The
body is the inscribed
surface of events (traced
by language and dissolved
by ideas), the locus
of a dissociated self
(adopting the illusion
of substantial unity),
and a volume in disintegration. Genealogy,
as an analysis of descent,
is thus situated within
the articulation of
the body and history. Its
task is to expose a
body totally imprinted
by history and the process
of history's destruction
of the body.
—Michel
Foucault, "Nietzsche,
Genealogy,
History" (1971)
Is
not the erotic portion
of the body where
the garment gapes?
In perversion (which is
the realm of textual pleasure)
there are no "erogenous
zones" (a
foolish expression, besides);
it is intermittence, as
psychoanalysis has so
rightly stated, which
is erotic: the intermittence
of skin flashing between
two articles of clothing
(trousers and sweater),
between two edges (the
open-necked shirt, the
glove and the sleeve);
it is this flash itself
which seduces, or rather:
the staging of an appearance-as-disappearance.
—Roland
Barthes, The
Pleasure
of
the
Text (1973)
The
problem with the body
as a positive slogan
[of the irreducible,
material real] is that
the body itself, as
a unified entity, is
an Imaginary concept
(in Lacan's sense);
it is what Deleuze calls
a "body
without organs," an
empty totality that
organizes the world
without participating
in it. We
experience the body
through our experience
of the world and of
other people, so that
it is perhaps a misnomer
to speak of the body
at all as a substantive
with a definite article,
unless we have in mind
the bodies of others,
rather than our own
phenomenological referent.
—Fredric
Jameson, "The
End
of
Temporality" (2003)
-
This
essay takes as
its subject both
the sexual body
as represented
in British romantic
fiction and the
imagination (is
it "literary" or "pornographic"?)
that was required
to envision that
body as a narrative
event. Situated
after the high
watermark of "libertine
literature" in
the 1740s and
50s but before
the emergence
of "pornography" proper
in the 1830s
and 40s, romantic
fiction inherited
the eighteenth
century's
conflicted
attitudes
about novelistic
pleasure but
was itself
produced in
a cultural
marketplace
that had not
yet fixed
and formulated
the discursive
opposition
between "literature" and "pornography." Overshadowed
by Foucault's
discussion
of the medical-moral
discourse
and its role
in the transformation
of sex into
sexuality—of
sexual acts
as isolated
performances
of a subject
into sexual
identity
as a totalizing
subjectivity
derived
from those
acts—the
emergence
of "literature" and "pornography" as
diametrically
opposed
but mutually
dependent
discursive
categories
occurred
at precisely
the same
time that
sexology
began
the work
that
would
provide
Foucault
with his
most compelling
example: the
creation
of "homosexuality" (The
History
of Sexuality,
Volume
1,
42-45,
85-91).[1] With
all
due
haste,
in
other
words,
historians
of
sexuality
have
considered
the
mid-nineteenth-century
transformation
of
the
sodomite
into
the
homosexual
but
have
neglected
to
connect
the
evolution
of
pornography
to
that
same
seismic,
discursive
shift. Relegated
to
the
periphery,
perhaps
because
of
its
own
unseemly
nature
or
perhaps
because
its
fantasies
appear
less
ideologically
forceful
than
those
of
medicine
or
public
policy,
pornography
remains
an
undervalued
but
crucially
important
feature
of
the
modern
state,
a
discourse
whose
status
as
worthless,
forgettable,
and
disposable
belies
both
its
ubiquity
and
its
undisputed
economic
power.
Writing
with
confidence
in
the
influential
collection, Sexual
Knowledge,
Sexual
Science:
The
History
of
Attitudes
to
Sexuality,
for
example,
Julia
Leslie
notes, "There
were
two
main
discourses
about
sexuality
in
early
modern
England,
one
religious,
one
medical" (83).
