Ground of freedom, also makes us more vulnerable than ever to thoseĪpprehensions of loss endemic to our culture and which can render theĮxperience of desire as also an experience of grieving » (Dollimore But self-disidentification, even as it can become the « the Western struggle for individual self-realization necessitates a Dollimore’s brilliant odyssey concludes that: Themes of eros and thanatos as a central topos of Western literatureĪnd thought. Past, Dollimore (1998) took on the monumental task of delineating the Of course, readers of Shakespeare, Hegel, Freud and Foucault mayĪlready have their own, and different, responses to these questions.Ĭoncerned to expose the anxieties of the present in the work of the Synonymous, the paper considers some of the implications of theĬoncepts of seduction and sacrifice for understanding contemporary Which spectacular consumption and identity have become almost Recent films, one British and one American. Hence the home of a living death and secondly as a city of sacrificeĪnd redemption, which functions symbolically for a much wider population than those who have ever been there, as represented in two In two senses-first as a city of seduction, a monument to kitsch, and Identity, by glamourizing the means sufficiently to construct it as theĮnd? These are the issues-essentially ones of self-identity-which Is this tension practically resolved by faking its resolution, by faking That to know is to die a little in the jouissance or petite mort of insight? Involves the surrendering of that identity to another, or an Other, such Palaces really mausoleums? Is the question of individual identityĪlways in tension with the pursuit of knowledge, which always Indeed fundamentally human, are our contemporary pleasure Human? And if pleasure is indeed a means, and the problem is Means? Does AIDS lead us to focus on a contemporary gay problem,Ī historical homosexual problem, or a fundamental paradox of being Of pleasure really the pursuit of death with pleasure merely as a Notes, sexuality itself had been conceived in relation to death since To The History of Sexuality, as one might expect from a serious scholar of Bataille and Nietzsche, was largely ignored until it offered itselfĪs evidence in support of the tendentious image of him « fucking others to death, or, better still, being fucked to death himself » (Dollimore, 1998: 310 see also Miller 1993: 294). The extensive consideration of death undertaken byįoucault throughout his works, from The Archaeology of Knowledge
The dimension that links the two, as Cavafy notes, of desire, was AIDS broughtĭeath and homosexuality closer both literally and symbolically. Popularly been regarded as a grave (Bersani, 1988). Very literal sense then the rectum where their seed is poured has Homosexuals do not procreate through their sexual activity and in a The connection of homosexuality and death is not a new one.
Saw safe sex, however idiosyncratically, as an issue of sovereignty,Īnd risk as a question of free will, might not have behaved much differently. Knowledge of AIDS in 1983 was limited and naivety was widespread,īut given the trajectory which the disease has since taken and the continuing comments of Moore and Cavafy on contemporary gayīehaviour, there is perhaps evidence to suggest that those men who
Have not been far from the truth, but Foucault’s partners may themselves have been willing and desirous of taking the risk. When Miller (1993) suggested in his biography that Michelįoucault may have not only sought unprotected sex in the bath-houses of San Francisco but may have knowingly infected others there wasĬonsiderable resistance to his assertions-but not only may Miller
To become sero-positive-as a means of outing it as a topic for dis cussion. Through media as internationally respected as the BBC-including theĮxistence of “sero-transformation” parties where HIV negative gays go Resurfaced into popular attention through comments made in and Gay’s compulsion to unprotected sex, an addiction which has recently Cavafy, of course is talking about the promiscuous (Cavafy, He Swears, cited in Moore )įatal pleasure. He returns, lost, to the same fatal pleasure. « He swears every now and then to begin a better life.īut when night comes with its own counsel,