On Friday, January 28, Professor Steven Swarbrick (Baruch College, CUNY)—whose talk was rescheduled from November—will give his paper entitled "Epicures in Kissing: Asexuality, Psychoanalysis, and Venus and Adonis."
Abstract:
Freud’s readings of Shakespeare are notorious for their universalizing claims about human sexuality. What is less commonly noticed, and what my essay seeks to foreground, is the asexuality that underwrites psychoanalytic theories of sex. From Leo Bersani’s claim, “There is a big truth about sex: most people don’t like it,” to Lauren Berlant and Lee Edelman’s coauthored book, Sex, or the Unbearable, psychoanalysis affirms Julie Sondra Decker’s account of sexuality in The Invisible Orientation, where Decker describes sex as “at best tolerable, at worst uncomfortable.” Following Decker, the field of asexuality studies urges scholars to question the monopoly that sex has on our existing tools of research and to recognize sexuality as a compulsory system shaping bodies, pleasures, and cultural hermeneutics. Focusing on Venus and Adonis, I show that Shakespeare’s poem is replete with asexual encounters, including objectless kisses and an unromantic partner who, at the end of the poem, reproduces himself asexually as a plant. In other words, it is not Adonis alone who spurns sexual romance; Venus’ insatiable kissing is a textbook example of Freud’s point about the paradoxical asexuality of sex: when it comes to the pleasures of kissing, Freud says, “‘It’s a pity I can’t kiss myself.’” This essay invites us to read asexuality not as a particular orientation. Instead, it asks how asexuality, psychoanalysis, and Shakespeare disorient our readings of sex.
This event will be held online via Zoom. You can access the meeting using this link: https://columbiauniversity.zoom.us/j/4855059036. The full Zoom invitation is copied below.
The meeting will be held from 7-8:30pm EST, with announcements from 7-7:15pm, the talk 7:15-8:00pm and Q&A from 8-8:30pm. We will also host a casual social/cocktail half hour after the meeting. Since there won't be a dinner and we have no space constraints, an RSVP is not required. But I am still circulating the Evite for the sake of consistency and to preserve our sense of community. You can find announcements from our seminar members at the end of this email.
Columbia University encourages persons with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. The University Seminar participants with disabilities who anticipate needing accommodations or who have questions about physical access may contact the Office of Disability Services at 212-854-2388 or [email protected]. Disability accommodations, including sign-language interpreters, are available on request. Requests for accommodations must be made two weeks in advance. On campus, Seminar participants with disabilities should alert a Public Safety Officer that they need assistance accessing campus.
