Today is a Thinking Day
Last year, I wrote a paper for my Foucault class on the relationship between philosophy and sadomasochism. In that paper, I wrote, but did not quite understand myself, this:
Through these desexualized events that challenged the norms of sexual sexual practice by using the body as a source of sensual pleasure beyond the genital, the S/M practitioners of San Francisco realized Foucault's ideal of "mak[ing] of one's body a place for the production of extraordinarily polymorphic pleasures, while simultaneously detaching it from a valorization of the genitalia... particularly of the male genitalia." Foucault, after exposing the reification of genitalia as a social construction, advocates for greater polymorphousness should not aim at "a 'liberation' of 'sex-desire,' but rather 'at a general economy of pleasure not based on sexual norms.' "
I think I finally get now what Foucault thought was missing from the sensual/tactile world at large and how the San Francisco S/M scene filled that void. While sight is served aesthetically by film and the other visual arts, sound by music and poetry, taste by cuisine, and smell by a number of corporations, there are no institutions -- or perhaps even common practices -- devoted to the cultivation, refinement, development, and/or aesthetics of the sense of touch outside the binary of pleasure via sex and pain via asceticism. Sadomasochism -- the "desexualized" kind that doesn't end in orgasm (I'm paraphrasing descriptions by practitioners here) -- occupies, then, a unique place in sensory experience, for it is (was?) seemingly devoted to a wide variety of tactile stimulation in quality and in intensity over the range of the body (not just the genitals).
Thinking about this, I'm reminded of the fact that every time I watch "Fight Club," I yearn to punch someone, not as an expression of anger or aggression, but just to learn what punching someone feels like. I could just punch a wall, you might argue, but that seems much more painful than, and qualitatively much different from, hitting flesh over bone. This is why the monopolization of tactile experimentation by sex is regrettable. People -- if I may briefly universalize -- clearly crave stimulation as leisure and as art/sublimity; we go to all kinds of restaurants and museums and schools and churches and countries to try new sensory, intellectual, affective, and spiritual experiences. Since much of the "avant-garde" is mediated by such public institutions as museums, and many museums already conceptualize their exhibits as "experiences" (e.g., performance art) rather than mere presentations of art works, it seems a natural (and for me, quite desirable) extension to create galleries that cater (exclusively) to tactile stimulation and exploration.
Through these desexualized events that challenged the norms of sexual sexual practice by using the body as a source of sensual pleasure beyond the genital, the S/M practitioners of San Francisco realized Foucault's ideal of "mak[ing] of one's body a place for the production of extraordinarily polymorphic pleasures, while simultaneously detaching it from a valorization of the genitalia... particularly of the male genitalia." Foucault, after exposing the reification of genitalia as a social construction, advocates for greater polymorphousness should not aim at "a 'liberation' of 'sex-desire,' but rather 'at a general economy of pleasure not based on sexual norms.' "
I think I finally get now what Foucault thought was missing from the sensual/tactile world at large and how the San Francisco S/M scene filled that void. While sight is served aesthetically by film and the other visual arts, sound by music and poetry, taste by cuisine, and smell by a number of corporations, there are no institutions -- or perhaps even common practices -- devoted to the cultivation, refinement, development, and/or aesthetics of the sense of touch outside the binary of pleasure via sex and pain via asceticism. Sadomasochism -- the "desexualized" kind that doesn't end in orgasm (I'm paraphrasing descriptions by practitioners here) -- occupies, then, a unique place in sensory experience, for it is (was?) seemingly devoted to a wide variety of tactile stimulation in quality and in intensity over the range of the body (not just the genitals).
Thinking about this, I'm reminded of the fact that every time I watch "Fight Club," I yearn to punch someone, not as an expression of anger or aggression, but just to learn what punching someone feels like. I could just punch a wall, you might argue, but that seems much more painful than, and qualitatively much different from, hitting flesh over bone. This is why the monopolization of tactile experimentation by sex is regrettable. People -- if I may briefly universalize -- clearly crave stimulation as leisure and as art/sublimity; we go to all kinds of restaurants and museums and schools and churches and countries to try new sensory, intellectual, affective, and spiritual experiences. Since much of the "avant-garde" is mediated by such public institutions as museums, and many museums already conceptualize their exhibits as "experiences" (e.g., performance art) rather than mere presentations of art works, it seems a natural (and for me, quite desirable) extension to create galleries that cater (exclusively) to tactile stimulation and exploration.