|
Pornotopia
Pornotopia is an idea in critical theory describing an imagined space determined by fantasies and dominated by human sexual activity, expressed in and encompassing pornography and erotica. The word was coined by American literary critic Steven Marcus in his 1966 book ''The Other Victorians'', deriving inspiration from nineteenth-century English literature on sexuality by moralists, physicians and erotic authors. American sociologist Daniel Bell expounded on the idea, viewing the promotion and enforcement of enjoyment in late capitalism as the ground for society's pornotopia, paradoxically going against the bourgeois virtues of sobriety, chastity and purity that the system of capitalism was historically built alongside. Structure A pornotopia is characterized by its freedom from the normal social restraints of place and time ingrained by the Real, instead orienting around unconscious laws of enjoyment. Steven Marcus summarized this aspect with the principle that "it is alway ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steven Marcus
Steven Paul Marcus (December 13, 1928 – April 25, 2018) was an American academic and literary critic who published influential psychoanalytic analyses of the novels of Charles Dickens and Victorian pornography. He was George Delacorte Professor Emeritus in the Humanities at Columbia University. Biography Early life Steven Marcus was born in New York City, the son of Nathan and Adeline Muriel (née Gordon) Marcus. His grandparents were emigrants from the countryside near Vilnius. Adeline and Nathan, both nominally observant Jews, were raised, met, and married in the Bronx, and Nathan attended business school for two years to become an accountant. Only ten months after Steven was born in 1928, the stock market crashed, leaving his father unemployed for six years and causing the family to slide into poverty. Steven’s sister, Debora, was born in 1936, and the family moved to a lower-class neighborhood in the Bronx called Highbridge, near Yankee Stadium, which was populated by Iri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Pearl (magazine)
''The Pearl: A Magazine of Facetiae and Voluptuous Reading'' was a pornographic monthly magazine issued in London during the mid-Victorian period by William Lazenby. It was closed down by the British authorities for violating contemporary standards of obscenity. Publication ''The Pearl'' ran for eighteen issues from July 1879 to December 1880, with two Christmas supplements. As an underground publication, it was limited to 150 copies and cost twenty-five pounds, which made it unusually expensive relative to comparable contemporaneous pornographic periodicals. The Christmas Annual, a crudely produced supplement that ran sixty pages, sold for three guineas. Only the special numbers contained illustrations. The publisher and editor, William Lazenby, also wrote some of the content. The magazine was distributed discreetly through mail order. Based on the cost and subject matter, the target audience appears to have been middle- and upper-class professionals. Two of the flagellant poem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Critical Theory
A critical theory is any approach to social philosophy that focuses on society and culture to reveal, critique and challenge power structures. With roots in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems stem more from social structures and cultural assumptions than from individuals. It argues that ideology is the principal obstacle to human liberation. Critical theory finds applications in various fields of study, including psychoanalysis, sociology, history, communication theory, philosophy and feminist theory. Specifically, Critical Theory (capitalized) is a school of thought practiced by the Frankfurt School theoreticians Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm, and Max Horkheimer. Horkheimer described a theory as critical insofar as it seeks "to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them." Although a product of modernism, and although many of the progenitors of Critical Theory were skeptical of postmoderni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag (; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer, philosopher, and political activist. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay "Notes on 'Camp'", in 1964. Her best-known works include the critical works ''Against Interpretation'' (1966), ''Styles of Radical Will'' (1968), ''On Photography'' (1977), and ''Illness as Metaphor'' (1978), as well as the fictional works ''The Way We Live Now'' (1986), ''The Volcano Lover'' (1992), and '' In America'' (1999). Sontag was active in writing and speaking about, or travelling to, areas of conflict, including during the Vietnam War and the Siege of Sarajevo. She wrote extensively about photography, culture and media, AIDS and illness, human rights, and leftist ideology. Her essays and speeches drew controversy, and she has been described as "one of the most influential critics of her generation." Early life and education Sontag was born Susan Rosenblatt in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kinsey Institute
The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction (often shortened to The Kinsey Institute) is a research institute at Indiana University. Established in Bloomington, Indiana, in 1947 as a nonprofit, the institute merged with Indiana University in 2016, "abolishing the 1947 independent incorporation absolutely and completely." The institute's mission is "To foster and promote a greater understanding of human sexuality and relationships through research, outreach, education, and historical preservation." Research, graduate training, information services, and the collection and preservation of library, art, and archival materials are main activities carried out by The Kinsey Institute. The institute and Alfred Kinsey himself have been the subject of much controversy. As of July 1, 2019, evolutionary biologist and sex researcher Justin Garcia holds the title of executive director of The Kinsey Institute, previously noted as the institute's research director. Garcia i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, , ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and published papers that were later collected in the book ''Écrits''. His work made a significant impact on continental philosophy and cultural theory in areas such as post-structuralism, critical theory, feminist theory and film theory, as well as on the practice of psychoanalysis itself. Lacan took up and discussed the whole range of Freudian concepts, emphasizing the philosophical dimension of Freud's thought and applying concepts derived from structuralism in linguistics and anthropology to its development in his own work, which he would further augment by employing formulae from predicate logic and topology. Taking this new direction, and introducing controversial innovations in clinical practice, led to expulsion for Lacan and his foll ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reality Principle