Historians
of
literature
would
disagree,
of
course, insisting
that
various
kinds
of
literature,
say
restoration
drama
or
the
eighteenth-century
novel,
were
similarly
influential
and
similarly
important
as
antecedents
to
the "modern" sexuality
of
the
nineteenth
century. Those
with
knowledge
of
libertine
literature
might
even
suggest
that
all
of
its
various
forms—bawdy
poetry,
whore
dialogues,
criminal
biographies,
divorce
proceedings,
salacious
medical
treatises,
scandal
fiction,
etc—together
constituted
a "proto-pornography" also
worthy
of
consideration.[2] But
neither
historians
of
sexuality,
nor
historians
of
literature
have
been
eager
to
include
the
emergence
of
pornography
as
one
of
the
premier
events
of
modern
culture. Even
Terry
Eagleton makes
a
compelling
case
for
the
invention
of
modern "literature" and "criticism" without
mention
of
pornography
and
its
sudden
appearance
in
the
early
nineteenth
century.[3] What
if,
however,
modern "literature" had
an
evil
twin,
a
shady
and
disreputable
other
whose
pleasures
mocked
the
refined
taste
of
the
public
sphere
even
as
they
embodied
the
quintessence
of
its
new
consumer
capitalism? What
if,
in
other
words,
literature
and
pornography
were
complementary
constructions
whose
Manichean
drama
(as
artificial
and
self-serving
a
contest
as
those
staged
by
professional
wrestling)
obscures
the
power
with
which
they
together
construct
and
deploy
sexual
norms
and
deviancies? Then,
presumably,
the
sexual
bodies
imagined
by
romantic
fiction
would
become
valuable
prehistory
to
our
modern
paradigms;
no
longer
either
legitimate
or
illegitimate
aesthetic
representations,
they
would
instead
become
both
imaginative
prefigurements
of
our
lived
realities
and
historical
records
of
the
evolving
conflicts
between
private
acts
and
the
public
domain
that
sought
at
once
to
express
and
control
those
acts.
-
When
Foucault writes
that "The
body is the inscribed
surface of events
(traced by language
and dissolved by
ideas), the locus
of a dissociated
self (adopting the
illusion of substantial
unity), and a volume
in disintegration," he
challenges the corporeal "real" as
always already inscribed
with the discursive
strictures within
which that real
appears. Such
inscription—the
body-as-text—tropes
the imprisonment
of nature by culture
and exposes the
power that discourse
wields to know its
object according
to its own designs. Foucault's
bodies—the
docile or normalized,
the criminal or
perverse, the homogeneous
or sanitized—must
be "read," the
invisible language
written on their
surfaces revealed
and decoded by an
act of the historical
revision: the historian
sees the body inscribed
over time by knowledge
and power. The
sexual bodies of
romantic fiction
are also seen by
acts of imagination,
envisioned both
as narrative and
human possibility
by authors testing
the abilities of
language to represent
and recreate somatic
pleasure. Envisioned
again by a nuanced
historicism, these
bodies speak volumes. No
less ideologically
freighted than the
bodies of history,
the bodies of fiction
can be seen as complex
sites where the
ideals and reals
of human sexuality
are tested against
the cultural moment. Although
made of words, these
bodies can also
live in the world:
they emerge from
living hands and
go forth from the
page to quicken
the pulse, excite
the desires, and
stir the flesh. Like
their historical
counterparts, the
sexual bodies of
romantic fiction
are both desirable
and desiring. They
too can choose to
reveal or conceal,
to expose or tantalize;
they too can watch
as other bodies
dance provocatively
in and out of view. Presorted
by the categorical
imperatives of the
nineteenth century,
however, these bodies
have stories unfairly
thrust upon them. "Literature" inscribes
a legitimacy that
pushes sexuality
under the protective
arm of humanism; "pornography" erases
subtle satire and
innovative technique
and philosophical
nuance and bestows
a juvenile, masculinist
fantasy uniform
in intent and unwaveringly
simplistic in effect. The
former reminds us
of what we are to
remember; the latter
of what
we are permitted
to forget.
-
But
is it the case
that these discursive
categories have
always been so
radically different? So
dramatically opposed
in intention and
effect? What
indeed of the
imagination that
brings them forth
in the world? A
difference of
degree or of kind? What
of the middle
ground? That
which is traditionally
figured as "erotic"?
Roland Barthes
insists that,
whether in language
or in life, eroticism
can be found "where
the garment gapes," where
the space between the
exposed and
the revealed
provokes wonder
and imagination
(9-10). Not
to be confused
with the schoolboy's
desire to have
the body fully
exposed, eroticism
is thus transformed
from a problem
of knowledge
and possession—of
knowing/seeing/having
the body of
the beloved—into
a problem of imagination
and relinquishment—of
seeing what
is to be seen
and imagining
what is not
and letting
go of the
illusion of
mastery. Barthes's
formulation
prohibits
the body's
status as
ultimate referent:
it is not
body's exposure
or possession
that excites;
it is the
gap itself,
the flash,
the space
between the
concealed
and the concealing. Desire,
he insists,
adheres to
intermittence. It
is more time
than space,
more narrative
than character. This
explains
at least
in part why
fiction and
film are
so far superior
to painting
and sculpture
as vehicles
for the erotic.
-
If
Foucault insists
that the sexual
body is discursively
contingent, then
Barthes insists
that some discursive
bodies are sexually
contingent, that
they defer and displace
meanings with playful
teasings that excite
and arouse the attentive
reader
Apparently
Arab scholars, when
speaking of the
text, use this admirable
expression: the
certain body. What
body? We
have several of
them; the body of
anatomists and physiologists,
the one science
sees or discusses:
this is the text
of grammarians,
critics, commentators,
philologists (the
pheno-text). But
we also have a body
of bliss consisting
solely of erotic
relations, utterly
distinct from the
first body: it is
another contour,
another nomination;
thus with the text:
it is more than
the open list of
the fires of language
(those living fires,
intermittent lights,
wandering features
strewn in the text
like seeds . . .). Does
the text have human
form, is it a figure,
an anagram of the
body? Yes,
but of our erotic
body. The
pleasure of the
text is irreducible
to physiological
need. (16-17)
The
opening distinction
between the body
of science and the
body of bliss in
no way mandates
that the former
prohibits the discussion
of pleasure and
that the latter
indulges it; to
the contrary, it
is not the subject
matter of the discourse
that determines
the distinction
but instead the
text's own awareness
of the meaning it
delivers: the "pheno-text," certain
of its ability to
transmit truth,
is cold and haughty;
the text of bliss
is alternately provocative,
flirtatious, and
coy. That closing
insistence—"The
pleasure of the
text is irreducible
to physiological
need"—pushes
the eroticism of
discursive body
squarely into the
realm of the imagination,
into the gap between
the certainties
of the text (what
it "means")
and the musings
of the reader (what
is envisioned). "The
pleasure of the
text is not certain," Barthes
contends, "nothing
says that this same
text will please
us a second time;
it is a friable
pleasure, split
by mood, habit circumstance,
a precarious pleasure
. . ." (52).
-
Taken
together, the two
bodies—the
sexual body of
Foucault's history
and the erotic
body of Barthes's
language—emphasize
both the obvious—an
ongoing romance
between lived
sexuality and
its modes of
representation—and
the not-so-obvious—that
sexuality
and its representations
share a choice
both of discursive
locations
and temporal
modes. Foucault's "sexuality" and
Barthes's "certain
body" move
out of historical
flux into
the atemporal
space of
knowable
essence. Whether
in life
or in language,
the body
can be hypostatized
as an eternal
object or
situated
as an imagined
event, a
process unfolding
in time. Not
surprisingly,
the different
temporal
modes occasion
very
different
kinds of "authorial" and "readerly" satisfaction
(terms
that I
am asking
to signify
both lived
and representational
acts). In
other
words,
when
bodies
are produced
and consumed
as objects,
both
in life
and in
language,
the satisfaction
is akin
to that
of mastery,
of knowing
the other,
of celebrating
spatial
dominance
over
temporal
exchange. So
conceived,
sexuality
deploys
desire
as
a means
to possession
and
ownership,
a kind
of somatic
consumerism. Conversely,
however,
bodies
can also
be experienced
as events,
less
objects
than
opportunity,
moments
in the
history
of subject
and
culture
alike
where
pleasure
can
be shared,
prolonged,
and
indulged. Pleasure
in time—as
opposed
to
desire
over
space—correlates
to
Foucault's
sexual
acts
(as
opposed
identity)
and
Barthes's
eroticism
(as
opposed
to
certainty). Crucial
to
the
staging
of
sexual
bodies
in
romantic
fiction,
temporality
is
not,
however,
an
unchanging
heuristic. On
the
contrary,
its
evolution
is
tied
directly
the
shifting
socioeconomic
order
out
of
which
it
emerges.
