by Anne Dufourmantelle translated by Catherine Porter
University of Illinois Press, 2007 Paper: 978-0-252-07488-2 | Cloth: 978-0-252-03263-9 Library of Congress Classification HQ21.D84 2007 Dewey Decimal Classification 306.701
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Bringing sex and philosophy together on a blind date, Anne Dufourmantelle’s provocative study uses this analogy to uncover and examine philosophy’s blind spot. Delightful and startling comparisons spring from the date: both sex and philosophy are dangerous, both are socially subversive, and both are obsessions. Although sex and philosophy have much in common, however, they have scarcely known one another until now.
Socrates and Diogenes had little to say about sex, and although it was notoriously explored by the Marquis de Sade, this study explains why philosophy has never been fully sexualized nor sex really philosophized. Blind Date highlights the marked deletion of sexual topics and themes from philosophical works, while also opening doors for their union. Inviting readers to remember that thought does not require repressed desire, Dufourmantelle argues that sex is everywhere, and it affects all kinds of thinking.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Anne Dufourmantelle's books include (with Avital Ronell) Fighting Theory and (with Jacques Derrida) Of Hospitality. Catherine Porter is a professor emerita of French, SUNY Cortland.
REVIEWS
“And what if the paradox proposed by the philosophical life were precisely this: that underneath it all there is nothing to think but the body? The body as origin and space of thought, the body that imagines and loves, the body that lives and dies, the body that hopes and desires? But nothing to do with sex . . . Neither voluptuousness nor eroticism nor whispering . . . Sex will never come up. Not once. . . . Sex is the silent other of philosophy.”--from “Two or three things we know about them...”
"This wide-ranging, provocative book is partly philosophical, partly a literary evocation of the pleasures and difficulties of sex and of thinking."--Times Higher Education
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Introduction: The Stealth Pulse of PhilosophyAvital Ronell
Blind date
Rendez-vous
Preliminaries
Two or three things we know about them
Display
Touching
Excuses
Little arrangements among friends
Here one does not learn
Gravity of sex, lightness of philosophy
Body moor flesh landscape memory
On the illusion of being immortal
Some alibis for a non-encounter
Alterations
Varieties of intemperance
On sex kept secret
Shame and the question of innocence
Foucault, interpreter
Tinkering
Blinds
Jealousy 1 on essence
Jealousy 2 the instant of grace
Jealousy 3 on truth
Dionysian life
Rhythms
On the political: Sade in the boudoir
The practice of insomnia
From butterflies to Ideas
Bluebeard's seventh chamber
March or die . . .
A metaphysical eagle's nest
All lives--or, on the possible in its relation to death
Pornographies
Animals and the world
On the body, once again . . .
On enchantment and other tombs . . .
"No one knows what a body can do"
Joinings
Sacrifice
Hungers
Private lives
Letters from a.
Summer 1882: Nietzsche, R¿e, Salom¿
An unavowable community
Armed vigilance
Blinds
Sade: a summons
Mortal condition (of literature)
Literature, ever again . . .
No end
6
Notes
Index
by Anne Dufourmantelle translated by Catherine Porter
University of Illinois Press, 2007 Paper: 978-0-252-07488-2 Cloth: 978-0-252-03263-9
Bringing sex and philosophy together on a blind date, Anne Dufourmantelle’s provocative study uses this analogy to uncover and examine philosophy’s blind spot. Delightful and startling comparisons spring from the date: both sex and philosophy are dangerous, both are socially subversive, and both are obsessions. Although sex and philosophy have much in common, however, they have scarcely known one another until now.
Socrates and Diogenes had little to say about sex, and although it was notoriously explored by the Marquis de Sade, this study explains why philosophy has never been fully sexualized nor sex really philosophized. Blind Date highlights the marked deletion of sexual topics and themes from philosophical works, while also opening doors for their union. Inviting readers to remember that thought does not require repressed desire, Dufourmantelle argues that sex is everywhere, and it affects all kinds of thinking.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Anne Dufourmantelle's books include (with Avital Ronell) Fighting Theory and (with Jacques Derrida) Of Hospitality. Catherine Porter is a professor emerita of French, SUNY Cortland.
REVIEWS
“And what if the paradox proposed by the philosophical life were precisely this: that underneath it all there is nothing to think but the body? The body as origin and space of thought, the body that imagines and loves, the body that lives and dies, the body that hopes and desires? But nothing to do with sex . . . Neither voluptuousness nor eroticism nor whispering . . . Sex will never come up. Not once. . . . Sex is the silent other of philosophy.”--from “Two or three things we know about them...”
"This wide-ranging, provocative book is partly philosophical, partly a literary evocation of the pleasures and difficulties of sex and of thinking."--Times Higher Education
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Introduction: The Stealth Pulse of PhilosophyAvital Ronell
Blind date
Rendez-vous
Preliminaries
Two or three things we know about them
Display
Touching
Excuses
Little arrangements among friends
Here one does not learn
Gravity of sex, lightness of philosophy
Body moor flesh landscape memory
On the illusion of being immortal
Some alibis for a non-encounter
Alterations
Varieties of intemperance
On sex kept secret
Shame and the question of innocence
Foucault, interpreter
Tinkering
Blinds
Jealousy 1 on essence
Jealousy 2 the instant of grace
Jealousy 3 on truth
Dionysian life
Rhythms
On the political: Sade in the boudoir
The practice of insomnia
From butterflies to Ideas
Bluebeard's seventh chamber
March or die . . .
A metaphysical eagle's nest
All lives--or, on the possible in its relation to death
Pornographies
Animals and the world
On the body, once again . . .
On enchantment and other tombs . . .
"No one knows what a body can do"
Joinings
Sacrifice
Hungers
Private lives
Letters from a.
Summer 1882: Nietzsche, R¿e, Salom¿
An unavowable community
Armed vigilance
Blinds
Sade: a summons
Mortal condition (of literature)
Literature, ever again . . .
No end
6
Notes
Index
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC