Juliet or Justine?
Philosophy, Eroticism and
(Extreme) Pornography
James Aire
Written in the context of
the ongoing Parliamentary Debate in the
Many
have questioned the relevance of philosophy of late, as the stagnant image they
abide, captivates, sours, freezes their minds, and keeps them from what they
have been made to believe is the bad side
of town.
We
are talking about dark, hidden ‘forces’, those underneath Bildung, education, discipline and breeding, the medical doctor,
psychiatrist, jailer, surveillance, (too bad
for Mill, but maybe not for Bentham) as they
orchestrate a situation of archetypes
and techniques for the reproduction
of the Same.
Yet,
in our context, the bad side is the
current official establishment, and
not the other bad side, the resistance that is the ceaseless spectre of an ever
deepening topos of questioning. We must throw our existence into
question. We must become bad, and in the right way…
There
is a deeper topos, not all at once or
as an accumulation – existence itself seeks instead to lay out a place for
be-ing and expression, communication - to the exclusion, in each case, of the
established arche and its culture of
hegemony.
It
is perhaps philosophy, as with no other field of study, that could address our
concerns with respect to the overwhelming transformations of human sexuality
and existence, since the agricultural and industrial revolutions, but
especially in the last fifty, twenty, ten, five, one year(s), amid this -
Yet,
it does not whisper a word in its sanitized corridors (except for stale
references to Foucault, the dusty fate to which even Bataille will not escape)
upon the forbidden depths of human sexuality (it leaves that to the diaspora in the other disciplines and to
popular culture).
Indeed,
there are, to this very moment, epistemological and existential taboos
surrounding questions of ‘our’ sexuality.
Is that which is disclosed an aspect of our ‘nature’ or existence, and
how are we to respond to this revelation of ‘ourselves’?
Of
course, the question of the eroticisation of one’s own subordination should be
explored, but this is a topic that cannot be addressed in the terms of morality
or amid the current sexual aesthetics.
To
a significant extent, this question
exposes the tactical and strategic implications of the internet (technology in
the sense of Heidegger’s Question
Concerning Technology), in the dissemination of the ‘ghost’ of sexuality per se (Derrida) –
Foucault
would have loved the internet, the dimension of the ghost, sex and death.
This
awakens the questions of death and eroticism.
Such a question and disclosure begins to upstage modernity – as an echo, an aspect, thread, culture, discursive
formation, iconography of these pre-historical and post-historical ‘ways of
life’.
Philosophy
had long made a theme of eros, in
Empedocles and Plato (the Symposium,
for instance), Aristotle, Augustine, Eckhart, Bruno, Leibniz, Kant, Schelling,
Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bataille, Heidegger, Deleuze, Derrida,
Foucault, Wittgenstein, Kristeva, Iriguray, to name only a few – not mention
poets and artists (including film makers) who are inexorably intertwined in
this grand conversation/contestation amid our strange existence.
Each
of these is trying to say that our lives are more than laws enacted by whatever
current arche, theory, state,
government, tribe - that our desire is insurmountable, and must be acknowledged
as a force in our discussions.
It
would seem that having acknowledged eroticism as a form of life (as an
unimpeachable aspect of the human condition), and as expression as art and
intimate practises, philosophy would turn to pornography, erotic art and sexual
practises in a similar manner. Indeed,
it could well be argued that pornography is a genre of art, even if, low art.
But, the opinion on pornography has been mixed between a small
smattering of advocates, those who oppose it, and those who either tolerate or
consume it.
Yet,
when did low art lose its
appeal? Did the internet come too
late? Or, does it not swallow low art,
give it a place for expression, but one of no consequence?
Such
a terrain compels the philosopher to begin to deal with the underground events
behind the mask of aesthetics and the ‘industry’, amid the body (which is not
that of the mind), culture, the soul – and the criticisms of pornography from a
moral, ethical or political basis. Of course, there are also many free spirits
who embrace pornography as a means of liberation and expression (Cf.
Klossowski, Bellmer), and this includes all of the various sub-genres of
pornography, including the most ‘extreme’.
We
are familiar with these battles and ceaselessly hear everyone’s best lines on
the matter. Yet, as many of ‘us’ feel
compromised even dealing with this topic, not to mention mere eroticism, not to
mention pornography and extreme pornography, it seems that there has been
erected, ironically – or perhaps tragically - a barrier to research into
contemporary sexual existence and expression as the guilty conscience of the researcher. This could be symptomatic of a culture of
weakness, as we could discern easily enough from Nietzsche.
‘We’
recoil amid the dark depths of our enlightenment.
Indeed,
if the law which is being discussed is passed, this would mean that an
intellectual researcher of eroticism and ‘pornography’ (as expressions of human
sexual existence) would be criminalised. The fact that this present, my very
writing now (and you become complicit as you read) may be criminalised or held
suspect (if it is not already so) in less than a months time is quite
disturbing.
We
may think of Foucault in this context, in relation to the exposure of a truth
regime to its existence as conflict, and should expand our reflections upon
this matter in a serious manner – and act
the
deed is all ..
Behind
all of this chatter, expression and politik
about sexuality, gender, eroticism, pornography, sexual violence, there lies an
unarticulated question – and one that genuinely seduces us into an abyss.
An
un-important question distracts us: What are ‘they’ trying to hide?
Yet,
each of us already always knows and feels what ‘they’ try to hide, ‘in’ their
idle chatter and gossip.
Each
of us is complicit in the secret, we, each of us, knows what we are trying to
hide.
Yet,
should we bother to hide it? Indeed, it
is upon this sexual topography that we build our world. Yet, we can still articulate the question:
Do
not these images and films indicate a depth to the human creature, and, are
these images and films not indicative of the primal desires (even if extreme)
that are felt, imagined or expressed amid the human condition, not as
deviations to be tolerated, but regarded as authentic desires and narratives
with respect to the event, flux, of human, finite, existence?
Is
it possible that an exploration of our more darker sides will enlighten us as
to the authentic meaning of our finite existence?
Shall
we be Juliet or Justine?
(2007)