-
The
historicity of
the idea of the
temporal stands
tall amid contemporary
musings about our
changing cultural
sphere. Arguing,
for example, that
many recent treatments
have incorrectly "valoriz[d]
. . . the body
and its experience
as the only authentic
form of materialism," Fredric
Jameson contends
that a defining
tendency of
late capitalism
is the "reduction
to the present," which,
he insists,
occurs in
concert with
a "reduction
to the body": "it
seems clear
enough that
when you
have
nothing
left
but your
temporal
present,
it follows
that
you also
have nothing
left but
your own
body. The
reduction
to the present
can thus
also be
formulated
in terms
of a reduction
to the body
as a present
of time" (712).[4] Commensurate
with instantaneous
communication,
global
markets,
and colonized
subjectivities,
this reduction
signals
a larger
loss, the
loss of
history
from cultural
consciousness:
consuming,
entertaining,
desiring
everything
and wanting
nothing
in the
moment
erodes
past
and future
and limits
engagement
with the
complexities
of culture
over time.
Symptomatic
of this
reduction,
and the
larger
loss in
which
it participates,
is the "violence
pornography" of
American
action
films,
which,
according
to Jameson,
proffers
a "succession
of explosive
and
self-sufficient
present
moments
of violence" that
in
turn "gradually
crowds
out
the
development
of
narrative
time
and
reduces
plot
to the
merest
pretext
or
thread" (714). As
Jameson
notes
in
passing,
the
generic
predecessor
here
is
sexual
pornography,
whose "absolutely
episodic
nature" is
composed
of "intermittent
closures
[that]
are
allowed
to
be
a
good
deal
more
final." It
is
this
casual
nod
to
an
ill-bred
generic
relative—a
relative
stupidly
self-evident,
obstinately just
there on
the
cultural
landscape,
and
seemingly
both
important
and
not
to
the
larger
scheme
of
things—that
I
take
as
a
point
of
departure
for
my
own
musings
on
the
rise
and
fall
of
the
pornographic
imagination. Jameson
is
entirely
correct,
in
other
words,
to
suggest
that
sexual
pornography
is
the
purest
form
of
reduction-to-the-present
available
today
and
that
its
gross
panderings
to
the
desires
of
its
audience
provide
a
model
for
other
kinds
of
popular
entertainment,
but
he
misses
an
opportunity
to
think
about
how
and
why
this
may
be
important
to
our
cultural
moment. Is
it
the
case,
for
example,
that
contemporary
pornography
is
actually
about
sexuality
and
its
pleasures,
any
more
than
action
films,
say,
are
really
about
crime
and
punishment? If
pornography
is
about
sexuality,
what
kind
of
sexuality
is
it
and
how
does
that
sexuality
serve
larger
cultural
interests? Does
the
pornography
of
the
nineteenth
century
participate
in
the
normalizing
project
of
medical-moral
discourse
or
is
it
a
form
of
resistance
to
that
project? If
pornography
is
not
about
sexuality,
if
it
is
only
the
simulated
surface
of
a "real" vanquished
long
ago
by
forces
currently
invisible
to
the
historian,
how
do
we
understand
that
process
and
render
|
