Pleasure as an Experience

By: Charisse Willis

During our class, we quickly learned that one cannot discuss pleasure without desire nor desire without pleasure. Similarly, neither can be discussed without bumping into stigmas and the idea of normalization. I must admit that I did not see the correlation between Johanna Oksala’s article, which discusses Michel Foucault’s idea of experience, and the topics of our class, but this was due to my own naiveté. Pleasure is very much so an experience and it is this experience that makes desire such a dangerous concept.

In this brief discussion of Oksala’s article, I wish to address four of the key points that she brings up:

“The experience of the subject cannot be the starting point for our knowledge of the world, because it is the knowledge of the world that constitutes the experience of the subject” (99).

I agree with this statement. It is impossible to separate our thoughts, beliefs, and experiences from the world that surrounds us as it is our world that defines these things. The idea that society and those which control it dictates what is right and wrong has played a large role in our discussions this semester. Going back to Schivelbusch and his discussion of spices, coffee, tea, and drugs, one can see that things go through periods of tolerance and intolerance. Spices were a way to demonstrate wealth and thus they came to symbolize it. A subject’s experience of salt and pepper could not be separated from the idea that one was supposed to desire these spices as one was supposed to desire wealth. 

Similarly, one can look at drugs such as opium and cocaine and see that they too enjoyed their heyday. There was a time when these substances could be picked up at pharmacies and ingested in public. Some substances do indeed cause harm and perhaps they do warrant restriction, but living in a society where cigarettes are extremely popular, it is hard to argue this point. It is simply that cigarettes are considered “okay” by those in control today, but who knows where we will be ten or twenty years from now.

“He [Foucault] makes a claim about bodies and pleasures, which in my view presupposes an understanding of the experiential body in so far as pleasure can only be understood as an experience of pleasure, not solely as a concept or as a practice…The rallying point for the counterattack against the deployment of sexuality ought not to be sex-desire, but bodies and pleasures (Foucault 1976/1990, 157” (100-101).

Here, Foucault is making the argument that bodies and pleasure can be used as a means of resistance to power. My mind goes to the chapter, “America Undressed,” from the book 1969. This chapter discussed pornography, indecency, and the one of the peaks of marijuana use. If there was any time where bodies and pleasure were used as resistance, surely it was the ‘60s and ‘70s. This was a time where people protested against wars and resisted a restrictive government by having sex in public, smoking marijuana, doing other drugs such as ecstasy, cocaine, etc. 

This era was not merely about those that desired sex, drugs, and alcohol indulging. This era was a time where these things were used to rebel. “Make love, not war” was not a slogan that promoted simply the act of sex. Instead, it was about using the body and pleasure as a way to protest against what those in control of society wanted.

“In an interview Foucault opposes the term desire because it functions as a calibration in terms of normality: ‘I am advancing this term (pleasure), because it seems to me that it escapes the medical and naturalistic connotations inherent in the notion of desire… There is no ‘pathology’ of pleasure, no ‘abnormal’ pleasure’ (quoted in Halperin 1995, 93-94)” (108).

This idea that there is no “abnormal” pleasure caused me to think back to Daniel Bergner’s, The Other Side of Desire. The book’s discusses the desires, categorized as abnormal or destructive, of four individuals. As stated earlier, desire cannot be discussed without thinking about pleasure, but in the book it is not the pleasure that Bergner’s subjects experience that is considered “abnormal;” it is the desire. 

For example, when Laura discusses that her family members saw Devotees, people who desire people with amputated limbs, there is no mention of pleasure. This could be because Laura’s family cannot fathom any pleasure coming from such a desire, but I think we should also take a look at why the desire is perverse and the action following the desire is not discussed. This also happens in the chapter that discusses pedophilia. The desire for young children is “not right”. There is indeed “pathology” to the desire, but the pleasure itself is not addressed. Why is this? Is it that condemning the desire subsequently condemns the pleasure?

 “By calling pleasure an event outside the subject, and not an experience of the subject, Foucault is clearly looking for a new perspective on experience. He is interested in experience as the possibility of surprise, a transgression of limit into something unanticipated or even unintelligible. Experience is an event outside the subject when it is experienced as transgressing the limits of the normal lifeworld into something that exceeds the constitutive power of our familiar normativity; in this sense it throws us outside of ourselves” (111).

