Sociology

http://soc.sagepub.com/ Sociology and the Problem of Eroticism

Chris Shilling and Philip A. Mellor Sociology 2010 44: 435 DOI: 10.1177/0038038510362475 The online version of this article can be found at: http://soc.sagepub.com/content/44/3/435

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com

On behalf of:

British Sociological Association

Additional services and information for Sociology can be found at: Email Alerts: http://soc.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://soc.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://soc.sagepub.com/content/44/3/435.refs.html

Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at Univ of Education, Winneba on July 6, 2013

>> Version of Record - Jun 18, 2010 What is This?

Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at Univ of Education, Winneba on July 6, 2013

Sociology
Copyright The Author(s) 2010, Reprints and permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav BSA Publications Ltd Volume 44(3): 435452 DOI: 10.1177/0038038510362475

Sociology and the Problem of Eroticism

I

Chris Shilling
University of Kent

Philip A. Mellor
University of Leeds

A B S T RACT

Sociology has traditionally been concerned with problems of social order and meaning, and with how modern societies confronted these challenges when religion was in apparent decline, yet classical sociologists struggled to reconcile within their analyses the (dis)ordering and meaningful potentialities of eroticism. This article examines how eroticism has been viewed as a source of life-affirming meanings and as personally and socially destructive. Utilizing the contrasting theories of Weber and Bataille, we explore sociologys ambivalence towards eroticism, and criticize contemporary sociological approaches to the subject, before turning to the writings of Cixous, Irigaray and Kristeva for alternative models of the religiously informed eroticization of daily life. The perspectives these French theorists bring to the subject, and the issues that remain unresolved in their work, identify new lines of inquiry and re-emphasize the importance of building a sociology of eroticism that can address adequately its relationship to questions of order and meaning.
K E Y WOR D S

classical sociology / embodiment / eroticism / French feminism / religion

Introduction
rom its origins, sociology has been concerned with the problems of social order (the difficulties associated with maintaining social stability), meaning (the difficulties individuals and collectivities confront in imparting significance to their actions), and, certainly in its classical period, with how modern

435
Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at Univ of Education, Winneba on July 6, 2013

436

Sociology Volume 44

Number 3

June 2010

societies confront these issues when religious authorities and beliefs were in apparent decline (e.g. Nisbet, 1994). Comte and Durkheim, for example, suggested that social groups stimulated among their members emotions and norms that bound individuals into moral communities (Comte, 1853, Vol. II: 3502, 5556; Durkheim, 1995[1912]). Webers and Simmels focus on acting and interacting individuals, in contrast, explored how meaningful action involved reflexivity towards others, and how individuals developed coherent personalities by acting in line with their ethical beliefs (Levine, 1995). In each of these cases, furthermore, social orders and meanings were understood to be vulnerable because of the increasing fragility of religion. This vulnerability was evident in Comtes dual conception of sociology as a science and a religious project, a conception that reflected his concern that the decline of institutional religion could result in social degeneration; while Durkheim expressed similar anxieties about the social consequences of religions decline. For Weber (1948[1919a]), the quality of meaningful action was also threatened, as religious disenchantment undermined peoples capacity to pursue passionately ethically consistent action. Relatedly, Simmel (1990[1907] 1997[1912]) charted the spread of a cynicism that eroded individuals sense of possessing a soul, which thereby undermined their ability to experience relationships or moral values meaningfully. A philosophical questioning of the modern viability of any socially emboldening and life-affirming values reinforced these sociological concerns. Nietzsche (2003[18835]), in particular, was convinced that the death of God (the demise of Christian-moral frameworks and belief in divine absolutes) risked a period of life-stultifying pessimism. This background to sociologys concern with order and meaning provides an important context for the disciplines analyses of eroticism as it highlights as particularly important three aspects of these analyses. First, despite later theorists such as Marcuse (1987[1955]) investing erotic impulses with revolutionary potential, key classical sociologists tended to ignore eroticism. Durkheim paid no attention to the erotic potential of collective effervescence (Friedland, 2005), while Simmel (1971[1910]: 135) reduced eroticism to coquetry, a shadow form of serious matters. Second, however, other sociologists saw eroticism as possessed of religious dimensions, an identification of especial significance given disciplinary concerns about the decline of institutional religion. Comte, for example, associated fetishism, an issue related to eroticism, with religious values conducive to human development, but it is Webers concerns about individual action and Batailles neo-Durkheimian theory that most comprehensively dealt with eroticism as a dimension of religious life key to issues of order and meaning. Third, while Weber and Bataille dealt most comprehensively with eroticism, they invested its religious dimensions with a thoroughly ambivalent power: they recognized these as life-enhancing sources of meaning, but also identified them as personally oppressive, especially to women, socially unpredictable, and often dangerous. In what follows, we suggest that these particular ways of engaging with eroticism remain significant for sociology and continue to render problematic

Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at Univ of Education, Winneba on July 6, 2013

Sociology and the problem of eroticism Shilling & Mellor

437

the disciplines analyses of the subject. Following Durkheim and Simmel, many influential writings simply ignore erotic phenomena, neglecting their consequences for social order and meaning. What particularly interests us about contemporary sociological engagements with the subject, however, is the selective way they respond to core aspects of the view of eroticism bequeathed to the discipline by Weber and Bataille. On the one hand, Webers and Batailles focus on the ambivalent consequences of eroticism has given way to a series of onedimensional visions of its character and insufficiently critical assumptions about its domestication. On the other hand, sociology has also neglected the links they established between erotic and religious phenomena, thus underestimating the power, attraction and importance of the potentially life-affirming but also socially disordering effects of eroticism. With regard to both these issues, we argue that sociology can look to developments within French feminist theory to re-engage creatively with the potential for a sociology of eroticism whose importance was established in the work of Weber and Bataille. After outlining the analytical basis on which eroticism became important for Weber and Bataille, and exploring the partial convergence that exists between their writings in depicting the erotic as a transcendent escape from everyday life, we consider how contemporary treatments of eroticism have overlooked the complexity of their work. Following this, we examine Cixous, Irigarays and Kristevas visions of the positive potential of eroticism, and their focus on religious dimensions of erotic experiences and relationships. By moving away from patriarchal and sacrificial conceptions of eroticism towards positive forms of religious eroticism, they engage with key themes in the work of Weber and Bataille, and suggest new lines of sociological inquiry relevant to traditional disciplinary concerns with the problem of social order and meaning. We conclude, however, by suggesting that elements of their work remain problematic and by identifying key questions for the further development of a satisfactory sociology of eroticism.

