New issue of Stasis is out: #1, 2016, What is to be done with sex?

2018-03-01

This issue continues the discussion between Slavoj Žižek, Alenka Zupancic, Mladen Dolar, Keti Chukhrov, Aaron Schuster, and Oxana Timofeeva, which took place in Ljubljana in May 2014. The idea for this discussion was inspired by the short essay “The Anti-Sexus,” written by Andrey Platonov in 1926. In contemporary capitalism, the economy of sex has again become a problem, but the stakes are different. They vary from a wide movement of sexual liberation on the level of private and individual freedoms in Western countries, to puritanism or growing restrictions and prohibitions in countries like Russia; from the widespread commodification of pleasure (the “society of enjoyment”) to asexuality as an identity or individual choice. New moral dilemmas appear when one prefers to masturbate rather than encounter another human being in a potentially destructive (non-)relation. Can or should sexuality be liberated? Can sexuality liberate? Can or should one liberate oneself from sexuality? Why should sexuality be conceived as a uniquely troublesome point of human existence? From our historical experience, relating to the sexual heritage of revolutionary struggles of the past century, and in light of contemporary forms of solitude and libidinal malaise, we raise and discuss these questions.