Smut

Erotic Reality/Obscene Ideology

Murray S. Davis

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780226137926, 9780226137919
• eBook ISBN: 9780226162461
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Human Sexuality in Psychology
• Index: Social Sciences

Smut investigates sex in a way that differes from nearly all previous books on the subject. Drawing on a wide variety of literary forms, including the work of novelists, poets, and even comedians–resources ranging from the most sublime theologians to the most profane pornographers–Murray S. Davis goes beyond those who regard sex merely as a biological instinct or animal behavior. He recaptures sex for the social sciences by reemphasizing the aspects of it that are unique to human beings in all their rich perplexity.

In part one, Davis employs a phenomenlogical approach to examine the differrence between sexual arousal and ordinary experience: sexual arousal, he argues, alters a person's experience of the world, resulting in an "erotic reality" that contratsts strikingly to our everyday reality; different perceptions of time, space, human bodies, and other social types occur in  each realm. Davis describes in detail the movement from everyday into erotic reality from the first subtle castings-off to the shocking post-orgasmic return.

In part two the author employs a structuralist approach to determine why some people find this alternation between realities "dirty." He begins with a meditation on the similarity between sex and dirt and then asks, "How must somone view the world for him to find sex dirty?" Normal sex can be disliked, Davis concludes, only if it violates a certain conception of the individual; perverted sex can be despised only if it further violates certain conceptions of social relations and social organization. Davis ends part two with a "periodic table of perversions" that systematically summarizes the fundamental social elements out of which those who find sex dirty construct their world.

Finally, in part three Davis considers other conceptual grids affected by the alternation between everyday and erotic realities: the "pornographic," which concieves of the individual, social relations, and social organizations as deserving to disrupted by sex; and the "naturalistic," which concieves of them in a way that cannot be disrupted by sex. Throughout history these ideologies have contested for control over Western society, and, in his conlusion, Davis ofers a prognosis for the future of sex based on these historical ideological cycles.

Part One

Sexual Experience

Erotic Reality and Everyday Reality

Writing in the 1920s, the Austrian novelist Robert Musil observed that sex was one of those activities that pull consciousness away from the ordinary concerns of everyday life:

The sight of her had stirred him and moved him to caresses. Now, when it was all over, he felt again how little it concerned him. The incredible swiftness of such transformations, which turn a sane man into a frothing lunatic, now became all too strikingly clear. But it seemed to him that this erotic metamorphosis of consciousness was only a special case of something far more general; for nowadays all manifestations of our inner life, such as for instance an evening at the theatre, a concert, or a church service, are such swift appearing and disappearing islands of a second state of consciousness temporarily interpolated into the ordinary one.

‘And yet a short time ago I was still at work,’ he thought, ‘and before that I was walking down the street to buy a paper. . . . Yet in the mean time we have been flying through a cloud of madness, and it is no less uncanny how the solid experiences close up again over that vanishing gap and re-assert themselves in all their tenacity.’ [1965, p. 132]

The perspective from which we shall study these interpolations of specialized experience within the broader experience of everyday life is the phenomenological.

Phenomenology was first defined in its modern form by the German philosopher Edmund Husserl, who conceived of it as a method to discover the foundations of the physical world in human experience rather than in matter, where the natural sciences sought them. His student, the Austrian philosopher-sociologist Alfred Schutz, reoriented phenomenological research from the physical to the social world. Schutz undertook a series of investigations into the human experience of various temporary social roles, asking how it felt to be a stranger, a homecomer, a scientist, a musician, a fantasizer, a dreamer. But he did not investigate the experience of what his contemporary Robert Musil considered the paradigm of all temporary social roles: the copulator. This topic was left for the French Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre to explore in his major work Being and Nothingness (1956). But even Sartre was less interested in describing sexual experience than in using it to prove the durability of the individual in contrast to the ephemerality of all relations between individuals, of which sex is the prototype. Recently, in Frame Analysis (1974), the Canadian-American sociologist Erving Goffman greatly increased the power of the phenomenological perspective by examining the borders that distinguish experience inside a situation from experience outside the situation, as a “frame” differentiates what is experienced as “picture” from what is experienced as “wall.” He extended phenomenology’s concerns, applying it particularly to “an evening at the theater” (as suggested by Musil); and he refined its concepts, above all in his distinction between an individual’s sense of “what is real” and “what it is he can get caught up in, engrossed in, carried away by” (p. 6). But apart from some brief peeks at pornography (pp. 54–56, 70–71, 277–78), Goffman—uncharacteristically reticent—refrains from framing sex, the most obvious application of frame analysis.

