Session 8: The Marxist and Aesthetic
Erotic
Chair: Terrie Waddell
Towards a Marxism of the Erotic: Some Initial Thoughts
Paul Reynolds
Centre for Studies in the Social Sciences,
Edge Hill College,
Ormskirk,
Lancashire, UK
The Erotic has been relatively neglected in Marxist
theory, often seen as a feature of false consciousness to be overcome
or harnessed (Kollontai), part of the terms of gendered enslavement
(Marxist feminism), an absence or fetishisation brought about by the
nature of capitalist society (Reich, Marcuse), and a subject that proves
the weaknesses of Marxism in relation to post-structuralist or romanticist
critiques of contemporary societies. Marxists have not looked at the
erotic in any systematic depth nor explored the erotic with regard
to contemporary theoretical and philosophical debates.
This paper will
seek to develop thoughts on where a Marxist erotics would come from
within Marxist thought, what key concepts and key theorists provide
the basis for a Marxist erotics, and what key insights a Marxist erotics
would bring. The broad argument will be that Marxism has some insightful
contributions to defining, understanding and liberating the erotic
from its class and capitalist constraints. Four particular insights
will be developed in the paper:
• Materiality and the Physicality
of the Erotic
• Alienation, Ideology, Consciousness and
the Fetishisation of the Erotic
• Romanticism, Philosophical
Concepts of Love and Sex and Locating the Erotic
• The Erotic
as Emancipatory
A Showing of Un Chien Andalou [17 minute surrealist
film by Salvador Dali/Luis Bunuel] followed by discussion.