Weber, Eroticism and Religious Regulation

Influenced deeply by Nietzsche, Webers interest in eroticism (and his conclusion that erotic relationships needed religious regulation) developed alongside his conviction that the human search for meaning devalued this-worldly activity. Christianity was central to this devaluation, encouraging its followers to live on the basis of other-worldly considerations, and contributing towards the general emergence of a self engaged, to an unprecedented degree, with an introspective search for meaning (Chowers, 1995). While Puritans scrutinized the self for sin or godliness in relation to other-worldly concerns of salvation, this search was even more difficult for subsequent generations left in a disenchanted world without faith. Trapped within the iron cage of modernity, characterized by the rationalization of life-spheres unconnected by overarching values (Whimster, 1995: 44950), life easily appeared devoid of significance.

Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at Univ of Education, Winneba on July 6, 2013

438

Sociology Volume 44

Number 3

June 2010

In exploring this loss of meaning further, Weber (1948[1915]) scrutinized the value-spheres of aesthetics, intellectualism, politics, religion and eroticism. Aesthetic and intellectual pursuits possessed meaningful potential. Art could be experienced as charismatic salvation from routines, while intellectualism marshalled energy (and the experience of what James (1956[1897]) referred to as a feeling of sufficiency) into rational achievement, albeit one that contributed eventually to disenchantment (Weber, 1948[1915]: 342, 350). Both were restricted by their elitism, however, and by a culture which had become inassimilable and in which the proliferation of self-contradictory and mutually antagonistic values led to devastating senselessness (Weber, 1948[1915]: 3567). Politics provided wider opportunities for individuals to join meaningful causes transcendent of the self, and reached its culmination during war. In the unconditional, sacrificial collectivity of combatants fighting for their country there was an evaporation of naturally given barriers of association and the release of a sentiment of community (1948[1915]: 335). There were limits to such nationalism, however, becoming clear to Weber with Germanys defeat in the war and the retreat from the public sphere of values associated with national greatness (Bologh, 1990: 193). Religion devalued this-worldly pursuits, with its world-denying forms causing the largest clashes with other valuespheres, even if the churches still comforted those unable to bear the fate of the times (Weber, 1948[1915]: 330, 1948[1919b]: 155), and though they still sought wider regulatory functions. It is against this background of the fragility of meaning that Weber considered erotic experiences and relationships. Weber (1948[1915]: 347, 345]) refers to eroticism as an embodied creative power that facilitates a sensual experience of unique meaning through a boundless giving of oneself radically opposed to functionality and rationality. Erotic relations offer a complete unification of individuals who would otherwise be separated by the unbrotherliness of bureaucracy (1948[1915]: 347). This is because their intense physical and emotional character not only effaces individuality, but offers the experience of being rooted in the kernel of the truly living, which is eternally inaccessible to any rational endeavour, and enjoying an inner, earthly sensation of salvation by mature love (1948[1915]: 347). Eroticism constitutes a flight from rationalized society, but not an unmediated return to biological life for Weber. Indeed, eroticism garnered its power by rejecting the nave naturalism of animal sex, and consciously cultivating sexuality as key to meaningful social existence. Eroticism maintains links with biology, however, as it would lose its vitalism if it became overrefined. The cultural refinement of sex has a long history, gaining momentum with the Christian Churchs attempt to remove sex from religious celebrations and regulate sexual life by containing it within marriage. Significant episodes in this history included pre-Christian endorsements of sacred harlotry, the eroticization of young males in the Greek ceremony of love, troubadour love poetry of the Middle Ages, salon culture, and modern extra-marital affairs (Weber, 1948[1915]: 3456).

Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at Univ of Education, Winneba on July 6, 2013

Sociology and the problem of eroticism Shilling & Mellor

439

Despite the attraction of eroticism as a response to the icy darkness and hardness of modernity (Weber, 1948[1919a]: 128), however, Weber could not endorse it unequivocally. This is because the fusing of souls within eroticism threatens generalized ethics and social orders, such as the religious ethic of brotherhood, in its exclusivity and potential brutality (Weber, 1948[1915]: 348). This was manifest not only in a will to possession that excludes others, but also in an egoistic enjoyment of oneself in the other involving the most intimate coercion of the soul of the weaker partner in the erotic relation (1948[1915]: 348). This is why Bologh (1990: 204, 21718) can depict the erotic relation as a patriarchal arrangement in which the stronger party accepts and expects the devotion of the weaker one, in which the will and subjectivity of the other is effaced in a physical and emotional process all the more damaging because it is unrecognized. Weber himself remains ambivalent about eroticism. He argues that humans can only achieve meaning by serving external goals (1948[1919a]). Here, erotic experiences provide a gateway through which individuals can recognize the unique significance of someone else, a joyous sensation of an inner-worldly salvation from rationalization providing an alternative to organized religion or the warrior ethic as a source of meaning (Weber, 1948[1915]: 346). However, Weber is also wary of the spiritual violence that can characterize erotic relationships, and did not view eroticism as a general foundation for social order. This is perhaps why he has been accused of never satisfactorily integrating eroticism into his thought (Mitzman, 1971), and why he displays uncertainty about whether eroticism is best viewed as a relationship or sublimated experience. In the final version of his 1915 intermediate essay on Religious rejections of the world, indeed, Weber appears to confine eroticism to three contrasting locations suggestive of its regulation by religion or its marginalization within private life. These involve the Lutheran notion of Gods allowance of marital sex, the Quaker submergence of eroticism within modernized, egalitarian marriage, and extra-marital affairs (Whimster, 1995: 459). We could identify these locations as involving distinctive types of eroticism: a religiously sanctioned physical eroticism within marriage, a religiously sanctioned emotional eroticism of unity within marriage, and a secular physical eroticism in extra-marital relations. The incipient distinctions Weber makes between religious(ly sanctioned), physical and emotional eroticism appear to be his attempt to regulate the disordering potential of this phenomenon. Paradoxically, despite his argument that Christianity devalued this-worldly meaning, Weber attributes religion with a key role in limiting eroticisms damaging potential, and in harnessing its expression within religiously sanctioned relationships. This close association between eroticism and religion parallels the work of Bataille.

