Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Pornosophy: The Wretched of the Earth


How can misery be such a turn on? You've seen the videos of domination in which either men or women may find themselves on the long end of a leash, being walked around like a dog. A whole branch of porn from the Marquis de Sade on of course is based on the pleasure that derives from pain and a good part of the subtext involves class struggle. The Marquis was an aristocrat and many of his guinea pigs were his maids (in one case he notoriously went to prison for sodomizing a man servant). Sex is is a form of imperialism in that in promotes the idea of a food chain or hierarchy and many of the pleasures that the #Metoo movement is trying to reeducate the public about have to do with the droit du seigneur. A TV series like Mad Men, set in the world of 50’s advertising, creates a perfect template in which to paint the intersection between ambition (social climbing) and desire. The question is, from whence does the orgasm derive? Is it about a man and woman, or two male and female counterparts on an even playing field, or is it essentially a product of economics. Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus: Capitialism and Schizophrenia proposes essentially a Marxist theory of sexuality. When you eliminate the power or hegemonic element from sexual relations, you eventually seek to do away with the notion of sex as a form of attack or rape of the disadvantaged by those who hold the reins of power. In so doing the nature of the pleasure principle is epigenetically transformed and the Wretched of the Earth are no longer a centerfold. 

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