Description
Book SynopsisThe cultural change denominated as “the new normal” goes far beyond the adaptation to habits like physical distancing, limited person-to-person contact, teleworking, and self-isolation established with the COVID-19 pandemic. A series of significant transformations in human behavior spreads today in societies all around the world: physical intimacy decreases while virtual reality expands and alterity declines while artificial intelligence emerges, leading to structural reconfigurations of sex, relationships, gender awareness, and subjectivity. Sexuality and Eroticism in a Post-pandemic World explores this new cultural atmosphere through twelve interdisciplinary essays questioning global governmentality and challenging the biopolitics of the new normal—the administration of self-control societies so politically correct that repressed desire for otherness only finds a simulation of its satisfaction with the forced abnormality, outrageousness, and violence of mainstream porn—, going from ars erotica to alternative pornography, from online dating to gender fluidity, from LGBTQI+ artivism to sex life cultivation, and more.
Table of ContentsForeword Preface List of Figures Notes on Contributors Introduction to the “New Normal” Biopolitics, Sexuality and Eroticism in a Post-pandemic World Phil Shining Part 1 Beyond Repression: Defying the Moral Codes of 21st Century Authoritarianism 1 Transgressing the New Normal Sexuality and Obscenity in a Post-pandemic Spain Assumpta Sabuco Cantó 2 A Media Pandemic Sexualized Right-Wing Populism and the Politics of Mis-sublimation Sophia Kanaouti 3 A Room of Whose Own? Pleasure and Privacy in Pre-and Post-pandemic Havana Dara E. Goldman Part 2 Beyond Sex: Embodying Pleasure and Sexuality in Times of Social Distancing 4 Pleasure in the Face of Death Poetry and Self-realization Rita Dirks 5 The Touch We Miss Nebojsa Kujundzic Part 3 Beyond Gender: Challenging Patriarchal and Heteronormative Sex Education through Alternative Pornography 6 Alt Porn as a New Sexual Script Dionne van Reenen and Robert Scott Stewart 7 Sex & Love in the Time of Quarantine Re-signifying Gender and Erotic Representations—Erika Lust-Style Lily Martinez Evangelista and M. Emilia Barbosa Part 4 Beyond the Senses: Immersing into Self-exploration through Visual and Plastic Arts 8 The Hunger for Touch Fatih Akin’s Gegen die Wand (Head-On) and the Cinema of Sensation Şebnem Nazlı Karalı and George Karpathakis 9 pros-thesis Lawrence Buttigieg 10 Scream at Life The Self as Erotic Figure Jon Braddy Part 5 Beyond the Ego: Embracing the Spiritual Possibilities of Desire 11 The Era of the Erotic Understanding Epochal Change through Tantra and Christianity John R. Dupuche 12 Sex Life Cultivation Ars Erotica as an Alternative to Sex Education and Sex Therapy Phil Shining Index