In sum, these theorists have chiseled many facets into the phenomenological prism; but to my knowledge neither they nor anyone else have used it to scrutinize sex as comprehensively, systematically, and concretely as I believe this topic requires.

The sexual phenomenology I will develop here is based on the following observation: Those who copulate—and those who merely want to—experience the world in a manner strikingly different from those who go about their ordinary activities in everyday life. Like certain psychedelic drugs, sexual arousal alters people’s consciousness, changing their perception of the world. Sex, in short, is a reality-generating activity.

My investigation of this topic will be an exercise in applied, rather than theoretical, phenomenology. I will attempt to articulate a specific experience rather than to discover the foundations of all experience, the task that has preoccupied phenomenology proper. Since I am more concerned with characterizing erotic experience than with searching for its pure “essence,” I can drop much of the conceptual apparatus and bizzare jargon elaborated by the phenomenological tradition for the further stages of this inquiry, retaining only the simple descriptive concepts with which it begins this quest. A brief explication of these aspects of phenomenology will be useful for understanding the difference between the realities generated by sexual arousal and by everyday life. They are presented most clearly in the works of Alfred Schutz.

Schutz held that we experience our life as a primary everyday life-world that contains such secondary “otherworldly” enclaves as dreams, fantasies, and science (1973, p. 21). He calls our everyday life-world and its several secondary subworlds “finite provinces of meaning” (p. 23). As long as they do not contradict one another, we will regard as “real” whichever one we happen to be in at the moment (p. 22). All experiences are harmonious and compatible within a single finite province of meaning but inharmonious and incompatible between different ones (pp. 23–24). Therefore, we will experience all transitions between finite provinces of meaning as a “shock.” Schutz cites as examples:

going to sleep as a leap into a dream, awaking, the theater curtain rising, “being absorbed” in a painting . . . the shifting of consciousness when one begins to play, the lived experience of the “numinous,” the jolt by which . . . the scientist shifts after dinner to the theoretical attitude, and also laughter as a reaction to the displacement of reality which is the basis of a joke. [1973, p. 24]

Schutz distinguishes the everyday life-world from others on the attentive dimension or what he calls the “tension of consciousness.” Our everyday life-world requires our consciousness to be at its highest tension level, requires us to be “wide-awake.” In contrast, our fantasy- or dream-world allows our consciousness to operate on lower tension levels, allows us to be less concerned with encountering actual everyday life (pp. 25, 35–36).

The pragmatic dimension or what Schutz calls the “form of spontaneity” also distinguishes these finite provinces of meaning. In daily life, “we act and operate not only within the life-world but also upon it” (p. 6). Through our bodily movements we actively “gear into” the outer world in order to transform its objects through “work.” In contrast, scientific theorizing requires only “acts of thought” and dreaming is mostly passive (1973, pp. 26–27; 1962, pp. 212, 240–42).

These worlds differ as well along the communicative dimension or the “form of sociality.” True communication is unique to everyday life because it is inherently intersubjective whereas dreaming is inherently solitary. Since scientific theorizing is also a solitary activity, the scientist must “drop the pure theoretical attitude . . . [and] return to the world of daily life . . . in order to communicate [his] theoretical thought to [his] fellow-men” (1973, pp. 27, 34; 1962, pp. 218, 244, 256). (We will examine other dimensions that, Schutz claims, distinguish the everyday life-world in chapter 1.)

The everyday life-world, then, differs from all other finite provinces of meaning because it is the wide-awake world of work and talk. Since only in this world are we most conscious, most affecting and affected physically, and most able to communicate verbally with others, Schutz concludes that it must be the “paramount reality,” although he concedes that it does not always look this way to those caught up in other worlds (1973, p. 25; 1962, pp. 341–42).

In adapting phenomenology to study sex I shall replace Schutz’s cumbersome “finite province of meaning” with the simple term “reality.”¹ Thus I will refer to the experience of the world generated by our ordinary round of life as “everyday reality” and to that generated by our actual or potential sexual activities as “erotic reality.”

