Eroticism (from Ancient Greek ἔρως (érōs) 'love, desire' and -ism) is a quality that causessexual feelings,[1] as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning theaesthetics ofsexual desire, sensuality, andromantic love. That quality may be found in any form ofartwork, includingpainting,sculpture,photography,drama,film,music, orliterature. It may also be found inadvertising. The term may also refer to a state ofsexual arousal[1] or anticipation of such – an insistent sexualimpulse,desire, or pattern of thoughts.
As French novelistHonoré de Balzac stated, eroticism is dependent not just upon an individual'ssexual morality, but also the culture and time in which an individual resides.[2][3][4]
Because the nature of what is erotic is fluid,[5] early definitions of the term attempted to conceive eroticism as some form of sensual or romantic love or as the human sex drive (libido); for example, theEncyclopédie of 1755 states that the erotic "is an epithet which is applied to everything with a connection to the love of the sexes; one employs it particularly to characterize...a dissoluteness, an excess".[6] Libertine literature such as those byJohn Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester evoked eroticism to the readers.[how?][7]
Because eroticism is wholly dependent on the viewer's culture and personal tastes pertaining to what, exactly, defines the erotic,[8][9] critics have often[how often?] confused eroticism withpornography, withanti-pornography activistAndrea Dworkin saying, "Erotica is simply high-class pornography; better produced, better conceived, better executed, better packaged, designed for a better class of consumer."[10] This confusion, asLynn Hunt writes, "demonstrate[s] the difficulty of drawing... a clear generic demarcation between the erotic and the pornographic": "the history of the separation of pornography from eroticism... remains to be written".[11]
Audre Lorde recognises eroticism and pornography as “two diametrically opposed uses of the sexual”, defining the erotic as “a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.”[12] In her 1978 essay,Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power, Lorde identifies the erotic as a source of creative power that is deeply rooted in a spiritual plane of unrecognised or unexpressed feeling and sensation.
Influenced bySigmund Freud,[13]psychotherapists have turned to Greek philosophy for an understanding of eros' heightenedaesthetic.[14] ForPlato,Eros takes an almosttranscendent manifestation when the subject seeks to go beyond itself and form a communion with the object/other: "the true order of going...to the things of love, is to use the beauties of earth as steps...to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair actions, and from fair actions to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty".[15]
Modern French conceptions of eroticism can be traced to theAge of Enlightenment,[16] when "in the eighteenth century, dictionaries defined the erotic as that which concerned love...eroticism was the intrusion into the public sphere of something that was at base private".[17] This theme of intrusion or transgression was taken up in the twentieth century by the French philosopherGeorges Bataille, who argued that eroticism performs a function of dissolving boundaries between human subjectivity and humanity, a transgression that dissolves the rational world but is always temporary,[18] as well as that, "Desire in eroticism is the desire that triumphs over the taboo. It presupposes man in conflict with himself".[19] For Bataille, as well as many French theorists, "Eroticism, unlike simple sexual activity, is a psychological quest...eroticism is assenting to life even in death".[20]
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Queer theory andLGBTQ studies consider the concept from anon-heterosexual perspective, viewing psychoanalytical and modernist views of eroticism as both archaic[21] andheterosexist,[22] written primarily by and for a "handful of elite, heterosexual, bourgeois men"[23] who "mistook their own repressed sexual proclivities"[24] as the norm.[25]
Theorists likeEve Kosofsky Sedgwick,[26]Gayle S. Rubin[27] andMarilyn Frye[28] all write extensively about eroticism from a heterosexual,lesbian andseparatist point of view, respectively, seeing eroticism as both a political force[29] and cultural critique[30] for marginalized groups, or asMario Vargas Llosa summarized: "Eroticism has its own moral justification because it says that pleasure is enough for me; it is a statement of the individual's sovereignty".[31]
Audre Lorde, a lesbian Caribbean-American writer and outspokenfeminist, calledthe erotic a source of power specifically identified with the female, often corrupted or distorted by oppression, since it poses the challenge of change. "For women, this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our lives".[32] In "The Uses of the Erotic" withinSister Outsider, she discusses how the erotic comes from the sharing of joy, "whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual" and provides the basis on which understanding provides a foundation for acknowledging difference.[12] Lorde suggests that if we suppress the erotic rather than recognize its presence, it takes on a different form. Rather than enjoying and sharing with one another, it becomes objectifying, which she says translates into abuse as we attempt to hide and suppress our experiences.[33]