This last quote also reminds of the Bergner text, the case of Jacob in particular. Jacob has a foot fetish. This fetish, though it does not do harm to anyone, is seen as something dirty and it provokes a feeling of shame. However, the pleasure that comes from this desire is what is interesting. The book makes the point that because of Jacob’s intense desire, he is able to experience a pleasure that “ordinary” humans or humans with “ordinary” desires will never experience. The theorist categorizes Jacob’s experience as something that transgresses the normal realm of pleasure. Furthermore, Jacob is not fully aware of this. For Jacob, this pleasure that he feels is simply his ordinary response to the fulfillment of his desire.

Could this pleasure, this pleasure that seems to be out of the grasp of those without “abnormal” desires, be the key to the experience that Foucault was attempting to discover?

A Closing Thought...

By Hayley Turner

When I heard that I would be taking a class about pleasure and desire I understood that I would be discussing sex and drugs, the two things I believed were associated with pleasure and desire. It was not until after our first few discussions that I realized that pleasure and desire is everywhere and can be associated with anything.

I would have never associated coffee and spices with pleasure. I’m not sure how many people in today’s society would. However books have been written on the pleasure derived from these substances. I also would have never thought of the Protestant ethic and Capitalism as areas to look for pleasure and desire but low and behold books have been written about them as well.

This semester has been interesting and has taught me a lot about pleasure and desire. The class has opened my eyes to pleasure that can be found within the norms of society but also pleasure that fall outside the norm. Some of these ‘deviant’ pleasures are included in the book The Other Side of Desire by Daniel Bergner. These pleasures include a fetish for amputees, a possible pedophile, a female bareness and the fetish of feet. Other pleasures that seem to fall outside the norms that I have learned about or discussed this semester include body modification, zoophilia, and excessive pornography.

Although we have discussed a broad range of pleasures and desires this semester, to me one thing is clear, I may find pleasure in one thing and others might find hate and distaste. Thus pleasure and desire like many other aspects of our lives is subjective and is based solely on the individuals. The aspect of desire that is based on society is how open individuals are about their desires. Thus, society places constraints on pleasure and desire, these constraints can include the law but can also just be based on societal norms and the confidence and openness of the individual.   

Querelle Killed Me!

Rainer Werner Fassinbinder’s film Querelle was a real trip, for most viewers. He took the auidience into  a surreal, dreamlike land, called “Brest.” It was there that we met Querelle, a pouty lipped, enigma. Querelle worked as a sailor and his captain was in love with him; always watching and recording every mysterious move Querelle made.

The ship docked in Brest, where a brothel was located. So began the strange and intense story that unravels. Querelle looses a dice game, (secretly on purpose) to sleep with Nono, the Madame’s husband. Querlle was a thief and a murderer. What was interesting was that every time the characters in this film were having sex, there was always a layer of anger, uncertainty and discomfort attached. The Police man basically forced Querelle at knife point to give him a hand job.

There was a bizarre scene at the beginning where Querelle and his brother Robert embraced but then slowly punch each other in the stomach repeatedly. Robert also fought Querelle when he found out that his brother had anal sex with Nono, the proprietor of the brothel. There seemed to be much sexual confusion. At one moment, the men of Brest were very open about being gay and making love to a man and the next, they were shouting things like “I’m no fairy!” I was very confused because I didn’t understand how the men defined themselves and their sexuality.

The only lady of the film, Madame Lysiane was a sad character. She was not seen very much however her role was very important.  In my opinion, she loved many men in Brest but no one reciprocated that love back to her. Her husband, Nono had sex with Querelle and seemed to be very attached afterwards. Querelle did not notice that she existed and his brother Robert was too passionate about Querelle to give Lysiane what she needed. Lysiane was heard repeatedly singing “each man kills the thing he loves” at the bar. I believe that she feels very lonely and insignificant in this male dominated world.

