Blind Date: Sex and Philosophy

Description

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 repressing one's desire, Dufourmantelle argues that sex is everywhere and affects all kinds of thinking. "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 "Blind Date contains a host of pithy statements about the nature of sex, the nature of philosophy, and the nature of their implication. Its insights have the piquancy and unexpectedness associated with psychoanalysis at its best. Those interested in sex and/or contemporary French philosophy will find it a stimulating reading experience."--Peter Connor, associate professor of French and comparative literature, Barnard College Introduction: The Stealth Pulse of Philosophy (Avital Ronell) xi Translator's Note xxiii Blind Date... 1 Rendez-vous 3 Preliminaries 4 Two or Three Things We Know about Them... 5 Display 7 Touching 9 Excuses 10 Little Arrangements among Friends 11 Here One Does Not Learn 12 Gravity of Sex, Lightness of Philosophy 13 Body Moor Flesh Landscape Memory 14 On the Illusion of Being Immortal 16 Some Alibis for a Nonencounter 18 Alterations 20 Varieties of Intemperance 23 On Sex Kept Secret 26 Shame and the Question of Innocence 28 Foucault, Interpreter 30 Tinkering 32 Blinds 33 Jealousy 1: On Essence 34 Jealousy 2: The Instant of Grace 37 Jealousy 3: On Truth 42 Dionysian Life 45 Rhythms 47 On the Political: Sade in the Boudoir 48 The Practice of Insomnia 51 From Butterflies to Ideas 52 The Idea of Pleasure 54 Bluebeard's Seventh Chamber 55 March or Die... 58 A Metaphysical Eagle's Nest 59 All Lives - Or, on the Possible in Its Relation to Death 61 Pornographies 63 Animals and the World 64 On the Body, Once Again... 66 On Enchantment and Other Tombs... 67 "No One Knows What a Body Can Do" 71 Joinings 77 Sacrifice 79 Hungers 81 Private Lives 84 Letters from a. 85 Summer 1882: Nietzsche, Ree, Salome 87 An Unavowable Community 97 Armed Vigilance 99 Blinds 100 Sade: A Summons 101 Mortal Condition (of Literature) 102 Literature, Ever Again... 103 No End 104 Notes 105 Name Index 111