Furthermore, I will not assume with Schutz that everyday reality is the “paramount reality,” superordinate to all others (presumably including erotic reality; see also Goffman’s critique of this assumption, 1974, pp. 560–63.) Schutz, who earned his living as a lawyer, banker, and broker, reveals his bourgeois bias in believing everyday reality more basic than the others. There may be many lawyers, bankers, and brokers who experience erotic episodes as nothing more than insignificant interruptions contained within the larger organization of their everyday lives. But prowling the halls of office buildings there are also many lovers (incidentally employed as lawyers, bankers, and brokers) who experience their everyday existence in the workaday world as merely the unimportant and unpleasant interlude between their erotic activities. When undistracted by work, their consciousness continually returns to this most significant and satisfying segment of their lives. Whoever has experienced how boring jobs dull awareness and how sexual fantasies (not to mention activities) sharpen it will be extremely skeptical of Schutz’s assertion that the former require a “higher tension of consciousness” than the latter.

Most sex theorists agree that people lead split-level lives, experiencing everyday reality and erotic reality as two distinct realms.² Nevertheless, components of one realm sometimes appear in the other.

Erotic elements may migrate into everyday reality, subjecting ordinary consciousness to painful strain. For example, words that conjure up erotic reality blurted out in an everyday setting may be as shocking as “a pistol shot at a concert” (to borrow Stendhal’s famous image of a revolution). This was especially true in eras when sexual activities were unmentionable, as the cartoonist Al Capp recalls in speaking about his early sexual experiences in the 1920s:

You never talked about sex. It simply wasn’t mentioned. The whole point was to have sex but never to admit to the other one that you’d had it. Even while you were buttoning up your fly, you just didn’t admit it. Nice people simply never talked about it at all. [Fleming and Fleming 1975, p. 39]

Psychoanalysis underscores the role of language in evoking each reality by trying to teach people to use the vocabulary of erotic reality without going into it.

Much of the character of the early periods of psychoanalysis involves training the patient in how to talk without arousal about this [sexual] aspect of his life. Even when this process is successful it creates the capacity to talk only in the context of the specialized therapeutic relationship and often with a highly abstract vocabulary that protects both the therapist and the patient from directly confronting sexual content. This is learning a capacity to neutralize the topic of sexuality, not learning to talk about it without concomitant anxiety or arousal. [Gagnon and Simon 1973, p. 105]

Also, certain parts of the body are citizens of both erotic and everyday realms, for we must suppress our awareness of their sexual allegiances to put them to ordinary uses.

Most of the physical acts . . . in the . . . sexual sequence occur in many other situations—the palpation of the breast for cancer, the gynecological examination, the insertion of tampons, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation—all involve homologous physical events. But the social situation and the actors are not defined as sexual or potentially sexual, and the introduction of a sexual element is seen as a violation of the expected social arrangements. [Gagnon and Simon 1973, pp. 22–23]

Everyday objects too, like cigars and donuts, may act as “sex symbols”—carnal forms lurking behind casual contents. Sex symbols seduce their viewers’ unsuspecting consciousness out of the everyday into the erotic, causing them to wonder why so much trivia should evoke so much anxiety.

If erotic elements do not succeed in transforming or shocking everyday consciousness, they may end up merely annoying or embarrassing it. Some people—often reviewers of ordinary films—find boring and pointless the pornographic films that enthrall the rest of their audience. Unable to “get off” into an erotic reality that would inject excitement and meaning into the sexual images on the screen, they must watch them in the bright light of everyday reality, which washes out much of the shade and color of their sense.

Although the consumption of pornography may inadvertently occur in everyday reality, many aspects of its production must occur there. An editorial apprentice in a pornographic book factory reports her first reaction to the irony of having to deal with erotic elements in a matter-of-fact everyday way:

I would have to replace all the author’s boring physiological terms and charming euphemisms with hardcore, right-to-the-point grabbers. . . . Here I was, fumbling and fidgeting while my new boss recited terms for the male sex organ in the same tone of voice he might use to discuss the weather.

“It seems strange to be discussing these things, doesn’t it?” he asked, seeing my embarrassment.

I barely giggled out my agreement. [Lane 1978, p. 14]

Finally, when those locked into everyday reality are forced to copulate, they will find even the sex act itself absurd. An...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Approaches and Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One. Sexual Experience
• Part Two. Smut Structure
• Part Three. The War of the World Views
• Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Index