We Have Never Had Sex
Keywords:
Andrey Platonov, Georges Bataille, masturbation, sex, war
Abstract
The paper proposes an original approach to the analysis of the sexual economy of war and, together with Donna Haraway’s claim “We have never been human,” reconsiders Lacan’s formula “There is no sexual relation” proceeding from the idea of sex as a humanizing practice. This idea is opposed to popular metaphors of animality and the naturality of human sexual life. Thus, according to Georges Bataille sex, or rather eroticism, is what transforms not human beings into animals, but animals into human beings: just like labor in Engels, it presents a central principle of anthropogenesis. For Bataille, this transformation is an event that marked the passage between pre-history and history and the appearance of historical humanity. The paper places this argument into a paradoxical twist by suggesting a hypothesis that such a transformative event has not yet happened, and that, instead of sex, in today’s capitalist society people rather practice, to quote Žižek, “masturbation with a living partner,” where the integrity of a person is replaced by partial objects. This argument finds support in Platonov’s satire on masturbation and his critique of the Anti-Sexus, the latter being both masturbatory and antisexual (i.e., something that prevents sexual relationships). The paper shows that there is a remarkable gap in Platonov’s writings between two understandings of sex—as “the soul of the bourgeoisie” which is to be overcome by the consciousness of the proletariat, and as what is to be postponed until a communist society will be built. It analyses the constitutive character of this gap, or ambiguity, for Platonov’s radical revolutionary asceticism.
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Timofeeva, Oxana (2012). History of Animals: An Essay on Negativity, Immanence, and Freedom. Maastricht: Jan van Eyck.
Timofeeva, Oxana (2015). “Unconscious Desire for Communism.” Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender, and Culture 11: 32–48.
Tuck, Greg (2009). “Mainstreaming of Masturbation: Autoeroticism and Consumer Capitalism.” In Mainstreaming Sex: The Sexualization of Western Culture, ed. Feona Attwood, 77–93. London: I. B. Tauris & Co.
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Žižek, Slavoj (2012b). Less than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. London: Verso.
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Attwood, Feona, ed. (2009). Mainstreaming Sex: The Sexualization of Western Culture. London: I. B. Tauris & Co.
Bataille, Georges (1991). The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, Vols II–III. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Zone Books.
Bataille, Georges (1992). Theory of Religion. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Zone Books.
Bozovic, Miran (2000). An Utterly Dark Spot: Gaze and Body in Early Modern Philosophy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Bullock, Phillip (2005). The Feminine in the Prose of Andrey Platonov. Oxford: Legenda.
Chubarov, Igor (2010). “Smert’ pola, ili ‘bezmolvie liubvi’ (obrazy seksual’nosti I smerti v proizvedeniiakh Andreia Platonova I Nikolaya Fyodorova)” [“The death of gender, or ‘The silence of love’ (Images of sexuality and death in Andrey Platonov and Nikolay Fyodorov)”]. New Literary Observer 107: 231–52.
D’Souza, Dinesh (1999). Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Flatley, Jonathan (2008). Affective Mapping. Melancholia and the Politics of Modernism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Freud, Sigmund (2002). Civilization and Its Discontents. Trans. David McLintock. Lon- don: Penguin.
Jameson, Fredric (1994). The Seeds of Time. New York: Columbia University Press.
HansenLove, A. A. (2009). “«Antiseksus» Platonova i antigenerativnaia poėtika” [“‘The Anti-Sexus’ Platonov and antigenerative poetics”]. Wiener Slawistischer Almanach 63: 167—90.
Haraway, Donna (2008). When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Kinsey, Alfred C., Wardell Baxter Pomeroy and Clyde E. Martin (1998). Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male [1948]. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Kinsey, Alfred C., Wardell Baxter Pomeroy and Clyde E. Martin (1998). Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female [1953]. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Lacan, Jacques (1971). Ecrits II. Paris: Seul.
Lacan, Jacques (1998). On Feminine Sexuality. The Limits of Love and Knowledge. Encore: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book XX, 1972–1973. Trans. Bruce Fink. New York. Norton.
Livers, K. (2000). “Scatology and Eschatology: The Discovery of the Flesh in Andrey Platonov’s ‘Happy Moscow’.” Slavic Review 59.1: 154–82.
Lukács, Georg (1937). “Emmanuil Levin” [Emmanuel Levin]. Lit. Obozrenie 19–20: 55–62.
Luxemburg, Rosa (1951). The Accumulation of Capital. Ed. Dr. W. Stark. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd.
Magun, Artemy (2010). “Otritsatel’naia revoliutsiia Andreia Platonova” [“Andrey Platonov’s negative revolution”]. New Literary Observer 106: 65–95.
Marcuse, Herbert (1966). Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. Boston: Beacon Press.
Masters, W. H and Virginia Johnson (1966). Human Sexual Response. New York: Bantam Books.
