COMP 421 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Orgasm, Religious Symbolism, Safeword
27 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
● S/m has evolved to be able to be applied to things outside of the physically erotic
● Can be used to frame political theory
● Opens the possibility of transcendence
Bataille
● Continuity/discontinuity - what does this mean?
● Reproduction implies the existence of discontinuity
○ He points to moments where there are two beings but there aren’t
■ Asexual - splitting, there are two but also continuous
■ Sexual - sperm and ovum join together in continuity
○ (12) “beings which reproduce themselves are distinct from one another…”
■ There is always a gulf
■ Death becomes the moment where we lose that sense of distinction
● Life is the loss of continuity
● (17) ”the whole business of eroticism is to strike to the inmost ore of the living being…”
● Active male / Passive female - paving the way for fusion where both are mingled
○ Objective is to dissolve both
○ Is is harder to read the top than the bottom in this light - there are not enough
tops - everyone wants to be “sacrificed”
● (18) “murder as a pinnacle of erotic excitement”
● Divine/religious eroticism -
● Willingness to get rid of our own borders in order for us to get to the farthest bounds of
possibility - suicidal…?
MacKendrick
m-powerment
● Foucault - idea of resistance/restraint, idea of self-control
● Power is relational
● Taking pleasure in the body’s force against power
○ Startle/disrupt power
● Nietzsche - power wants to grow/expand
○ Restraint forces it to keep pushing
○ (106) power of the will is directed toward obstacles
○ Restraint/resistance to push the self past the self
○ Pushes beyond what you think you can take - pain
○ It needs something to push against
○ (119) Rejecting the eroticization of powerlessness
○ It is about forestalling, traditional sex is built around orgasm, here the gratification
is not the point, it is about intensification
● (107) masochism is wholly unlike oppression
○ Religious symbolism
○ “One could not do so alone” - you cannot push past the self without help
○ It cannot be like oppression because it does not seek to remove resistance
■ It demands resistance
○ Resisting the idea of a telos (109)
Document Summary
S/m has evolved to be able to be applied to things outside of the physically erotic. Can be used to frame political theory. He points to moments where there are two beings but there aren"t. Asexual - splitting, there are two but also continuous. Sexual - sperm and ovum join together in continuity. (12) beings which reproduce themselves are distinct from one another . Death becomes the moment where we lose that sense of distinction. (17) the whole business of eroticism is to strike to the inmost ore of the living being . Active male / passive female - paving the way for fusion where both are mingled. Is is harder to read the top than the bottom in this light - there are not enough tops - everyone wants to be sacrificed . (18) murder as a pinnacle of erotic excitement . Foucault - idea of resistance/restraint, idea of self-control. Taking pleasure in the body"s force against power.