Bataille, Eroticism and Religious Sacrifice

While Weber explored eroticism and the loss of meaning in modernity from the methodologically individualist starting point characteristic of German thought

Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at Univ of Education, Winneba on July 6, 2013

440

Sociology Volume 44

Number 3

June 2010

(Levine, 1995), Bataille (1992[1945]) engaged with Nietzsches warnings about the death of God from a Durkheimian concern with the collectivity as well as the social actor. Despite pursuing Durkheims focus on the health of society being dependent on the generation of effervescent powers, however, there is significant convergence between Batailles and Webers reflections on the experiences and relationships characteristic of eroticism and its consequences for the individual search for meaning. Bataille, like Weber, associated modernity with a loss of meaning occasioned by Christianity in general and Protestantism in particular. Following Durkheim (1995[1912]), Bataille (1991, 1993) argued that the most important social processes were not the restricted economy of work or acquisition promoted by Puritanism, but the sacred energies connecting people emotionally and intellectually to a reality transcendent of their organic needs. For Bataille, transcending energies were at their height during periods of useless expenditure, including sacrifice, war, mystical fervour, potlatch, and sexual orgies. Protestantism prohibited these releases, however, by instituting an asceticism and private accumulation that undermined the social basis of the sacred, endangering this-worldly meaning (Bataille, 1991: 124; Richardson, 1994: 75). This is the context in which Bataille (1996[1936]: 179) talks about the devitalizing consequences of a world that cannot be loved to the point of death, a world Protestantism and capitalism reduced to self-interest and the obligation to work, a world in which eroticism becomes a key issue. In a definition comparable to Webers view of eroticism as embodied creative power, Bataille treats eroticism as an exuberance of life; a commitment to living as vitally as possible up to death, and in which the boundaries associated with the discontinuity of individual existence are dissolved (2006[1957]: 11). The whole point of erotic experiences and relationships, indeed, is to destroy the self-contained character of participants in their normal lives (2006[1957]: 17). Thus, while Bataille identifies three types of eroticism (physical, emotional and religious), these share the capacity to substitute for the individual isolated discontinuity a feeling of profound continuity in which life becomes deeply meaningful (2006[1957]: 15). Physical eroticism involves the eroticism of bodies a passionate conjoining of flesh in a dance of desire and consummation in which a sacrificial violation of individual being is experienced, resulting in a glimpse of the possibility of infinity (Richardson, 1998). Here, nakedness constitutes a prelude to a fusion that is also a destruction of participants in their daily lives culminating in the temporary obliteration of difference during orgasm. Physical eroticism is not immersion in unmediated biological life, though, but mirrors Webers cultivated sexuality, a distinctively human return to animal life (Bataille, 1993: 342, 2006[1957]: 11, 29). Emotional eroticism involves the eroticism of hearts in which the lover perceives the loved in their totality, prolonging physical eroticism into interpersonal communion (Richardson, 1994: 109). The fusion of lovers bodies persists on the spiritual plane, but this does not end the violation of individual being

Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at Univ of Education, Winneba on July 6, 2013

Sociology and the problem of eroticism Shilling & Mellor

441

(Bataille, 2006[1957]: 20). Indeed, the search for fusion can result in an anguished urge to possess, entailing a partner preferring to kill rather than lose their lover. Bataille explains this by noting that only in the destruction through death if need be, of the individuals solitariness can there appear that image of the beloved object which in the lovers eyes invests all being with significance (2006[1957]: 21). Resonating with Webers discussions of mysticism, Batailles third form of eroticism, religious eroticism, involves eroticism of the spirit in which there is no dependence on a partner to reveal continuity above the discontinuity of individual existence. Historically, this has been exemplified by religious sacrifice in which individual separateness is violated by an act that fuses the sacrifices and other participants together with their victim. The victim dies and the spectators share in what death reveals. As Bataille (2006[1957]) explains, the sacredness of this is the revelation of continuity through the death of a discontinuous being to those who watch it as a solemn rite. What is particularly important about religious eroticism is the sense in which this sacrificial aspect underpins all forms of eroticism for Bataille. There is always a violation of individuality in eroticism, in reaching beyond the present in search of transcendent meaning, and there is always a sacrificial component in the possession and merging central to erotic experiences and relationships. As Batailles comments about religious eroticism and sacrifice suggest, eroticism might be compared with that effervescence central to Durkheims account of how individuals are forged into collectivities. In each form identified by Bataille, however, it constitutes transcendence without limits. Irrespective of whether individuals are in an erotic relationship, erotic experiences constitute an emotionally disorientating void associated with the bottomless and boundlessness of the universe (Bataille, 1993: 168). Discontinuous identities are blown apart, yet this transcendence of individuality is one in which the experience of life confronts death. The anguish that Bataille (1989) associates with our awareness that we are incomplete and condemned to death is removed, only to be replaced by a limitless abyss. Life also meets death prosaically in the physical eroticism of sex, where the possibility of biological reproduction is linked to the inevitability of death. Thus, while effervescence for Durkheim adds to the individual, typically securing them to a collectivity, eroticism for Bataille obliterates the individual, propelling them towards non-existence through relationships that can be violent and inimical to ordered socialities. Batailles developments of, and departures from, Durkheims work are evident further in his dealings with the ambivalence of eroticism when he focuses on Durkheims (1995[1912]: 213) fleeting comments on the impure sacred. For Bataille, eroticisms force occurs because of its doubled-edged character: it is not an unambiguously joyous escape from discontinuity, but places one beyond comfort and comprehension. To begin with, given its association with the boundaries of life and death, the experience of eroticism involves fascination and horror, affirmation and denial, and the wish to escape isolation without falling irrevocably into a void (Bataille, 2006[1957]: 211, 244). The meaning

Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at Univ of Education, Winneba on July 6, 2013

442

Sociology Volume 44

Number 3

June 2010

provided by erotic continuity is, then, compromised by its opening onto an experience beyond meaning. Additionally, Bataille recognizes there is something heavy, sinister and male-dominated about how physical eroticism destroys the self-contained character of the participants (2006[1957]:19). Eroticism is not egalitarian: the effacements occurring in sexual relations often result in the victimization of the female partner. As Bataille (2006[1957]: 90) observes, reminding us of the ubiquity of sacrifice in eroticism, The lover strips the beloved of her identity no less than the blood stained priest his human or animal victim. The woman is despoiled of her being. Batailles recognition of this exploitation culminates when analysing Sades sexual morality as a ruinous form of eroticism in which refusal to recognize the value of the other results in murder (2006[1957]: 107, 171). The Janus-faced character of physical eroticism is also manifest through the paradox lying at the heart of this experience: while it involves a fusion which travels beyond the limits of a person, its immediate focus is an object, a body, usually an objectified female body. Here, though, the body is not eroticism in its completeness but a vehicle for eroticism (2006[1957]: 12930). As Simone de Beauvoir (1993[1949]) argued in the case of social and intimate life, it is the body of the woman reduced to immanence that provides for the transcendence of the man. If the ambivalence of eroticism for Weber revolves around its potential to mitigate modern disenchantment, Batailles considerations are based on a reevaluation of Durkheims analysis of the sacred. Despite this, there are striking similarities between their analyses. Both identify Christianity as central to the increased importance of eroticism. By disenchanting the world, or blocking the circulation of surplus energy and restricting contact with the sacred, Puritanism accentuates problems associated with the meaning of life and the anguish people experience living with knowledge of certain death. In this context, Bataille and Weber view the various forms of eroticism as modes of connecting and transporting individuals beyond isolated, routinized daily life. Eroticism here is a positive force. It is the extent of this connection, though, that highlights the ambivalence of eroticism. For Weber, immersion within erotic relationships is socially ambivalent because of their restricted, often dyadic, size. For Bataille, in contrast, erotic connection opens individuals to the shared experience of meaningful continuity, yet this experience is more disorienting than ordering in its consequences. Neither theorist associates eroticism with the creation or consolidation of general social orders. Relatedly, both recognize the brutalizing potential of physical eroticism; an eroticism in which female identity stands to be effaced. As Bologh (1990: 218) argues, erotic couplings may involve a sacrifice from both parties, but women bear the brunt of violation in its physical and emotional forms. In this sense, Weber and Bataille also have a clear view of eroticism as a negative force that is socially disruptive and personally damaging. Finally, both theorists view religion as increasing the potency of eroticisms ambivalence. It is not simply that erotic experiences and relationships possess a transcendent potentiality ordinarily associated with religious phenomena. Instead, Weber

Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at Univ of Education, Winneba on July 6, 2013

Sociology and the problem of eroticism Shilling & Mellor

443

looks to religion as a means of regulating erotic experiences within, or at the margins of, sanctioned relationships, while Bataille identifies violent sacrifice as religious eroticisms height. In an age when religious authorities and beliefs were in apparent decline, eroticism provided evidence of their continued importance to human life.

Contemporary Sociology and New Visions of the Erotic

Weber and Bataille exerted a significant influence on the discipline, but the complexities of their analyses of eroticism have been overlooked in contemporary sociology. This is perhaps most surprising in the sociology of emotions, a sub-discipline concerned with the consequences of various emotions for social order and meaningful action (e.g. Stets and Turner, 2008), yet which has marginalized eroticism. The related sociological concern with love and intimacy in recent years has also downplayed the double-edged nature of eroticism in favour of such issues as ideology and inequality (e.g. Felmlee and Sprecher, 2007; Jackson, 1993). Those sociologically informed writings that do engage with issues raised by Weber and Bataille, moreover, usually focus on domesticated or rationalized forms of eroticism. Writers such as Giddens (1992) and Bauman (2003), for example, provide visions of pure relationships or liquid love in the intimate realm as superseding eroticism: here, eroticism has been tamed into a manageable resource that can enhance those reflexively constituted life-goals that constitute the dominant framework of modern intimacy. Similarly, McNair (2002), Paasonen (2007) and other analysts of the sexualization of the public sphere argue that physical eroticism has become appropriated by consumer culture (Garber, 2000: 23). Within this perspective, culture has rationalized and commodified physical communion, emptying it of what Weber and Bataille regard as its potential for life-affirming meaning, and largely robbing it of the capacity to reshape, or radically disrupt, social orders. What is also of note is the lack of engagement with religious themes in such studies. This lack signals a reduced conception of eroticism, and ignores the significance of religion for the sociological concern with order and meaning. Studies into the global rise of religious extremism, for example, draw upon Batailles focus on sacrifice and engage, albeit pessimistically, with Webers interest in the generalizability of an ethic of brotherly love, particularly with regard to the destruction that can follow unconditional commitments to transcendent causes in which other people are reduced to sacrificial objects (e.g. Catherwood, 2003; Juergensmeyer, 2003). Such analyses invite sociologists to explore the erotic dimensions of religion, yet this is ignored by those studies that highlight instead reflexively appropriated or devitalized forms of eroticism. It is for this reason that we have to look outside the boundaries of sociology, to contemporary French feminism, to find explorations of erotic experiences and relationships that might engage more creatively with the positions

Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at Univ of Education, Winneba on July 6, 2013

444

Sociology Volume 44

Number 3

June 2010

outlined by Weber and Bataille. While their methods and styles are not easily assimilated to the usual formalism of sociological theory or research, the work of Cixous, Kristeva, and Irigaray warrants attention as it can be read as an attempt to bridge the individualist and collectivist traditions represented by Weber and Bataille, and to engage with their interests in eroticism and religion in a manner that brings a distinctive concern with the feminine to the subject.1 In terms of bridging these traditions, Cixous, Kristeva and Irigaray seek to uncover the collective foundations of western social orders by analysing the repression of passionate and libidinous energies.2 Engaging critically with Lacan (1977), they portray these foundations as symbolic orders of language, law, custom and traditional religion in which the feminine and maternal are sacrificed in order to facilitate subject formation consistent with masculine culture. Their related excavations of these masculine foundations excavations which sometimes reveal Batailles influence result not only in a revalidation of collective feminine principles and energies, however, but of the individual. This is not the individual conceived of as an autonomous, masculine project of the Enlightenment, or as one who gains transcendence only through sacrifice and at the expense of others. Instead, Cixous, Kristeva and Irigaray suggest that a cultures foundations should be judged on the basis of whether they enable individuals to be nurtured, respected and fulfilled as distinct yet interdependent beings able to grow within loving relationships. In terms of engaging with eroticism and religion, Cixous, Kristeva and Irigaray explore how traditional religion discredited femininitys link with nature and fecundity, and constructed an image of transcendence and desire privileging a (masculine) God as the centre and source of all truth (Joy et al., 2002: 9). In contrast to Webers and Batailles views of religious eroticism as regulatory and sacrificial, however, they argue that eroticism can assume religious dimensions that transgress the Symbolic Order, enabling a recovery of universally beneficial feminine principles. Here, the erotic is not a dizzying escape from daily life for some, at the expense of others, but a revitalizing reconnection with drives and passions excluded from masculine culture that can stimulate an ethical reformation of daily life. In this respect, the distinctive contributions of Cixous, Kristeva and Irigaray offer a potentially significant contribution towards a new line of sociological inquiry regarding erotic experiences and relationships. There exists a distinction between traditional religion and a divinity released through desire and writing running throughout Cixous work (Hollywood, 2003: 147). Traditional religion is associated with a masculine economy of giving (based on the self-aggrandizement of the giver, situated at the heart of the Symbolic Order), while divinity is linked to a feminine economy in which giving occurs without regard for self-interest (Cixous, 1986[1969], 1991a). In this context, Cixous (1976) conceives criture fminine as a form of writing derived from a libido able to avoid the masculine power of the Symbolic and facilitate new relationships between self and Other (Cixous, 1991b; Duchen, 1986: 92). Here, writing has an erotic and religious significance, a libidinous and

Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at Univ of Education, Winneba on July 6, 2013

Sociology and the problem of eroticism Shilling & Mellor

445

transcendent durability, that has persisted despite Judeo-Christian attempts to suppress its sources (suppressions reflected in the biblical story of Eves temptation, and explored by Cixous, 1991a, through the autobiographical figure of the Jewoman). Writing is an act of faith containing the promise of revelation, and able to conjure up the forbidden and make contact with the God that escapes us and makes us wonder (Cixous, 1991a: 129, 1998). This is the context in which writing for Cixous constitutes a literary eroticism enabling a libidinous break from the limitations of masculine culture and creating a religious means of expression for the repressed feminine body. While Weber and Bataille viewed the erotic as operating at the expense of others, as partly sacrificial, Cixous views writing as a form of religious eroticism possessed of the potential to recover (feminine) identity and challenge the repression and binary oppositions characteristic of the symbolic order. Eroticism is connected to the body, finds its expression through the creativity of writing, and has through this activity the potential to reform the world (Cixous, 1998: 150). Kristeva also examines religions role in regulating bodily drives and affects as part of the Symbolic Order of language and culture. In her reading of Leviticus, Kristeva (1982[1980]) analyses how the ancient Hebraic tradition sought to make abject (to portray as vile objects of disgust) the fecund properties of the female body, and instilled sexual divisions into the heart of the sacred. This abjection was apparent in how religious myth and ritual identified women as threats to be vanquished by sacrifice (Greaney, 2008; Reineke, 2003: 114). Despite the alienating effects of institutional religion, however, Kristeva (1987[1985]) argues that religious faith can be a creative resource against oppression and a means of repairing the self through openness to the Other (Joy et al., 2002: 87). The capacity of faith to be utilized in this way results from the religious eroticism stimulated by the meeting of jouissance (the excess to our affects that cannot be contained wholly by any social order) and the Judeo-Christian discourse of love. In contrast to Webers and Batailles models of eroticism involving escape from everyday life at the expense of others religious eroticism for Kristeva (1987[1985]) involves recognizing and experiencing interdependence. It is in this context that Kristeva, discussing the role of the Virgin Mary in Roman Catholicism, calls for an heretical ethics, based on maternal experience, in which the feminine will not be sacrificed and in which there will be recognition, accommodation and love for the other based on, and analogous to, the mothers love for her child (Kristeva, 1987[1977]). Eroticism here manifests itself as a religiously inflected maternal eroticism culminating in emboldening experiences supportive of ethically defensible relationships that include rather than exclude the other. Irigaray (1993[1987]) shares Cixous and Kristevas concerns with sexual difference and the repression of the feminine in western culture, and argues that religion has designated women, and womens work, as primary objects of sacrifice. In seeking to go beyond religion as oppressive, Irigaray (1993[1987]) insists that women need their own God so they can appreciate their own

Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at Univ of Education, Winneba on July 6, 2013

446

Sociology Volume 44

Number 3

June 2010

genealogy a representation of the divine enabling women to prefigure their subjectivity and fulfil their potential. As women come to possess themselves, it is further possible to envisage divinity anew as a form of inter-subjective eroticism involving an interval (a phenomenon illustrated with images of the angel as an intermediary between body and spirit), and mucosity (viewed as the permeability of the borders marking inside and outside) (Irigaray, 1993[1984]). Divinity as interval constitutes a space between man and woman in which genuine interaction can occur on the basis of Descartes first passion, wonder. Here, admiration and awe in the face of something unknowable can be returned to its proper place: the realm of sexual difference (Irigaray, 1984: 124). The sense of the divine with which this is associated has the potential to result in new human relationships based on respect and nurturing rather than the masculine suppression of the feminine (Roy, 2003). Divinity as mucosity suggests that this mutual recognition does not leave the partners to a relationship untouched, but open to growth and transcendence. Genuinely intersubjective female/male communication begins via acceptance of the others identity as distinct, yet develops via a passion and love that can nurture transcendence without obliterating the individual (an obliteration that usually occurs at the expense of women) (Irigaray, 1996[1992]). Instead of being based on violence and suppression, then, the erotic becomes an inter-subjective foundation on which lovers build a bridge not only between themselves but also to the wider social and natural environment (Irigaray, 2002). Through respect for their differences, woman and man can aspire to being co-redeemers of their bodies, the world and the cosmos. Taken together, then, these new and related visions of the erotic contrast with the tendency for contemporary sociology to concentrate on devitalized forms of eroticism, and engage with the positive potential of the relationship between eroticism and religion. Given the psychoanalytic, philosophical and theological underpinnings of many of their arguments, Cixous, Kristeva and Irigaray might not be assimilated easily within the disciplinary canon. In what follows, however, we assess their potential sociological significance relative to the arguments of Weber and Bataille.

Sociology and the Problem of Eroticism

In common with Weber and Bataille, these French feminist visions of the erotic emphasize its religious character and its socially transgressive potential. Recognizing that religion has traditionally been associated with repressive, male-dominated orientations towards eroticism (Roy, 2003: 17), they nonetheless re-engage critically with Christian themes and symbols to articulate a new form of religious eroticism centred on the libidinous female body and feminine principles of interdependence. While Weber and Bataille judged the passions released by eroticism as erasing individual subjectivity and offering escape from the rationalism and disenchantment of worldly life, however, Cixous, Kristeva

Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at Univ of Education, Winneba on July 6, 2013

Sociology and the problem of eroticism Shilling & Mellor

447

and Irigaray look to the release of these erotic energies (through writing, the jouissance that can be expressed through a religious discourse of love, or the creation of a divine space in which can occur new relations between women and men) to transform daily life. In contrast to Bataille, but in a manner similar to Durkheim, they identify sacred effervescent energies as being able to add to rather than efface individual identities. Of particular note is the fact that, in imparting the religious character of erotic experiences and relationships with a generalizability and an ethical grounding, they conceive of eroticism not as an escape from rationalized life, but as an ethically supportable and religiously imbued way of reforming social relationships and eroticizing daily life.3 Eroticism becomes in their hands something that imparts the world with new meaning via an overcoming of those binary oppositions on which the Symbolic Order is predicated, and a release of those feminine energies previously repressed by masculine language and law. For Irigaray in particular, it also becomes the grounding for a new space in which women and men can meet to establish new relationships possessed of an affinity with Judeo-Christian notions of love and passion. There are two aspects of their treatment of eroticism that remain problematic, however. First, there is the danger that these writers, in focusing on the feminine, reproduce the binary phallocentric logic they oppose (Joy, 2003; Poxon, 2003; Wenzel, 1981: 272). They identify erotic religiosity as a force that could prompt changes throughout culture, but, read sociologically, their links between eroticism, religion and the feminine risk inverting rather than deconstructing much of the traditional Christianity they oppose. For Irigaray (1993[1984]: 54), for example, the accomplishment of female subjectivity requires a (female) God as the symbol of the perfection of femininity, just as the (male) God of Christianity allowed men to orient their finiteness with reference to infinity (Beattie, 1997: 170). This echoes Durkheims notion of the sacred as societys symbolic representation of itself to itself. However, since the masculine sacrificial eroticism discussed by Weber and Bataille is clearly considered repressive and intolerable, it also implies that only feminine religiosity can provide the ethical basis for the eroticization of everyday life. Thus, while the erotic becomes an ostensibly inter-subjective foundation on which lovers build a bridge not only between themselves but also to the wider social and natural environment, questions remain about the subjectivity of men, within Irigarays own account, if they can only represent themselves religiously through the feminine (Irigaray, 2002). Second, Irigaray, Kristeva and Cixous lay considerable emphasis on religious eroticism as transgression, but Webers and Batailles emphasis on the religious regulation of eroticism refers to more than male-dominated hegemony over women: for them, regulation is a necessary component of any social engagement with eroticism. For Bataille (2006[1957]: 65), for example, the regulation of eroticism is essential for the creation of meanings and relationships. Rooted as it is in the body, eroticism can escape, overflow or undermine the social because of its general associations with chaos and animal violence

Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at Univ of Education, Winneba on July 6, 2013

448

Sociology Volume 44

Number 3

June 2010

(Bataille, 2006[1957]). Thus, Irigaray, Cixous and Kristeva not only offer a highly benign view of eroticism, in so far as it is not associated with masculinity, but, in so doing, direct attention away from important sociological questions about the nature of the relationship between eroticism and its regulation within stable social orders.