There were a lot of things that happened in the  middle of the story, but this plot led no where. The characters and dialogue were poorly developed; in general this film did not do anything for me. Maybe the message was so intense and buried in symbols or maybe there was nothing to this film at all. Whatever the case may be, I did not enjoy this film at the slightest. I wished that I could have learned something from Querelle.

In the end, the captain confessed his love for Querelle. They kissed and set off back to the ship.

Finding Your Sexual Self

     Niya here: In reading Kiini Ibura Salaam’s “How Sexual Harassment Slaughtered, then Saved Me”, Salaam recounts her days growing up in New Orleans where the majority of her femininity and sexuality was defined by her relationship with male strangers on the street. Catcalling, or as she described it the loud, yet silent, declarations of sexual advances often shouted at her became the bane of her social existence. This “bizarre training ground where predatory men taught me that […] no part of me was safe from comment” (Salaam, p326) caused her to form a set of unwritten laws to protect herself.

     Her self-imposed rules, which covered basic ways to avoid male groups on the street or to favor olden men than younger, in her mind kept her safe from sexual harassment throughout her adolescence. It was not until her college study-abroad experience in the Dominican Republic when Salaam for the first time began to accept and even emphasis her own body.  This newfound sexual freedom, however, was short-lived until Salaam experiences a string of sexual assault from male strangers. This experience morphed the slightly timid young woman into an angry and bitter woman.

     The anger Salaam expressed throughout her story ultimately reflects back to the issue of pleasure. A male catcalling on the streets is not something unique to the New Orleans. Historically, it can be traced to many of the cultural ideals that males dominate the public sphere and women the private, or the home. For those rare women who do enter the public sphere, they are subject to the male gaze. These notion still hold true, although somewhat subconsciously, throughout Salaam’s argument. She felt herself as an intruder in on the male dominated street corners, and thus tried to become invisible. It is only through the most traumatizing events that Salaam can assert her place in the public sphere, even challenging men on the street and finding herself as a visible (and possibly sexual) person. 

Consumerism and the Holidays

This is Sarah. Since it is the holiday season, I thought it would be appropriate to do a post on consumerism. Yesterday, I went to the mall to do some last minute holiday shopping. From the chaos and utter craziness I experienced, one would never know that we are in a financial crisis. Retailers are luring customers in with sales. Last year, I would not hesitate to buy an item at full price. This year, I bought all of my presents on sale. One of my favorite stores, Madewell, had a sale where all the already discounted items were an additional 30 percent off. I took full advantage. It is safe to say that the recession is a consumer's dream. People are now more inclined to buy due to bigger and better sales. Throughout my trip to Roosevelt Field Mall, people were in hysterics. I witnessed a woman in Bloomingdales fight with another woman over a last pair of shoes. The fight escalated to these women talking about each other's mothers. Long Islanders a pretty classy.

Ritzer's predictions were correct. Shopping is the new enchantment.

Ask. Tell.

This is Sheryl. In 1993, a law was put in place prohibiting gays from openly serving in the military. Since the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law was put into effect, over 13,500 service members have been dismissed from the military because of their sexuality.  The issue of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy has been in the news a few times recently due to an ongoing debate regarding lifting the ban on gays openly serving in the United States Armed Forces.  It’s been so up and down with the government that I can’t even keep track of the progress of the issue personally, but I saw an article with the latest updates about the matter on Yahoo News today and the issue is definitely of interest to me.  I am a firm believer that gay people should have the exact same rights as everyone else, including the opportunity to serve in the armed forces without having to hide their sexuality. 

President Obama made a statement in which he said, “It is time to close this chapter in our history.  It is time to recognize that sacrifice, valor and integrity are no more defined by sexual orientation than they are by race or gender, religion or creed.”  I personally could not agree with this statement more.