In Freudian psychology and psychoanalysis, the reality principle (german: Realitätsprinzip) is the ability of the mind to assess the reality of the external world, and to act upon it accordingly, as opposed to acting on the pleasure principle. Allowing the individual to defer (put off) instant gratification, the reality principle is the governing principle of the actions taken by the ego, after its slow development from a "pleasure-ego" into a "reality-ego": it may be compared to the triumph of reason over passion, head over heart, rational over emotional mind, human values over animal instinct. History Freud argued that “an ego thus educated has become ‘reasonable’; it no longer lets itself be governed by the pleasure principle, but obeys the reality principle, which also, at bottom, seeks to obtain pleasure, but pleasure which is assured through taking account of reality, even though it is pleasure postponed and diminished”. In his introductory lectures of 1915, at t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Imaginary (psychoanalysis)
The Imaginary (or Imaginary Order) is one of three terms in the psychoanalytic perspective of Jacques Lacan, along with the Symbolic and the Real. Each of the three terms emerged gradually over time, undergoing an evolution in Lacan's own development of thought. "Of these three terms, the 'imaginary' was the first to appear, well before the Rome Report of 1953…hen thenotion of the 'symbolic' came to the forefront."Sheridan, Alan. 1994. "Translator's Note" in '' The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis'', edited by J. Miller, ''Penguin Psychology Series''. London: Penguin Books. . Indeed, looking back at his intellectual development from the vantage point of the 1970s, Lacan epitomised it as follows: "I began with the Imaginary, I then had to chew on the story of the Symbolic ... and I finished by putting out for you this famous Real."As quoted in Mellard, James M. 2006. ''Beyond LacanSUNY series in Psychoanalysis and Culture'' Albany: State University of New York Press ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Story Of O
''Story of O'' (french: Histoire d'O, link=no, ) is an erotic novel published in 1954 by French author Anne Desclos under the pen name Pauline Réage, and published in French by Jean-Jacques Pauvert. Desclos did not reveal herself as the author for 40 years after the initial publication. Desclos stated she wrote the novel as a series of love letters to her lover Jean Paulhan, who had admired the work of the Marquis de Sade. The novel shares with the latter themes such as love, dominance, and submission. Plot ''Story of O'' is a tale of female submission involving a beautiful Parisian fashion photographer named O, who is taught to be constantly available for oral, vaginal, and anal intercourse, offering herself to any male who belongs to the same secret society as her lover. She is regularly stripped, blindfolded, chained, and whipped; her anus is widened by increasingly large plugs; her labium is pierced and her buttocks are branded. The story begins when O's lover, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anne Desclos
Anne Cécile Desclos (23 September 1907 – 27 April 1998) was a French journalist and novelist who wrote under the pen names Dominique Aury and Pauline Réage. She is best known for her erotic novel ''Story of O'' (1954). Early life Born in Rochefort, Charente-Maritime, France to a bilingual family, Desclos began reading in French and English at an early age. After completing her studies at the Sorbonne, she worked as a journalist until 1946 when she joined Gallimard Publishers as the editorial secretary for one of its imprints where she began using the pen name of Dominique Aury. An avid reader of English literature, Desclos either translated or introduced to readers in France such renowned authors as Algernon Charles Swinburne, Evelyn Waugh, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and numerous others. She became a critic and was made a member of the jury for several prominent literary awards. Career Desclos' lover and employer Jean Paulhan, a fervent admirer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Libido
Libido (; colloquial: sex drive) is a person's overall sexual drive or desire for sexual activity. Libido is influenced by biological, psychological, and social factors. Biologically, the sex hormones and associated neurotransmitters that act upon the nucleus accumbens (primarily testosterone and dopamine, respectively) regulate libido in humans. Social factors, such as work and family, and internal psychological factors, such as personality and stress, can affect libido. Libido can also be affected by medical conditions, medications, lifestyle and relationship issues, and age (e.g., puberty). A person who has extremely frequent sexual urges, or a suddenly increased sex drive may be experiencing hypersexuality, while the opposite condition is hyposexuality. In psychoanalytic theory, libido is psychic drive or energy, particularly associated with sexual instinct, but also present in other instinctive desires and drives. A person may have a desire for sex, but not have the opportu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Omnipotence
Omnipotence is the quality of having unlimited power. Monotheistic religions generally attribute omnipotence only to the deity of their faith. In the monotheistic religious philosophy of Abrahamic religions, omnipotence is often listed as one of a deity's characteristics, along with omniscience, omnipresence, and omnibenevolence. The presence of all these properties in a single entity has given rise to considerable theological debate, prominently including the problem of evil, the question of why such a deity would permit the existence of evil. It is accepted in philosophy and science that omnipotence can never be effectively understood. Etymology The word ''omnipotence'' derives from the Latin prefix ''omni''-, meaning "all", and the word ''potens'', meaning "potent" or "powerful". Thus the term means "all-powerful". Meanings Scholasticism The term omnipotent has been used to connote a number of different positions. These positions include, but are not limited to, the followi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.jpg "Click for more on -> Susan Sontag")
.jpg "Click for more on -> Kinsey Institute")
.jpg "Click for more on -> Libido")