Conclusion
Bataille (2006[1957]: 273) suggested that eroticism should be central to social theory because it is an intrinsic part of what it is to be human that can either underpin or overwhelm social life. Eroticism is the problem of problems as it is always a problematic part of human social experience (2006[1957]: 273). Webers (1948[1915]: 347, 345]) view of eroticism as an embodied creative power rooted in biology yet reflective of the cultivation of sexuality as a key to meaningful existence, expresses a similar view, particularly with regard to its potential potency in a world dominated by rationality and bureaucracy. Together, they thereby established the subject as a key one for the discipline to engage with creatively. As we suggested, however, the breadth and subtlety with which they engaged with this subject have not been developed satisfactorily within contemporary sociology. This is the context in which we identified Cixous, Kristeva and Irigaray as important sources for help in refocusing sociological attention on vitalistic forms of eroticism in the modern era, and their consequentiality for social order and the construction of meaning. In particular, these writers explore the intimate link between eroticism and religion and use this to broaden and diversify our understanding of the erotic by exploring its literary, maternal and inter-subjective dimensions. In so doing, they supplement Webers and Batailles earlier accounts of the physical, emotional and religious dimensions of erotic transcendence. In moving away from patriarchal and sacrificial conceptions towards positive forms of religious eroticism, moreover, these French writers open up the possibility of new lines of sociological inquiry relevant to traditional disciplinary concerns with the problem of social order and meaning. Nonetheless, we have suggested that, in losing the emphasis on the sociological ambivalence of eroticism evident in the work of Weber and Bataille, such writings leave us with further questions about the gendered nature of religious eroticism (even if this is framed in symbolic rather than the essentialist terms sometimes implied by these perspectives), and about the nature and implications of its regulation for various patterns of social order and social meaning. Given the centrality of these concerns to the work of Weber and Bataille, and despite the limitations evident in how they deal with them, many of which are usefully highlighted by the developments in French thought we have considered, we suggest that the further development of the sociology of eroticism can continue to engage fruitfully with their pioneering studies. Eroticism is an issue of vital importance for the disciplines enduring concerns with order and meaning,

Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at Univ of Education, Winneba on July 6, 2013

Sociology and the problem of eroticism Shilling & Mellor

449

yet it remains a problem for sociology and one that deserves to be given greater attention.

Notes
1 While the term French feminists does not do their work full justice glossing their ambivalence towards elements of feminism and the variable significance of psychoanalysis, deconstruction, philosophy and literary theory to their writings (Gambaudo, 2007) it usefully highlights the importance of gendered themes to them and their distinctiveness from Weber and Bataille. Wittig and Clment (who has written with Cixous) could also be included within this category, but we confine our focus in this article to Cixous, Kristeva and Irigaray as providing clear and related yet distinctive alternatives to Webers and Batailles engagements with eroticism. There is also an important ethical dimension to their arguments. There has already been a tradition of sociological research concerned with how collective effervescence enhances integration and symbolic meanings at the level of largescale groups (e.g. Maffesoli, 1996; Tiryakian, 1995), but there is also the possibility that emerging forms of eroticism may contain ethical dimensions that need to be examined seriously. While Foucault (1990) analysed the ancients who sought to regulate their sexuality and sexual relations on the basis of ethical considerations before the age where juridical codes were used to regulate sex, this issue of ethical forms of eroticism has not been prominent within sociology and deserves greater study (see also Hardy, 2004; Weitman, 1998: 96).

References
Bataille, G. (1989) The Tears of Eros. San Francisco: City Lights. Bataille, G. (1991) The Accursed Share, Vol.1. New York: Zone. Bataille, G. (1992[1945]) On Nietzsche. London: Athlone Press. Bataille, G. (1993) The Accursed Share, Vols. 2 and 3. New York: Zone. Bataille, G. (1996[1936]) The Sacred Conspiracy, in A. Stoekl (ed.) Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 19171939. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota University Press. Bataille, G. (2006[1957]) Eroticism. London: Marion Boyars. Bauman, Z. (2003) Liquid Love. Cambridge: Polity. Beattie, T. (1997) Carnal Love and Spiritual Imagination, in J. Davies and G. Loughlin (eds) Sex These Days. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Bologh, R. (1990) Love or Greatness? Max Weber and Masculine Thinking. London: Unwin Hyman. Catherwood, C. (2003) Why the Nations Rage. Killing in the Name of God. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield. Chowers, E. (1995) Max Weber: The Fate of Homo-hermeneut in a Disenchanted World, Journal of European Studies. 25: 98123. Cixous, H. (1976) The Laugh of the Medusa, Signs 1(4): 87593. Cixous, H. (1986[1969]) Inside. New York: Schocken Books.

Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at Univ of Education, Winneba on July 6, 2013

450

Sociology Volume 44

Number 3

June 2010

Cixous, H. (1991a) Coming to Writing and Other Essays. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Cixous, H. (1991b) Readings. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Cixous, H. (1998) Stigmata: Escaping Texts. London: Routledge. Comte, A. (1853) The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte. Vols.1 and 2. Trans. H. Matineau. London: John Chapman. De Beauvoir, S. (1993[1949]) The Second Sex. London: Everyman. Duchen, C. (1986) Feminism in France. London: Routledge. Durkheim, E. (1995[1912]) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: Free Press. Felmlee, D. and S. Sprecher (2007) Love, in J. Stets and J. Turner (eds) Handbook of the Sociology of Emotions. New York: Springer. Foucault, M. (1990) The Care of the Self. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Friedland, R. (2005) Drag Kings at the Totem Ball: The Erotics of Collective Representation in Emile Durkheim and Sigmund Freud, in J. Alexander and P. Smiths (eds) The Cambridge Companion to Durkheim, pp. 23973. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gambaudo, S. (2007) French Feminism vs Anglo-American Feminism: A Reconstruction, European Journal of Womens Studies 14: 93108. Garber, M. (2000) Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life. London: Routledge. Giddens, A. (1992) The Transformation of Intimacy. Cambridge: Polity. Greaney, M. (2008) Violence and the Sacred in the Fiction of Julia Kristeva, Theology & Sexuality 14(3): 293304. Hardy, S. (2004) The Greeks, Eroticism and Ourselves, Sexualities 7: 20116. Hollywood, A. (2003) Mysticism, Death and Desire in the Work of Helene Cixous and Catherine Clement, in M. Joy, K. OGrady and J. Poxon (eds) Religion in French Feminist Thought. London: Routledge. Irigaray, L. (1984) Sexual difference, in T. Moi (ed.) French Feminist Thought. Oxford: Blackwell. Irigaray, L. (1993[1984]) An Ethics of Sexual Difference. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Irigaray, L. (1993[1987]) Sexes and Genealogies. Columbia, OH: Columbia University Press. Irigaray, L. (1996[1992]) I Love to You: Sketch of a Possible Felicity in History. London: Routledge. Irigaray, L. (2002) Between East and West. Columbia, OH: Columbia University Press. Jackson, S. (1993) Even Sociologists Fall in Love: An Exploration in the Sociology of Emotions, Sociology 27: 20120. James, W. (1956[1897]) The Sentiment of Rationality, in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. New York: Dover. Joy, M. (2003) Irigarays Eastern Explorations, in M. Joy, K. OGrady and J. Poxon (eds) Religion in French Feminist Thought. London: Routledge. Joy, M., K. OGrady and J. Poxon (eds) (2002) French Feminists on Religion. London: Routledge. Juergensmeyer, M. (2003) Terror in the Mind of God. The Global Rise of Religious Violence. Berkeley, CA: California University Press.

Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at Univ of Education, Winneba on July 6, 2013

Sociology and the problem of eroticism Shilling & Mellor Kristeva, J. (1982[1980]) Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Columbia, OH: Columbia University Press. Kristeva, J. (1987[1977]) Stabat mater, in T. Moi (ed.) The Kristeva Reader. Columbia, OH: Columbia University Press. Kristeva, J. (1987[1985]) In the Beginning Was Love: Psychoanalysis and Faith. Columbia, OH: Columbia University Press. Lacan, J. (1977) Ecrits. A Selection. London: W.W. Norton. Levine, D. (1995) Visions of the Sociological Tradition. Chicago: Chicago University Press. McNair, B. (2002) Striptease Culture. London: Routledge. Marcuse, H. (1987[1955]) Eros and Civilization. London: Routledge. Maffesoli, M. (1996) The Time of the Tribes. London: Sage. Mitzman, A. (1971) The Iron Cage. New York: Grosset and Dunlap. Nietzsche, F. (2003[18835]) Thus Spoke Zarathustra. London: Penguin. Nisbet, R. (1994) The Sociological Tradition. New York: Free Press. Paasonen, S. (2007) Pornification. Oxford: Berg. Poxon, J. (2003) Corporeality and Divinity: Irigaray and the Problem of the Ideal, in M. Joy, K. OGrady and J. Poxon (eds) Religion in French Feminist Thought. London: Routledge. Reineke, M. (2003) Our Vital Necessity. Julia Kristevas Theory of Sacrifice, in M. Joy, K. OGrady and J. Poxon (eds) Religion in French Feminist Thought. London: Routledge. Richardson, M. (1994) Georges Bataille. London: Routledge. Richardson, M. (1998) Seductions of the Impossible: Love, the Erotic and Sacrifice in Surrealist Discourse, Theory, Culture and Society. 15(34): 71110. Roy, M-A. (2003) Women and Spirituality in the Writings of Luce Irigaray, in M. Joy, K. OGrady and J. Poxon (eds) Religion in French Feminist Thought. London: Routledge. Simmel, G. (1971[1910]) Sociability, in D. Levine (ed.) Georg Simmel on Individual and Social Forms. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Simmel, G. (1990[1907]) The Philosophy of Money. London: Routledge. Simmel, G. (1997[1912]) Religion, in G. Simmel Essays on Religion, pp. 136214. London: Yale University Press. Stets, J. and J. Turner (2008) Handbook of the Sociology of Emotions. New York: Springer. Tiryakian, E. (1995) Collective Effervescence, Social Change and Charisma: Durkheim, Weber and 1989, International Sociology 10(3): 26981. Weber, M. (1948[1919a]) Politics as a Vocation, in H.H. Gerth and C.W. Mills (eds) From Max Weber. London: Routledge. Weber, M. (1948[1919b]) Science as a Vocation, in H.H. Gerth and C.W. Mills (eds) From Max Weber. London: Routledge. Weber, M. (1948[1915]) Religious Rejections of the World and their Directions, in H.H. Gerth and C.W. Mills (eds) From Max Weber. London: Routledge. Wenzel, H. (1981) The Text as Body/Politics, Feminist Studies 7(2): 26487. Weitman, S. (1998) On the Elementary Forms of the Socioerotic Life, Theory, Culture and Society 15(34): 71110. Whimster, S. (1995) Max Weber on the Erotic and some Comparisons with the Work of Foucault, International Sociology 10(4): 44762.

451

Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at Univ of Education, Winneba on July 6, 2013

452

Sociology Volume 44

Number 3

June 2010

Chris Shilling
Is Professor of Sociology and Director of Graduate Studies (Research) for SSPSSR at the University of Kent. He is editor of The Sociological Review Monograph Series, and his recent publications include Changing Bodies. Habit, Crisis and Creativity (Sage, 2008), Embodying Sociology. Retrospect, Progress and Prospects (editor, Blackwells, 2007), and The Body in Culture, Technology and Society (Sage, 2005). Address: SSPSSR, Cornwallis Building, University of Kent at Canterbury, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NF, UK. E-mail: c.shilling@kent.ac.uk

Philip A. Mellor
Is Professor of Religion and Social Theory, and Head of the School of Humanities, at the University of Leeds. His publications include Religion, Realism and Social Theory (Sage, 2004), and, with Chris Shilling, The Sociological Ambition (Sage, 2001) and Re-forming the Body: Religion, Community and Modernity (Sage, 1997). Address: School of Humanities, Hopewell House, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK. E-mail: p.a.mellor@leeds.ac.uk

Date submitted February 2009 Date accepted September 2009

Downloaded from soc.sagepub.com at Univ of Education, Winneba on July 6, 2013