Category Archives: Eroticism In Literature

I am interested in how eroticism is depicted in different kinds of literature and how social changes have affected tolerance levels for this kind of content through the ages.

Realism vs Reality: the foreshortening of meaning.

There’s an interesting article in the Guardian by Tom Sutcliffe on Gaspar Noé’s most recent film ‘Love’. It brings up the interesting question of whether fiction has the capacity to say more to us than reality and, if so, why? Many women prefer erotica over porn, and they are often painted as prudes. Of course, Continue Reading

The Reader / Writer Conspiracy & the Hackneyed Ellipsis of the Real

How might fictional prose be framed in terms of Lacan’s Three Orders? Lacan described the human psyche as operating on three different ‘orders’ or registers: the Real, the Imaginary and the Symbolic. As speaking beings, we live in all three orders simultaneously, but not always consciously. They are experiential modes –  ways of experiencing reality Continue Reading

From Sin to Superficiality: Erotic Narratives

Erotic fiction is often narrated in first person, or third person proximate, attempting to give the reader an experience of the story’s eroticism from inside the mind and the body of the narrator. In this way, it has the capacity to do what image-based pornography (which almost always situates the viewer as voyeur) cannot do; Continue Reading

The Safety of Desire

“desire is a defense, a defense against going beyond a limit in jouissance” Jacques Lacan, Ecrits For Lacan, desire and fantasy are the life- and self-preserving strategies we use to keep us from slipping into a mindless and self-destructive pursuit of jouissance. Desires and the fantasies we construct around them are firmly rooted in language. Continue Reading

What Is Not Shown

In her book, Resisting Nudities: A Study in the Aesthetics of Eroticism, Florence Dee Boodakian points out that when it comes to cultural restrictions on nudity, apparent modesties quite often tend to draw attention to what is being ‘hidden'(13). The thong bikini is a case in point: where tiny pieces of cloth actually serve to call attention Continue Reading

Susan Sontag’s Essay on The Pornographic Imagination

Here is The-Pornographic-Imagination-by-Susan-Sontag From her collection of essays in Styles of Radical Wills. There is also a lovely youtube video of a lecture where she talks about the pornographic comedic interchange.

“I’m Not Fucking, I’m Talking to You”, or I Could be Fucking You.

In Lacan’s Seminar on The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, in his attempt to explain how sublimation of desire works and how closely it is tied to language, he says: Sublimation is nonetheless satisfaction of the drive, without repression. In other words —for the moment, I am not fucking, I am talking to you. Well! I Continue Reading

Porn Survey – Results & Thoughts

Firstly, I would like to thank all of you who took the time to participate in my very quick, informal porn survey. And an even bigger thank you to those who commented, elaborated, or offered their thoughts when none of the options fit the way in which you use porn. (Just a note, if you Continue Reading

Porn! Huh! Good God, Ya’ll…

First, let me present my bona fides. Although I’m sometimes critical about certain types of porn, I don’t in principle have anything against it. I consume it occasionally myself. I would tell you how I use it, but it might influence your answers so… I’m interested in what you use it for. Don’t roll your eyes and Continue Reading

The Paradox of Enjoyment

Most of you who visit this blog know that I use it as a sort of mental sorting space, a way to digest a lot of the theory I’m reading, processing and incorporating into my thesis – both the critical and the creative portions –  on postmodern (or post-postmodern) eroticism. Hopefully, if you’ve been reading Continue Reading