystics and contemporary Christian spirituals. The analysis of scripture is grounded on a hermeneutic approach, contrasted with complementary phenomenological analysis. I conclude by discussing how the act of bodily worship through song can facilitate an intimate spiritual experience akin to sexual orgasm, unpacking this through a brief delineation of the structure of contemporary Christian worship music and the sensual auditory affectation derived from this experience.
Keywords:
Christian sexuality – sex and God – eroticism – spiritual intimacy – holistic sex – orgasm – ecstasy – Christian worship – contemporary Christian music – the Church as the betrothed to Christ.
Part III Alternative Ecstasy: Exploring the Spirituality of Non-Hegemonic Sexuality
Chapter 5
Oscar Wilde’s Spirituality:
The Erotics of Queer Theology
Author: Rita Dirks
Pages: 197–210
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004437869_007
Abstract:
Recent developments in queer studies and religion studies place the Judeo-Christian tradition within an essentially egalitarian continuum. Current re-examinations of religious practices usually recognize that expressions of sexuality are not a codeable phenomenon. Scott Haldeman, for one, writes of the sacredness of homosexuality; he writes of the spiritual sacramental revelation aspects of sex with his male lover: ‘in the comingling of bodies, I feel deeply and tangibly, yet fragilely and fleetingly, something of divine love’. Oscar Wilde, according to Ellis Hansen, ‘brought his singular synthesis of Roman Catholicism, estheticism, and eroticism’ to his writings, like in his work De Profundis, portraying a Christ of ambiguous sexuality. In De Profundis, Wilde’s Christ is not only an artist, but also the ‘young bridegroom’, frolicking with his male ‘companions’, and a ‘lover for whose love the whole world was too small’. In my chapter, I argue that Wilde, living and writing over a hundred years ago, prefigured much of queer theory and religion from his earliest poetry to his last epistle.
Keywords:
Queer theology – Christ – spirituality – eroticism – homoeroticism – De Profundis – Wilde, Oscar
Chapter 6
The Holy Rebellious Pussy:
New Feminist Demands and Religious Confrontations
Author: Assumpta Sabuco Cantó and Ana Álvarez Borrero
Pages: 211–242
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004437869_008
Abstract:
The Holy Rebellious Pussy Procession has significantly aroused the conflict around the ways in which sexuality and the conceptions of what is sacred are expressed. While feminist women think their own genitals are sacred, some Christian sectors assume this conception as harmful against the respect for the traditions and popular beliefs. For the Spanish Feminist Movement—official since 1983 with the setting up of the Woman’s Institute in Spain—the government’s initiative of reforming the Abortion Act in 2013 strengthens inter-generational ties, consolidating a coalition known as ‘Freedom Train’, with proposals linked to the 15M and other alternative politics movements. In this context, the protests of a group of Andalusian women in Malaga and Sevilla with their Rebellious Pussy’s brotherhood provides new insights and conceptions about the hegemonic view of sexuality and spirituality. The aims of this paper are: firstly, to review the arguments classified in a socio-cultural context such as the Andalusian, in which Holy Week is deeply felt; secondly, to analyse the ways in which these opposed mindsets have been placed; thirdly, to specify the social consequences of this confrontation for both positions.
Keywords:
artivism – feminism – Catholicism – social movements – gender equality – abortion – human rights – sacredness – spirituality – sexual freedom
Part IV Taboo Challenges: Obstacles and Strategies for New Sexuality and Spirituality Re-Integrations
Chapter 7
The (In)compatibility Between Spirituality and Sexuality:
Contemporary Chinese Case Studies
Author: Huai Bao
Pages: 245–268
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004437869_009
Abstract:
In Mainland China modern spirituality is informed by a blend of Buddhism and other religions, as well as humanistic psychology. Drawing on in-depth interviews with individuals in China who claim to be ‘spiritual’ and/or who identify themselves as religious, this study examines and interrogates the (in)compatibility between spirituality and sexuality in presenting and negotiating a diversity of opinions over topics traditionally perceived as taboo. From the hegemonic perspective spirituality can hardly be linked to sexuality as complementing one another due to the common belief that the latter disturbs the former. Even while interviewees tend to defend their personal belief, following or taking distance from the hegemonic perspective, this study is not aimed at forming a conclusive argument favouring one particular point of view, but instead analyses the complexity of exploring the interrelatedness between spirituality and sexuality in the lived experiences of contemporary China.
