Foucault and the Kamasutra

The Courtesan, the Dandy, and the Birth of Ars Erotica as Theater in India

Sanjay K. Gautam

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780226348445, 9780226348308
• eBook ISBN: 9780226348582
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Asian Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The Kamasutra is best known in the West for its scandalous celebration of unbridled sensuality. Yet, there is much, much more to it; embedded in the text is a vision of the city founded on art and aesthetic pleasure. In Foucault and the "Kamasutra", Sanjay K. Gautam lays out the nature and origin of this iconic Indian text and engages in the first serious reading of its relationship with Foucault.

Gautam shows how closely intertwined the history of erotics in Indian culture is with the history of theater-aesthetics grounded in the discourse of love, and Foucault provides the framework for opening up an intellectual horizon of Indian thought. To do this, Gautam looks to the history of three inglorious characters in classical India: the courtesan and her two closest male companions—her patron, the dandy consort; and her teacher and advisor, the dandy guru. Foucault's distinction between erotic arts and the science of sexuality drives Gautam's exploration of the courtesan as a symbol of both sexual-erotic and aesthetic pleasure. In the end, by entwining together Foucault's works on the history of sexuality in the West and the classical Indian texts on eros, Gautam transforms our understanding of both, even as he opens up new ways of investigating erotics, aesthetics, gender relations, and subjectivity.

1

Foucault and the Notion of Ars Erotica: Pleasure as Desubjectivation

Well over a century after its publication, even today the Kāmasūtra still carries a sense of scandal around it. Remarkably, there is no evidence in the text itself that it meant to provoke any such scandal. The Kāmasūtra’s approach to its own subject is far from casual. It was written in all seriousness and earnestness in the cause of sexual-erotic pleasure as one of the ontological dimensions of human existence. Indeed, the opening chapters of the first of the six books in the Kāmasūtra are a theoretical exploration of immense complexity and significance that seeks to establish sexual-erotic pleasure as one of the three competing and conflicting ontological domains—the others being Brahmanical law (dharma) and political power (artha)—of history and human existence. In this regard, it is interesting that at the end of the debate about the nature of difference between how men and women relate to the activity of sex, the Kāmasūtra states that the debate until then had been meant for the experts of erotics; that it is now going to elaborate some of the themes in detail for lay people, literally the “dimwitted.”1 What the Kāmasūtra alludes to in this statement is the complexity and subtlety of the issues involved and the need for interpretation to get to the meaning of this debate. It is also a warning to the reader not quickly to assume the most obvious meaning of the sutras conforming to common sense as self-evident.

It was the inability to see the Kāmasūtra as a work of thought that prevented generations of scholars from seeing a network of categories—above all, the notion of sexual-erotic pleasure—that grounds the discourse of erotics in it. This inability is not surprising in a world where pleasure and thought are seen in adversarial terms, where pleasure means the absence of thought. In such an intellectual environment, the Kāmasūtra presented a paradox to its readers: it was a text on sexual-erotic pleasure that also claimed the status of thought. Indeed, more than a paradox, its claim to thought has really been at the root of the scandal of the Kāmasūtra in our age. But as the title Kāmasūtra, or a “treatise on pleasure,” suggests, pleasure was the ground of the discourse of erotics articulated in this text. It was the notion of pleasure that opened up the horizon of intelligibility in which sexual-erotic practices came to acquire a discourse in ancient India. Yet, there has been a general lack of focus on the notion of pleasure in the Kāmasūtra. This has been one of the most important reasons why the work has eluded a serious investigation into its historical origins.

It is in this intellectual context that Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality brought about a fundamental transformation. Foucault’s thoughts on the notion of pleasure as the ground of ars erotica as a discursive formation in stark contrast to scientia sexualis, or the science of sexuality, for the first time directly raised the question about the relationship between pleasure and knowledge. He also clearly and decisively stated the major issues that were at stake by locating the question of this relationship within a complex of some of his most enduring concerns, such as truth, power, self, and subjectivity. It was thus that Foucault opened a path into the Kāmasūtra as an intellectual tradition in its own right. By way of an exploration into how the notion of pleasure is problematized in the works of Foucault, this chapter is an attempt to problematize some of the major themes that are at the heart of this book. It is not my intention to construct a theory of pleasure out of Foucault’s comments and observations on the subject. Rather, this discussion is meant to be a theoretical problematization as a preparatory exercise before the historical investigation that is carried out in the rest of the book. In this I follow Foucault’s useful methodological distinction between what he calls “theoretical punctuation” and “concrete historical investigation.”2

Ars Erotica versus Scientia Sexualis

The contrast between nonwestern ars erotica, or art of erotics, and western scientia sexualis, or science of sexuality, played a critical role in the way Foucault problematized and planned his project on the history of sexuality. While ars erotica, according to Foucault, is anchored in pleasure, scientia sexualis is anchored in the notions of truth and self.3 In this contrast, Foucault had an opportunity to set the discourse of sexuality as science against another fully formed discourse on sexual relations and practices from another culture. Foucault thus relativized and shattered the self-evident nature of the discourse of sexuality as science, with claims to universality and truth. What, however, makes the place of ars erotica in Foucault’s project on the history of sexuality critical is that he claimed the notion of pleasure to be his own intellectual ground.4 In other words, more than just a contrast, ars erotica was the critical ground from which Foucault approached the nature and origin of the discourse of scientia sexualis. It would, therefore, be difficult to fully comprehend the nature and significance of Foucault’s project on the history of sexuality in the absence of an understanding of the notion of pleasure in his writings.