Obviously not everyone agrees with the ban of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and I wanted to get the opinion of someone who has served time in the military.  I have a friend who is in the military, so I asked him if lifting the ban would really be problematic or not, and I was kind of surprised by the conversation that followed.  He does not have anything against gays, but he does have a strong opinion on the matter.  He told me that “it would cause a mutiny.  There would literally be dead gay guys.”  When I asked him why, he told me, “We’re not queer and refuse to be known to associate with them…We have a reputation as ruthless killing machines, that fear and reputation is what we strive for and causes our enemies and allies to both fear and respect us.  If we allow queers, we’ll be seen as fairies and that fear will go away.”  He then went on to touch on the fact that there are strict rules regarding interactions with service members of the opposite sex because relationship issues can cloud peoples’ decisions, so gays shouldn’t be allowed either.  At this point my response was, “but if there are already gay guys in the military who just pretend not to be gay and they don’t ruin the fearful reputation then why does it matter? It’s not like the enemy is going to know if anyone in the unit is gay and therefore not be intimidated anymore.”  He responded to this by saying, “The enemies study us.  The gays don’t act gay so it’s ok because it’s not allowed and punishable still so we’re not condoning their actions.  The Taliban studies us to the point that they have our training manuals.  The overall opinion is that the military should consist of real men and gays can be in it as long as they stay in the closet.  It’s not fair to those who have fought and lost their lives and limbs and friends.”  So I asked him, “so just because they’re gay they’re not real men and don’t deserve to fight for or be willing to die for their country as well?”  He told me again that it comes down to the image.

I had never heard that perspective about the issue before and I was honestly shocked by it.  If anything, I would have thought of the issues within the military being homophobic issues regarding being in close quarters with gay guys for years at a time.  The article had a slightly different outlook, though.  It discusses a year-long study on the impact of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, which included a survey of troops and their families.  The study found that two-thirds of service members did not think that changing the law would have much of an effect at all.  It is also noted that 92% of troops believe they have served with a gay person, and saw no effect on the morale or effectiveness of the unit.

I know plenty of people agree with the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, but I believe that lifting the ban on openly gay people serving in the military is a very important step for gay rights.  Obviously the ban has not prevented gay people from serving in the military over the past seventeen years.  If 13,500 have already been dismissed because of their sexuality, one can only imagine how many did not get dismissed.  So they can fight for their country and the freedom and safety of their loved ones, but they can’t even truly be fighting for their own freedom because they can’t completely be who they really are while they’re enlisted?  That just isn’t right.  Gay people should be able to fight for their country if they want to, and they should be able to do so without having to hide who they are if they don’t want to.

Sex in a Cold Climate

This is Sheryl

In 1998, a plot of convent land in Dublin was sold by nuns to real estate developers.  An incredible discovery was soon made on that plot of land: the remains of 133 women buried in unmarked graves.  The women buried here were inmates of one of the ten Magdalene Asylums, institutes run by the Catholic Church which were essentially slave labor institutions.  The asylums were named after Mary Magdalene, a prostitute who repented and became a devout follower of Christ, according to Catholic belief.  The asylums were meant to rehabilitate girls who were considered “sinners” according to the Catholic faith.  The “sins” that these girls committed were related to sexual actions.  For most girls incarcerated, they had given birth out of wedlock and were separated from their babies and put into these asylums, usually by their families.  Other girls were incarcerated for engaging in sexual activities out of wedlock, whether they consented or not, or even simply being pretty enough that they caught boys’ attention.  The asylums were run by Catholic nuns who treated the women in a manner which, to call “terrible” would be quite the understatement.  Amazingly the last Magdalene Asylum stayed open until 1996.

                The documentary Sex in a Cold Climate tells the stories of four women who were forced to endure the tragic hardships of time spent in the Magdalene Asylums – three in the actual asylums themselves, and one in a related Magdalene orphanage.  Catholic belief saw sex outside of marriage as a sin comparable to murder, and engaging in such acts was means for punishment.  In fact, even to just ponder your own body was considered sinful.

                Brigid Young grew up in an orphanage connected to the Magdalene asylums. The girls were required to bind their chests in order to appear as flat as possible.  If a girl had nice hair, the hair was cut to prevent vanity.  Brigid recalled sexual harassment they endured on a weekly basis.  Every Saturday night, the girls were made to line up and strip naked as the nuns humiliated the girls by making fun of their bodies.  The orphans in the Magdalene Orphanages were not allowed to have any contact with the Magdalene girls.  The girls were made to believe that the Magdalenes were evil sinners, comparable to the devil.  Brigid recalls one instance when she brought laundry from the orphanage up to the asylum for the Magdalenes to clean.  When handing off the laundry, the Magdalene girl asked Brigid if her daughter was at the orphanage.  Brigid responded that she was in fact there, and the made a plan for Brigid to bring the girl to a part of the orphanage land where the Magdalene girl could see her daughter, however they got caught on the way.  A nun brought the girls to the Reverend Mother who beat the girls severely and violently shaved their heads to the point that their faces and necks were swollen, cut and bleeding from the scissors and razor, saying to the girls, “you’re not so pretty now, are you?”  All because they spoke to one of the girls in the Magdalene Asylum.

