Images of Bliss : Ejaculation, Masculinity, Meaning.
Title:
Images of Bliss : Ejaculation, Masculinity, Meaning.
Author:
Aydemir, Murat.
ISBN:
9780816654413
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
1 online resource (362 pages)
Contents:
Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- PART ONE: HISTORY, ART -- 1. Semen, Blood, Stars, and Ice: Serrano and Aristotle -- Blood -- Squigglies and Claret -- "As it were a deformed male" -- Why Semen Matters More -- The Illustrated Aristotle, Part I -- Stars -- Inconceivable -- Soiled White: Bataille -- Graphic White: Derrida -- Baroque White: Bal -- The Illustrated Aristotle, Part II -- Ice -- The Illustrated Aristotle, Part III -- PART TWO: PSYCHOANALYSIS -- 2. Image of the Vital Flow: Lacan -- Noeud/Nous -- The Name of the Phallus -- The Story's Setup -- Graphic Concatenation: When Phallus Meets Signifiable -- Bastard Offspring -- The Magician and the Veil -- Shame as Awkward Self-Reflexivity -- 3. Anamorphosis / Metamorphosis: Ambassadors -- Delicious Game -- Cool Men -- Twin Ambassadors -- Spot the Differences: Embarrassing Embrasse -- Man in Black: Melancholia and Empire -- 4. The Parting Veil: Angel in the Flesh -- The Specter Haunting Male Morphology -- Othering the Body: A Comedy -- The Deictic Veil and the Phallus/Penis -- Every Temptation -- Smile and Breast: Double-Crossing Gender -- PART THREE: PORNOGRAPHY -- 5. Significant Discharge: The Cum Shot and Narrativity -- Introducing the Cum Shot -- Justine: "I can't believe you just came" -- The Climax of Involuntary Spasm -- "I was not finished" -- Return and Repetition -- 6. Levering Ejaculation -- Porn as Opera or Musical -- Va(s)cillation -- Abjection -- Staining the Image -- Hand -- "Lass es gehen" -- Coda: Female Ejaculation -- 7. "Now Take One of Me As I Come": Pornographic Realities -- Hard Core -- Mundane Details: Reality-Effect -- Sexual Theatrics -- The Meaning of Moustaches: Verisimilitude -- Bazzo's Escape -- PART FOUR: THEORY -- 8. The Suspense and Suspension of Bliss: Barthes -- Connoisseur -- Taking One's Pleasure -- Being Taken by Bliss -- The Certain Body.
From Suspense to Suspension: Tumbling or Freezing Narrative -- Upstaging the Father -- Wandering Seeds -- 9. Dissimulating the Supreme Spasm: Derrida -- Trance -- Lucky Word -- Masculinity: Desire and Hysteria -- Supreme Spasm -- Semen as Pharmakon -- Singular Plural -- The Sperm's Tail as Supplement -- Closing Opening -- 10. Anxiety and Intimacy of Expenditure: Bataille -- Hostile Expenditures between Men -- Globular Droplets -- Male Guinea Pigs -- Intimacy of Expenditure -- The Eye of the Story -- Draining Masculinity -- Concepts of Ejaculation -- PART FIVE: LITERATURE -- 11. Misplaced Thigh: Proust -- Beginnings -- Adam's Rib -- Jupiter's Thigh -- From Wet Dream to Bad Dream -- 12. Gossamer Thread -- "Gosh, gosh, gosh, gosh!" -- Natural Trail -- Solitary Pleasure -- Gaze -- The Lilac -- Silvery Trace -- 13. A Few Drops That Express All -- Adolphe -- Norpois -- Men in Cubicles -- Behind the Curtain with Swann -- Re-searching Masculinity -- Epilogue: Forcing the Issue -- Color -- Scale -- Plane -- Temporality -- Part/Whole -- Opposition/Entanglement -- Conception/Inconceivable -- Imminent/Immanent -- Graphic -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Z.
Abstract:
Aristotle believed semen to be the purest of all bodily secretions, a vehicle for the spirit or psyche that gives form to substance. For Proust's narrator in Swann's Way, waking to find he has experienced a nocturnal emission, it is the product of "some misplacing of my thigh." The heavy metal band Metallica used it to adorn an album cover. Beyond its biological function, semen has been applied with surprising frequency to metaphorical and narratological purposes. In Images of Bliss, Murat Aydemir undertakes an original and extensive analysis of images of male orgasm and semen. In a series of detailed case studies-Aristotle's On the Generation of Animals; Andres Serrano's use of bodily fluids in his art; paintings by Holbein and Leonardo; Proust's In Search of Lost Time; hard-core pornography (both straight and gay); and key texts from the poststructuralist canon, including Lacan on the phallus, Bataille on expenditure, Barthes on bliss, and Derrida on dissemination-Aydemir traces the complex and often contradictory possibilities for imagination, description, and cognition that both the idea and the reality of semen make available. In particular, he foregrounds the significance of male ejaculation for masculine subjectivity. More often than not, Aydemir argues, the event or object of ejaculation emerges as the instance through which identity, meaning, and gender are not so much affirmed as they are relentlessly and productively questioned, complicated, and displaced. Combining close readings of diverse works with subtle theoretical elaboration and a keen eye for the cultural ideals and anxieties attached to sexuality, Images of Bliss offers a convincing and long overdue critical exploration of ejaculation in Western culture.
Local Note:
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2017. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
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