from physiology to poetry
The sexual body is an inalienable aspect of the human condition. Eroticism, understood as a higher, cultured form of life derived from, and led away from the crudeness of human physiology, is an inalienable aspect of any literary tradition. Love stories, together with war narrations, are at the very beginning. The love song is the source of poetry.
Without going back as far as Freud, the reflection on eroticism led by Georges Bataille proved particularly influential. On the other hand, queer criticism of binarism of sexual categorization revolutionized our views on culture.
Eroticism is more than just a sublimation of sex. According to the old definition of Bataille, it is a space of human liberty. Love may be seen as a sphere of cultural transgression, especially when it builds upon absence, rather than presence, of the body. This approach is resumed in the title of my endlessly unfinished research project, EROTICISM OF TRACE, which starts with the absence of Su'ad in the old Arabian qasidah of Kab ibn Zuhayr. Su'ad, as the figure of eroticism, is a being without a body, pure absence, a deferral suspended in the temporal void, between "not yet" and "too late", a shape-shifting ghoul that feeds on other bodies, taking on their shape.
The core of this book, which undoubtedly will be very beautiful when I finally give birth to it, is composed of some chosen moments of Arabic erotic poetry, starting with the lyrical introitus to Banat Su'ad, and continues with a selection of juicy Romance examples, such as the famous sextain Lo ferm voler by Arnaut Daniel. My rather serendipitous proceedings, such as a paper on the aporetic eroticism of Ausiàs March or the considerations on the figure of Wallada bint al-Mustakfi as a poetic and erotic subject of a new type are clearly contributing to this study. Those threads of reflection cross-pollinate each other, and the final outcome will probably lead right to our time. Perhaps in a way announced in my essay on the posterity of Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya under the pen of Fatema Mernissi.
Without going back as far as Freud, the reflection on eroticism led by Georges Bataille proved particularly influential. On the other hand, queer criticism of binarism of sexual categorization revolutionized our views on culture.
Eroticism is more than just a sublimation of sex. According to the old definition of Bataille, it is a space of human liberty. Love may be seen as a sphere of cultural transgression, especially when it builds upon absence, rather than presence, of the body. This approach is resumed in the title of my endlessly unfinished research project, EROTICISM OF TRACE, which starts with the absence of Su'ad in the old Arabian qasidah of Kab ibn Zuhayr. Su'ad, as the figure of eroticism, is a being without a body, pure absence, a deferral suspended in the temporal void, between "not yet" and "too late", a shape-shifting ghoul that feeds on other bodies, taking on their shape.
The core of this book, which undoubtedly will be very beautiful when I finally give birth to it, is composed of some chosen moments of Arabic erotic poetry, starting with the lyrical introitus to Banat Su'ad, and continues with a selection of juicy Romance examples, such as the famous sextain Lo ferm voler by Arnaut Daniel. My rather serendipitous proceedings, such as a paper on the aporetic eroticism of Ausiàs March or the considerations on the figure of Wallada bint al-Mustakfi as a poetic and erotic subject of a new type are clearly contributing to this study. Those threads of reflection cross-pollinate each other, and the final outcome will probably lead right to our time. Perhaps in a way announced in my essay on the posterity of Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya under the pen of Fatema Mernissi.