                Brigid also recalled being sexually assaulted by a priest.  She reported that he masturbated on her multiple times, and though at the time she did not know what exactly was going on, she knew it wasn’t right.  She knew that if she had said anything about the incidents, she would have instantly been sent to the Magdalene Asylums, so she was forced to keep it to herself.  Brigid managed to leave the orphanage, avoiding ever becoming a Magdalene, but the torture she went through in the orphanage stayed with her for the rest of her life, especially negatively affecting her marriage.

                Christina Mulcahy had sex out of wedlock and got pregnant.  She gave birth to a baby boy and hoped to marry the baby’s father.  However, the nuns overseeing her after the birth cut of contact between Christina and the baby’s father, and took away her baby, then 10 months old.  The nuns wouldn’t even let Christina say goodbye.  After being separated from her son, Christina attempted to return home but was told by her father that she was not allowed back in his house, as she had disgraced her family by giving birth to an illegitimate child.  Christina managed to escape the asylum after three years and was able to seek refuge with an old friend of hers temporarily before escaping to Northern Ireland.  She married and had a family of her own, but did not tell them about her first son until 6 months prior to the filming of the documentary.

                Martha Cooney was sexually assaulted by a male relative at the age of 14.  After telling her cousin about the incident, her family immediately sent her away to one of the asylums.  She was rescued by her cousin after spending four years in the asylum.  She never wanted to marry or make a commitment to anyone, because she didn’t want anyone to ever have power over her again.

                Phyllis Valentine grew up in a Catholic orphanage and was told one day that work had been found for her in a Laundry, and was transported to one of the Magdalene Asylums.  She was told right away that her hair would have to be cut because long hair was not allowed, and her long hair was cut up to her ears.  Phyllis began to rebel, not attending mass or meals or allowing the nuns to cut her hair, throwing fits and losing her temper until they backed off.  She was finally released after eight years.  She recalled how difficult it was to be out in the world after spending time in the asylums, fearing that people knew about her past just by looking at her.  Phyllis married but had no desire for the sexual aspect of her marriage, feeling ashamed every time her husband touched her.  She had children, but eventually divorced because of her emotional issues resulting from her time in the asylums.

                The girls were required to work in laundries seven days a week without pay.  Cleaning the dirty clothes was supposed to be representative of cleaning the dirty sins from their lives.  The girls worked side by side but were not allowed to speak a word to one another.  Phyllis asked early on to be paid for her work, to which the nuns simply laughed in her face and told her that she was there to work, without pay, until someone came to get her.

                Since most of the women were unwed mothers, one of the main objectives was to sever the thoughts the women had about their children.  They were not allowed to see their children or hear anything about them, aside from the occasional news of their children being adopted.  Many women became hysterical about this, resulting in punishment by the nuns.  Corporal punishment was extremely common.  Girls would be pushed, slapped, punched, and whipped by the nuns on a regular basis.  They were told that their lives were no longer worth living, that they were not worthy of a life outside of the walls that trapped them in.

                The church has kept the number of girls who passed through the Magdalene Asylums a secret, though the number is believed to be about 30,000.  There was nothing Godly or Christly about the asylums.  Brigid describes them as “devils dressed in nuns’ habits.”  Phyllis does not pray or go to church anymore.  She believes that if there was a just God, none of the girls would have had to go through the torture they endured.

                The film The Magdalene Sisters tells the stories of the women featured in the documentary, showing accounts of the torture and abuse the girls actually went through on a daily basis.  The girls were completely stripped of their rights.  Both films are extremely powerful and wonderfully depict the unimaginable things these girls were forced to endure because their chastity was considered compromised.