Naiman, Eric (1998). “Andrei Platonov and the Inadmissibility of Desire.” Russian Literature 23.4: 319–65.
Naiman, Eric (1997). Sex in Public: The Incarnation of Early Soviet Ideology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Nagisa Oshima, dir. (1986). Max, Mon Amour. Paris: Toho.
Oleynikov, Nikolay (2013). Sex ugnetennykh [Sex of the oppressed]. Moscow: SvobMarxIzd.
Platonov, Andrey (1978). Chevengur. Trans. Anthony Olcott. Ann Arbor: Ardis.
Platonov, Andrey (2004). Collected Works, Vol. I: 1918–1927 (Book 2: Articles). Moscow: IMLI RAN.
Platonov, Andrey (1990). “IUvenil’noe more” [The sea of youth]. In Na zare tumannoi unosti: povesti I rasskazy [On the sunset of a hazy youth: novels and stories], 277–350. Moscow: Soviet Russia.
Platonov, Andrey (2008). Soul: And Other Stories. Trans. Robert and Elizabeth Chandler and Angela Livingstone. New York: New York Review Books Classics.
Platonov, Andrey (2013). “The AntiSexus.” Trans. Anne. O. Fisher. Cabinet 51: 48–53.
Podoroga, Valery (1991). “The Eunuch of the Soul: Positions of Reading and the World of Platonov.” South Atlantic Quarterly 90.2: 357–408.
Reich, Wilhelm (1986). The Sexual Revolution: Toward a SelfRegulating Character Structure. Trans. Therese Pol. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Rowlands, Mark (2012). Animals Like Us. London: Verso.
Ryder, Andrew (2010). “Inner Experience is Not Psychosis: Bataille’s Ethics and Laca- nian Subjectivity.” Parrhesia 9: 94–108.
Schuster, Aaron (2013). “Sex and Antisex.” Cabinet 51: 41–47.
Seifrid, Thomas (1998). “Smradnye radosti marksizma: Zametki o Platonove i Batae” [On the fetid pleasures of Marxism: Notes on Platonov and Bataille]. New Literary Observer 32: 48–59.
Soble, Alan (1986). Pornography: Marxism, Feminism and the Future of Sexuality. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Thacker, Eugene (2010). After Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Timofeeva, Oxana and Oleynikov, Nikolay (2014). Making Love in Wartime: Sex, Beasts, Violence. YouTube video, 37:28, from a conference on Political Violence and Militant Aesthetics after Socialism “No Radical Art Actions Will Help Here…” St. Petersburg, September 20, 2014. Posted by “Manifesta Foundation,” October 23, 2014. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFJUm6Z7wBE.
Timofeeva, Oxana (2011). “Bednaya zizn: zootekhnik Visokovskij protiv filosofa Hei- deggera” [Poor life: animal technician Visokovsky against philosopher Heidegger]. In New Literary Observer 106: 96–113.
Timoofeeva, Oxana (2009). Vvedenie v eroticheskuju filosofiju Jjorja Bataja [Introduction to the Erotic Philosophy of Georges Bataille]. M.: NLO.
Timofeeva, Oxana (2012). History of Animals: An Essay on Negativity, Immanence, and Freedom. Maastricht: Jan van Eyck.
Timofeeva, Oxana (2015). “Unconscious Desire for Communism.” Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender, and Culture 11: 32–48.
Tuck, Greg (2009). “Mainstreaming of Masturbation: Autoeroticism and Consumer Capitalism.” In Mainstreaming Sex: The Sexualization of Western Culture, ed. Feona Attwood, 77–93. London: I. B. Tauris & Co.
Wilson, T. H. (1989). Sex and Gender: Making Cultural Sense of Civilization. Leiden: E. J Brill.
Žižek, Slavoj (2008). “Short Survey. Interview with Rosanna Greenstreet.” The Guardian, August 9.
Žižek, Slavoj (2012a). “From Animal to Stamina Training Unit.” In Timofeeva, Oxana, History of Animals: An Essay on Negativity, Immanence, and Freedom, 6–10. Maas- tricht: Jan van Eyck.
Žižek, Slavoj (2012b). Less than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. London: Verso.
Zolotonosov, Mikhail (1999). “Master I Masturbacija: Onangardistskaja Fantasija Andreja Platonova ‘Antiseksus’” [Master and Masturbation: Onangardist Fantasy of Andrey Platonov’s “The Anti-Sexus”]. In Slovo i telo: seksual’nye aspekty, univer- salii, interpretatsii russkogo kul’turnogo teksta XIX–XX vekov [World and body: sexual aspects, universal interpretations of Russian cultural texts, 19th–20th Cen- turies], ed. Mikhail Zolotonosov, 458–516. Moscow: Ladomir.
Published
2016-07-20
How to Cite
Timofeeva, O. (2016). We Have Never Had Sex. Stasis, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.33280/2310-3817-2016-4-1-144-161
Section
Articles
Copyright (c) 2016 Stasis
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