Keywords:
spirituality – sexuality – sexual misconduct – celibacy – Buddhism – China
Chapter 8
Sex Education and Tantra
Author: Pavel Hlavinka
Pages: 269–286
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004437869_010
Abstract:
The main objective of this interdisciplinary study developed on the boundaries of philosophy, religious studies, education sciences, and psychotherapy, is to analyse the relevance of Tantra as a component of sex education in intercultural societies. The benefits and applicability of Tantra are discussed in this article, exploring some essential interrelations between spirituality and sexuality. I propose that intercultural societies can become beneficiated with the incorporation of the knowledge of Tantric traditions into their sex education programs. Particularly, Tantric views regarding sexual and love relationships can be useful to persons and communities all over the world, even remaining faithful to other religions. The incorporation of Tantric ideas and techniques is an alternative to the traditional western educational system, where institutions merely cover sex education in terms of the physiology of conception and the health risks involved, in times when young adult people need guidance on their love and sexual relationships at erotic and spiritual levels. I present the idea that sex education could be inspired by Tantra, offering opportunities of self-knowledge, an ars erotica, and a source of personal growth.
Keywords:
sex education – spirituality – transpersonal psychology – psychotherapy – self-knowledge – Kashmir Shaivism – Trika – Neo-Tantra –Foucault, Michel
Part V Limit-Experience Embodiments: Erotico-Mystical Arts and Non-Normative Sexual Practices
Chapter 9
The Abandoned Self:
Excess and Inner Experience in Sadomasochism
Author: Catherine Papadopoullos
Pages: 289–317
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004437869_011
Abstract:
The rituals of domination and submission, sadism and masochism, are a decadent, shocking and extraordinary form of theatre. The habitué of sadomasochistic (sm) sex is a skilled technician, a professional performer, an expert choreographer and a costumer. In this Theatre of Cruelty, pleasure is not considered in relation to what is permitted and prohibited, evaluated in terms of efficacy or utility, or secreted by identity. Bataille eulogized the power and intensity of sexual experience, its capacity to drive individuals beyond dualisms: joy and horror, subject and object, pleasure and pain. It is in this place of frenzied bewilderment that the subject encounters limits—the limit of reality, of reason, of normativity, of doxa. De-subjugation and self-making happen simultaneously in what must be a radical limit-experience in so far as sm events can be unmediated and are capable of displacing and transfiguring the subject. Identity becomes ‘other’ than itself. This dazzling space where one may explore diverse possibilities of corporeality, being and thought is analysed in relation to Foucault’s genealogy of the modern sexual subject and the new possibilities for a radical sexual politics set against the prevailing forms of normative subjectivity.
Keywords:
consensual sadomasochism – limit-experience – self-transformation – techniques of the self subjectivity – eroticism – Foucault, Michel – Bataille, Georges
Chapter 10
Embodying ‘The Little Death’ of Orgasm:
An Interdisciplinary Research on Sexual Trance
Author: Phil Shining
Pages: 318–386
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004437869_012
Abstract:
This article is an attempt to study the problem of ‘the little death’ in all its depth and complexity. The subject will be approached through an empirical-constructivist model of interdisciplinary research on sexual trance and ecstasy, tracking the nucleus of convergence between scientific, philosophic, artistic, and religious sources, plus testimonies of empirical experimentation. Continuities and discontinuities are traced between Eastern and Western heterogeneous forms of knowledge, like the practices of ancient spiritual traditions, avant-garde poetry, post-structuralist philosophy, and neurophysiological models of explanation. It is proposed that the expression la petite mort functions as a highly accurate description of the neurophysiological core of the sexual trance embodiments, of trance in general, and of all mystical experiences in general. Orgasm and the embodiment of sexual trance are contrasted with three key problems: selflessness, death, and absolute ultimate reality. The article concludes by outlining a new, immanent model of empirically grounded mystical experience.
Keywords:
la petite mort – orgasm – trance – ecstasy – sexual embodiment – selflessness – mystical experience – limit-experience – Tantra – Bataille, Georges
Index
Pages: 387-405
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