Guest Lecture

Better than Text: Textuality as Sexuality in Postmodern Prose Poems.

A very interesting lecture by Bent Sørensen based on Margaret Atwood’s In Love with Raymond Chandler (1992; in Good Bones and Simple Murders) & Nin Andrews’ Notes on the Orgasm (1993; in The Book of Orgasms (2000)).

It would have been satisfying with a longer lecture giving time for a closer analysis of the two poems, which might also more easily had invited the students to comment and ask questions to this delicate subject. As it was, the thoughts – at least my thoughts – on the subject came rushing in afterwards.

So by referring to the old-fashioned love-letters being replaced by internet-chat, the lecturer concluded that we do need textual seduction and we do like the words to seduce us and awaken our passions and imagination.

Fair enough!

So when we talk about sexuality in texts, what kind of sexuality are we talking about? Where is the line between erotic literature and written pornography?

When we treat sexuality as a separated object (as in The Book of Orgasms), does that not indicate an alienation from our own emotions as source of our passions?

Why is it that apparently the pleasurable effect of sexuality is being textually worshipped, much more than love as a feeling leading to sexual pleasure?

Can we in fact convincingly objectify a subjective phenomenon such as the orgasm?

I understand the last paragraph in Nin Andrews poem:

The orgasm is very happy to be an orgasm. Sometimes she wonders what it would be like to be a man, sort of like the small boy who fills a Mason jar with spiders, wondering what it’s like to be a fly.

as if the orgasm wonders what it would be like to be consumed by it self and in not knowing indicates the lack of true passion. She – the orgasm – looses her power by not interacting with her interpreting participators, not feeling her own passion, not being able to penetrate life itself, but only to exist in brief breathtaking moments.

So one might textualise sexuality in a way, so that the orgasm appears to represent the creative principle, but unless the orgasms have a passionate and subjective impact upon the rest of ones life, they will but be as trophies on a shelf: Objects valuable only as symbols of single accomplishments, instead of the total sum of life experienced.

Just thoughts on a very inspiring lecture.