Much of the academic discourse on the subject has evolved, however, largely unmindful of the significance of this category of ars erotica.5 Part of the reason for this could be that, beyond a few well-thought-out lines about the nature and experience of pleasure, Foucault never clearly dwelt on the experience and event of pleasure. As insightful as they are, Foucault’s brief and isolated comments assume much more than they elaborate, and as such they fall far short of offering a comprehensive view on the subject of ars erotica with the notion of pleasure as its sovereign ground. Given Foucault’s reluctance to engage in a purely theoretical-philosophical speculation on any subject and his obvious preference, like any historian, to work with an archive, the absence of a ready archive of ars erotica in the West imposed severe limitations on his reflections on the subject. Indeed, Foucault acknowledged that his notion of pleasure did not yet have enough content and was rather sketchy; ars erotica was still an unexplored domain of experience and discourse.6 It would be a mistake, however, to assume that Foucault thought of the notion of pleasure as being incapable of having content in the form of either experience or discourse. Indeed, it was precisely to fend off the danger of his notion of pleasure being declared empty of content that he felt compelled to bring in ars erotica directly. It was a way for Foucault to point toward a historical-cultural archive of ars erotica grounded in pleasure. Since Foucault himself never got to this archive, it was a project yet to be executed.

Under these circumstances, Foucault often brought up his personal experiences at crucial moments during interviews to elucidate specific aspects of his notion of pleasure, as if those experiences constituted a personal archive for his research. Foucault thus appeared more forthcoming on the subject of pleasure in his interviews than he was in his published works. It is well known that there was a remarkable degree of continuum between Foucault’s personal experiences and engagement with contemporary issues and his academic research, nowhere more so than in his research on the history of sexuality.7 His frequent use of his own experiences as an archive, however, also shows that Foucault did think that pleasure was capable of a content accessible to historical investigation and theoretical reflection.

My intention in this chapter is to piece together what is a rather coherent view behind Foucault’s brief and widely dispersed comments on the notion of pleasure. First of all, I discuss the notion of pleasure in relation to truth as it appears in contrasting ways in the discourses of scientia sexualis and ars erotica. Second, I focus on pleasure in its relationship with self and subjectivity: pleasure as an event and experience of desubjectivation, an event of a loss of the sense of the self. I then focus on Foucault’s comments and observations that offer an insight into the precise dynamics that bring about this event of desubjectivation. One often thinks of pleasure, particularly sexual pleasure, to be inaccessible to any analysis that would make it intelligible, as if it marked a limit to intelligibility as such. Yet, a close study of Foucault shows that pleasure is indeed intelligible. After all, when Foucault identifies sexual pleasure to be an event of desubjectivation, he makes it intelligible and accessible to thought. What is more, in Foucault’s view, pleasure as desubjectivation can open up another horizon of intelligibility, a horizon otherwise inaccessible; indeed, the notion of pleasure as desubjectivation can function as an ontological ground for a critical discourse. I end the chapter by showing that the notion of pleasure had its roots in Foucault’s first project on the history of madness. The notion of pleasure came to occupy the same position madness once did in Foucault’s earliest work, History of Madness. Interestingly, the Orient, including Indian culture, also appears to have been part of Foucault’s thinking long before his discovery of ars erotica. Moreover, Foucault seems well aware of certain Indian spiritual-intellectual traditions grounded in desubjectivation.

Ars Erotica and the Primacy of Pleasure over Truth

In what follows I make a very brief and schematic presentation of the nature and significance of Foucault’s contrast between the discourses of ars erotica and scientia sexualis. The key to understanding the nature and significance of this contrast is to determine the precise nature in Foucault’s works of the relationship between truth and identity, or self, on the one hand, and pleasure, on the other.8 The first thing that needs to be noted is that sex is a discursive phenomenon. There is no direct access to the question of sex. It is only accessible through a discourse, for example, a discourse of scientia sexualis or a discourse of ars erotica. It is because sex is a discursive phenomenon that it finds itself caught in a web of questions relating to the notions of truth and self, and also the nature and origin of knowledge formations. As Foucault himself noted, “We must not refer a history of sexuality to the agency of sex; but rather show how ‘sex’ is historically subordinate to sexuality. We must not place sex on the side of reality, and sexuality on that of confused ideas and illusions; sexuality is a very real historical formation; it is what gave rise to the notion of sex, as a speculative element necessary to its operation. . . . It is the agency of sex that we must break away from.”9

