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August 30, 2003
For the Unablogger boys. who happen to wander over to junk for code in a curious frame of mind to have a look see.
This post on cheescake as subversion was an early response to Unablogger.
Then this image by Edward Hopper is another response:
The erotic can be isolation. It is also about the disorder of the body. Nakedness also wrecks the decency, style and glam conferred by our clothes.
Another response is by Bataille who argued that the erotic challenges utility. Bataille says:
"Beside nudity there is the strangeness of half-clothed bodies; what garments there are serve to emphasize the disorder of the body and show it to be all the more naked, all the more disordered. Brutality and miurder are further steps in the same direction. Similarly prostitution, coarse language an everything to do with eroticisn and infamy play their part in turning the world of sensual pleasure into one of ruin and degradation. Our only real purpose is to squander our resource to no purpose, just as if a wound were bleeding away inside us; we always want to be sure of the uselessness or the ruinousness of our extravagence. We want to feel as remote from the world where thrift is the rule as we can." (Georges Bataille, Eroticism, p. 170)
Excess. That's how to subvert the world ruled by utility. That's Bataille.
Nay, that's not strong enough. The desire behind excess is one of wanting to turn the world upside down and inside out. The truth of eroticism is treason again utility. All the brakes are off. since treason involves transgressing those taboos that normally surround our lives.
Now that's sexual subversion.
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