Sadomasochism in Art and Politics


Book Description

Dr Estela V. Welldon contests the view that sadomasochism is an isolated 'perversion'. Using numerous examples from literature, film, opera and other media, she undertakes an exploration of the psychodynamic aspects of sadomasochism that carries us from the writings of de Sade and von Sacher-Masoch to the contemporary underground S & M club scene. Challenging our expectations that S & M is concerned only with 'bizarre' activities, Dr Welldon illuminates the dynamics of power and control in everyday family life and sexual relationships. Her investigation deepens to include the downward spiral of domestic violence and child abuse, and the 'malignant bonding' between couples in cases such as Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, and Fred and Rosemary West. Is sadomasochism invariably present in the victim-perpetrator cycle? Is it learned or innate? Are sadism and masochism complete opposites or do they complement one another? Are they specifically related to the genders? Dr Welldon asks these questions and many more in a fluent, thought provoking essay.




Contract with the Skin


Book Description

Having oneself shot. Putting out fires with the bare hands and feet. Biting the body and photographing the marks. Sewing one's own mouth shut--all in front of an audience. What do these kinds of performances tell us about the social and historical context in which they occurred? Fascinating and accessibly written, CONTRACT WITH THE SKIN addresses the question in relation to psychoanalytic and legal concepts of masochism. 34 photos.




Aubrey Beardsley and Victorian Sexual Politics


Book Description

In the first serious examination of Aubrey Beardsley's drawings, poetry, and unfinished erotic novel, this book looks beyond dismissals of Beardsley's work, and offers a stimulating reconsideration of his artistic perspective. By examining Beardsley's work within the social, artistic, and literary context of the 1890's, Zatlin demonstrates that behind the choice of his subject matter there was more than simply a desire for sexual exploration: there was also a serious protest against hypocrisy and against the sexist social conventions that fostered that hypocrisy. She explores the various types of women revealed in his art, and argues convincingly that gender relations were Beardsley's overwhelming concern, and that his main achievement emerged as an erotic art which challenged public sexual morality.




Aesthetic Sexuality


Book Description

To understand why the concept of aesthetic sexuality is important, we must consider the influence of the first volume of Foucault's seminal The History of Sexuality. Arguing against Foucault's assertions that only scientia sexualis has operated in modern Western culture while ars erotica belongs to Eastern and ancient societies, Byrne suggests that modern Western culture has indeed witnessed a form of ars erotica, encompassed in what she calls ‘aesthetic sexuality'. To argue for the existence of aesthetic sexuality, Byrne examines mainly works of literature to show how, within these texts, sexual practice and pleasure are constructed as having aesthetic value, a quality that marks these experiences as forms of art. In aesthetic sexuality, value and meaning are located within sexual practice and pleasure rather than in their underlying cause; sexuality's raison d'être is tied to its aesthetic value, at surface level rather than beneath it. Aesthetic sexuality, Byrne shows, is a product of choice, a deliberate strategy of self-creation as well as a mode of social communication.




Carnal Aesthetics


Book Description

Art today is an increasingly multifaceted phenomenon, encompassing transgressive works that intervene in war and ecological disasters, in inequalities and revolutionary changes in technology. Carnal Aesthetics is a fascinating, new examination of this aspect of contemporary visual culture. Employing recent theories of transgressive body imagery, trauma, affect and sensation, it provides a fresh look at the meeting point between the politics of representation and the politics of perception through the prismatic lens of feminist theory. Acclaimed scholars analyse a wide range of seminal case studies coming from different media: digital photography, painting, video, film and multimedia art. They explore here a number of transgressive movements that significantly reconfigure the relationship between the body and the image. Unlike other books on the complex relationship between politics and aesthetics, Carnal Aesthetics seeks to provide a novel approach to art and culture by challenging the primacy of vision and by injecting an intersectional perspective into the fields of visual studies, film and media studies, as well as trauma studies. It is a significant contribution across these dynamic fields of exploration for scholars who deal with the socio-political nature of contemporary visual culture in their work.




The Culture and Politics of Populist Masculinities


Book Description

The ideologies and practices of various populist movements are centered on issues of gender, especially idealized notions of masculinity. Offering cultural, political, and historical approaches from a range of interdisciplinary and international perspectives, The Culture and Politics of Populist Masculinities analyzes articulations and performances that link populism to masculinity. In particular, the collection studies political participation in the form of public debates, media, and popular culture. The authors emphasize that in order to understand what can be defined as populism, we need to look at the culture that it inhabits and the efforts to claim, challenge, and reclaim the popular. Writing from a wide range of international contexts, the contributors to The Culture and Politics of Populist Masculinities explore how populist masculinities are articulated and performed, whether there is something problematic about a specifically masculine populism, and whether there is hope for a pluralist, inclusive, even progressive form of masculine populism. Culture and Politics of Populist Masculinities’ international range of contributors explore how populist masculinities are articulated and performed, whether there is something problematic about a specifically masculine populism, and whether there is hope for a pluralist, inclusive, even progressive form of masculine populism.




The Political Power of Visual Art


Book Description

Visual art has a ubiquitous political cast today. But which politics? Daniel Herwitz seeks clarity on the various things meant by politics, and how we can evaluate their presumptions or aspirations in contemporary art. Drawing on the work of William Kentridge, drenched in violence, race, and power, and the artworld immolations of Banksy, Herwitz's examples range from the NEA 4 and the question of offense-as-dissent, to the community driven work of George Gittoes, the identity politics of contemporary American art and (for contrast with the power of visual media) literature written in dialogue with truth commissions. He is interested in understanding art practices today in the light of two opposing inheritances: the avant-gardes and their politicization of the experimental art object, and 18th-century aesthetics, preaching the autonomy of the art object, which he interprets as the cultural compliment to modern liberalism. His historically-informed approach reveals how crucial this pair of legacies is to reading the tensions in voice and character of art today. Driven by questions about the capacity of the visual medium to speak politically or acquire political agency, this book is for anyone working in aesthetics or the art world concerned with the fate of cultural politics in a world spinning out of control, yet within reach of emancipation.







Sarah Waters: Gender and Sexual Politics


Book Description

Sarah Waters: Gender and Sexual Politics uniquely brings together feminist and queer theoretical perspectives on gender and sexuality through close analysis of works by Sarah Waters. This timely study examines topics ranging from heterosexuality, homosexuality, masculinities, femininities, sex, pornography, and the cultural effects of othering and domination across her work. The book covers each of Waters's published novels to date including Tipping the Velvet, Fingersmith and The Paying Guests and also considers her non-fiction and academic writing as well as the television adaptations of her texts. O'Callaghan situates Water's writing as an important textual space for the examination of contemporary gender and sexuality studies and locates her as an astute commentator and contributor to twenty-first century gender and sexual politics.




Masochism


Book Description

How does the male masochist provide a metaphor for modern and postmodern power? Present orthodoxy understands masculine power as invested in unity, identity, presence and technology. In this provocative work, however, Mansfield challenges our fundamental assumptions about masculine power in the postmodern era. Utilizing representations of masochism in literature, psychopathology, philosophy and cultural theory, the author argues that masculine power can now best be understood as masochistic.