What Foucault calls the “agency of sex” is the ground of Freudian psychoanalysis and is evident in its notions such as libido, sexual instinct, sexual drive, the id, and in Freud’s famous statement that ‘anatomy is destiny.’10 In Freud’s narration, this “agency of sex” is locked in an adversarial relationship with culture. In this ever-raging conflict, culture deploys its twin mechanism of repression and sublimation to both subdue this “agency of sex” and use it. According to Foucault, instead of discovering it as a prediscursive force of nature, it was psychoanalysis as a discourse of sexuality that “gave rise to the notion of sex” as an agency; let alone being in conflict with culture, “the notion of sex” is a product of culture. It was because Foucault did not believe in the “agency of sex” that he also did not believe in the Freudian theory of repression; the notion of repression was just as much of a historical construction, and not simply the discovery by Freud of a long overlooked fact. It is not surprising therefore that Foucault begins his project on the history of sexuality with a critique of the “repressive hypothesis.” In “subordinating” sex to sexuality, what Foucault in effect does is subordinate sex to discourse. It is because sex is a discursive phenomenon that it becomes a part of the broader history of a culture or society.11

What makes Foucault’s discovery of ars erotica so significant is that in it he found not only a completely different structure and rules of knowledge formation, but also a different conception of knowledge and its origin. According to Foucault, while in the discourse of scientia sexualis the notions of truth and identity function as sovereign categories, in ars erotica it is pleasure that has primacy.

In the erotic art, truth is drawn from pleasure itself, understood as a practice and accumulated as experience; pleasure is not considered in relation to an absolute of the permitted and the forbidden, nor by a reference to a criterion of utility, but first and foremost in relation to itself. . . . Moreover, this knowledge must be deflected back into the sexual practice itself, in order to shape it as though from within and in order to amplify its effects. . . . [The West, on the other hand, is] the only civilization to have developed over the centuries procedures for telling the truth of sex.12

The difference between scientia sexualis and ars erotica is articulated here in terms of the contrasting relationship between truth and pleasure in the two. Foucault problematizes the relationship between truth and pleasure as a conflict over primacy or sovereignty of one over the other. He defines ars erotica as a discourse in which pleasure exercises sovereignty over the notions of truth and self. In stating that in erotic art “truth is drawn from pleasure itself,” what Foucault in effect argued was that truth has its origin in pleasure. Given that the notion of truth also stands for knowledge, it means that in ars erotica knowledge itself has its origin in pleasure. Far from being opposed to thought, pleasure, in the discourse of ars erotica, is the condition of thought; it is pleasure that opens up the horizon of intelligibility in which thought comes into being.

Moreover, Foucault, in the same passage, states that in ars erotica “this knowledge must be deflected back into the sexual practice itself, in order to shape it as though from within and in order to amplify its effects.” Apart from being the origin of truth, pleasure is at the same time the end of its own truth, in that the knowledge that it generates about itself must be “deflected back” to serve it. Pleasure, therefore, is the master that truth and knowledge must serve and obey. Pleasure is at once the origin and end of truth, and, therefore, of knowledge. Thus, in ars erotica, the notion of truth finds itself subordinated to that of pleasure, a situation exactly the reverse of scientia sexualis, in which truth is the sovereign category. By elevating pleasure to the position of sovereignty, Foucault thus reversed the relationship between pleasure and truth as it obtained in scientia sexualis. To say that truth has its origin in pleasure is to say that truth does not have its origin in itself or thought. Because pleasure is the origin of its own truth in ars erotica, it [pleasure] is not judged by an external truth. In other words, it cannot be subjected to a truth that has its origin in something other than pleasure, such as science and philosophy, for example. It is because of this legislative sovereignty that in ars erotica pleasure claims the right to make its own rules.

A series of significant consequences follow from pleasure’s claim to sovereignty over truth: pleasure in ars erotica contests the claims of philosophy and science—as the custodians of truth—to interpret and regulate the domain of sexual practices. In other words, science and philosophy have no legitimate legislative authority to define either what pleasure is and what it is not or how it ought to be pursued or avoided. Pleasure’s claim to sovereignty also contests the legislative claims of religion under the sovereignty of god, morality under the sovereignty of the good, law under the sovereignty of the state, and medicine under the sovereignty of health or human nature. In claiming the absence of ars erotica in the West, then, what Foucault contends is that pleasure failed to attain legislative sovereignty in western cultures. Instead, pleasure was successfully brought under the jurisdiction of philosophy, science, religion, morality, and the state, all of which together contributed in complex ways toward the making of what Foucault called scientia sexualis—psychoanalysis, for example—in which truth emerged as the sovereign category.13

The best illustration of what Foucault meant by the conflict between pleasure and truth over sovereignty, and the nature of wha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Foucault and the Notion of Ars Erotica: Pleasure as Desubjectivation
• 2 Pleasure and Patriarchy: The Discourse of Dharma and the Figure of the Wife
• 3 The Courtesan and the Birth of Ars Erotica as Theater
• 4 The Courtesan and the Origins of the Nāṭyaśāstra: From Ars Erotica to Ars Theatrica
• 5 The Dandy-Guru and the Birth of the Discourses of Erotics and Theater
• 6 The City Dandy and the Vision of the City Based on Art
• 7 Foucault and the Kāmasūtra: Parting Ways
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index