Erotism

Erotism and pornography

The erotism is different from the Pornographie in what the pornography defines only what is shown (i.e. the human sexual relationship shown explicitly) while the erotism defines only what is felt (i.e. the sexual excitation). The pornography is thus not an erotism more " corsé". It belongs to another semantic field. It happens that the pornography and the erotism merge (the pornography being a means to reach a goal : the erotic feeling, the excitation), as it happens that they do not have anything to see. Examples:

Erotism without pornography: an attitude, a posture or a gesture of a person who, although vêtue and not doing anything particularly " sexy" , at an observer an excitation causes.
Pornography without erotism: pornographic films which leave the indifferent spectator (for much of people, the interacting body in a mechanical way, without anything to express and without felt do not cause anything) or of artistic works which use the pornography like average an esthetics (see certain work of H.R. Giger).
Pornography with erotism: these same pornographic films, on another public (or then realized differently, with a certain talent of setting in scene or interpretation for example) can completely create a sexual excitation.

In the language running however, the term of pornography is often perceived only like one intensification of the erotism - to see for example the press TV and the way in which it classifies films: a " film érotique" do not show the sexual organs (contrary to a " film pornographique") without however being inevitably erotic , i.e. ready to cause the excitation at the spectator. He is also sometimes seen like a perversion of the erotism, this last being considered to be nobler and more end because not showing supposed parts of the body obscenes. This confusion comes owing to the fact that the majority of pornographic works are made before very causing erotic feelings.

The English terms of software and hardware are then used to differentiate the value from these two terms which one puts in the same semantic field, the erotism being software and the pornography hardware . As the distinction between software and hardware remains specific to the appreciation of each one, it is clear that the use in the language running of the terms of pornography and erotism makes difficult and often confused any analysis of the subject.

André Breton summarized this question in an answer to double direction: " the pornography it is the erotism of the autres".

Imagination, seduction and appropriate dress

Particularly at the Man S, the erotism is often related to the sight. The reactions will be of course different from one person to another, but there is some " fondamentaux" anchored well in our imaginary.

Thus often, somebody will find tempting, even erotic, an equipped person short, or even of which clothing bucket (like Roland Barthes in the quotation writes it below), even still a person vêtue of a Vêtement grinding. The erotism can also come in this case from stimulation from imagination, imagination magnifie what is not visible, potentially makes it even more beautiful in the spirit of the observer; for this reason much of men find a woman in lower part much more erotic than a completely naked woman. Indeed, the infinite spring potentially rising from imagination does not exist any more or is seriously decreased.

Same manner, the erotism can be also stimulated by the ambiguity of an attitude, the suggestion, the nonknown as one, even the promise of a future situation, because imagination is requested also better. That belonged to the spring of seduction of much of women, consciously or unconsciously. It is in this direction that it is necessary to include/understand the quotation of Sacha Guitry: the best moment of the love, it is when one climbs .

As that is very well explained by the authors of this last article, certain clothing (or accessories) can cause at each and everyone a sexual Fétichisme, i.e. an attraction Sexuelle characterized by a strong erotic excitation with the sight of this clothing. It is of course the case of certain clothing, but it is also the case of accessories, such as the boots (riding boots, cuissardes).

This erotism will be born sometimes from the transgression operated by the person who " ose" not to return in the ambient uniformity while pointing out itself by its appropriate dress, its " look".

Erotic cat or Cybersex

With the arrival of Internet, developed a new form of erotism entirely based on the imagination and the use of the words. Certain people appreciate this form of erotism because it makes it possible to speak about its phantasms in full safety, anonymity, and while being released from inhibitions and the social constraints of the real life.

During the erotic dialogs, the partners engage in called virtual Roleplays " scenarios" in the Jargon of the Cat, where they think in very explicit situations erotic, describing with precision their desires and their phantasms. These simulations pushed to the extreme can be of a very realistic nature for some.

An erotic tradition of correspondence exists for a long time. One of most known is that having existed between Georges Sand and Frederic Chopin; but the innovation introduced by the erotic cat is anonymity, instantaneity and the fast availability multiple and different partners belonging to varied sociocultural mediums, being able to appease all the phantasms.

Philosophical approach

the philosopher Michel Henry makes a phenomenologic description of the erotism and love affair in its book “Incarnation, a philosophy of the flesh”.
Roland Barthes: " The erotism it is when clothing baille"
Jean-Clet Martin treats the report/ratio of the erotism with eternity: 100 words to enjoy the erotism , ED. Hinderers/Threshold.

Erotism and finitude

According to Georges Bataille, there is erotism only for one finished individual, centered on itself, and which however feels thorough to be melted, with the risk to lose itself there, in a community with others, carnal community, community of feeling and felt, written Lévinas to describe the significant proximity of the bodies, i.e. pleasure. The erotism must much with curiosity, or rather fascination, for a body makes differently than ours.

More deeply, the erotism is the promise of coincidence, however impossible if not charnellement, between these two worlds which are two distinct people (see the Banquet of Plato and the speech that it puts in the mouth of Aristophane).

Thus, the act in love takes part of the profanation. The erotism is a tournament, where it is a question of leading the other to leave its withdrawal, to expose itself. The caress would be according to Sartre a true incantation. It invites the partner to invest his body, with being its body, offering themselves, not like pure flesh, but like flesh inhabited by a person, a freedom. But, note Michel Leiris, “to hold crowned” is “finally to destroy it by stripping it little by little its character of strangeness”.

Always in the Banquet of Plato, one sees Socrate explaining why the erotism aims higher than the community and the complementarity of the lovers, than it makes sign towards Truth.

Like the religion, the erotism confronts the individual with a creative power which exceeds it. Less perhaps God, or the Idea of the Beautiful, that life, sexuality with the biological direction of the term, reproduction.

Crowned, sexuality is at the same time alarming and attracting. According to Bataille, it is not immoral as well as it does not suspend the individual morals in the name of the life and of the species. The erotism has this of commun run with the death which he refutes closing on oneself of the individual, closing to which he owes his conscience and his me. The sexual instinct, related to the reproduction, exceeds the horizon of the instinct of self-preservation. The individual does not reproduce because it is mortal, it is mortal so that the life can be renewed.

Sexuality and seduction

Simone de Beauvoir, in the Second Sex , underlined at which point, in the case of the mammals, sexuality takes a different direction for the male and the female. In the latter, “individuality is not asserted: the female abdicates itself with the profit of the species which claims this abdication”. Also, the male would have especially to play the part of the tempter, even of the attacker, to express his vital power by a free and splendid luxury. The coquettery, which consists in fleeing what one requests, to refuse and to be given, would be the expression of the apprehension of the female, who saw the childbirth in his flesh, is alienated there.

The erotism is opposed however to the brutality of the desire, or at least disguises it. Alain written in connection with the dance in love that it is good that “the animal does not show itself too much, and finally that it is humanized”. The erotism expresses at the same time the proximity of frenzy and the capacity to retain it. It is sublimation, however to divert us not as well sexuality as to purify it of any trouble. The erotism, it is sexuality become art and rate/rhythm.

One is right thus to distinguish it from the pornography, which is a form of negation of the desire and personality of the other. The obscene takes part of realism. It presents the flesh, or the act, in all its materiality. He denies the female one, which exists only in the withdrawal. There is however well at the bottom of the erotic play the horizon of the flesh. It equips the other with purity only for best stripping some. The thinker Emmanuel Lévinas writes that “beautiful art reverses the beauty of the female face” by depriving it its depth and of its carnal disorder, by making beauty a form recovering the indifferent matter of the table or the statue. The word " invertit" fact, perhaps, allusion to the Platonic love, which concerns young boys and who aims at rising by sublimation of the beauty of the body to that of the heart and the Ideas. But in erotic nudity “the face blunts” and “is prolonged, with ambiguity, in animality”. The ambiguity of the beauty would be that of the face itself, which at the same time calls the respect and is offered to the profanation. “Disrespect supposes the face”.

Libertinage

Schopenhauer was struck by contrast between the lightness and the brilliance of the light-hearted gallantry and the serious one, any animal according to him, of the sex act. Also it compared the erotic play to a simple lure, a trap tended by the life itself to the intelligence and the individuality of the lovers. But one can, contrary, to notice that the erotism, which worries little about procreation, makes last the pleasure and the desire when the sexual instinct, left with itself, becomes exhausted quickly. The erotism is thus deeply human. Indeed, the mankind is made conspicuous in what she does not know the animal alternation of the sexual indifference and the rut. It is in this space of indetermination which develop as well the vice squad as libertinage. The desire is caused so much any more by nature only by the art of the seduction. The pleasure is freed from any legitimation biological or social and posts itself with all the exemption from payment and the lightness of the play. The erotism merges then with all that the culture, ingeniousness, add, or cut off, with sexuality to make a pleasant and desirable play of it. The love itself then seems too constraining and too serious. In the Phèdre , Plato makes say to the Lysias speaker whom it is to better support the companies of seduction of those which do not like us, because they are much less importunate and inconsistent that in love ones. The erotism will be simply a form of civilization, like art or the conversation. There is however there a a little ridiculous attempt to standardize the erotic pleasure, to think it on the model of the gustatory pleasure. Isn't the erotism essentially confrontation with another body and another person, with the mystery of another experiment and another conscience?

There is of course also challenge in libertinage, as shown in the figure of Don Juan. The individual plays with fire, the " horn of taureau" according to the expression of Michel Leiris, i.e. the crowned powers of sexuality and death, approaches some with the risk to be burned there. It defies the forces which threaten its individuality and its independence, the marriage, the diseases, the love, and finds finally itself, unchanged. Libertinage neighbor dangerously also with the machism. Simone de Beauvoir noted indeed that the mammalian male is detached from the female at the time when it fertilizes it. Thus “the male at the time when it exceeds its individuality locks up there again”. It is true that the contraception and the liberalization of manners also allow the woman this form of erotic play.

See too

Love
Sexuality
Museum of the Erotism
Shunga (engraving) erotic Japanese women.

External bonds

erotic answers of prehistoric art: a lighting bataillien

Fiu-vro: Erootiga Simple: Eroticism

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