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Informationen zum Autor Robert Muchembled is Professor of Modern History at the University of Paris XIII. Translated by Jean Birrell. Klappentext Does the orgasm have a history? An almost incommunicable individual emotion yet also a cultural reality, the orgasm is part of our collective experience and also something separate from it. Its history is that of the hidden body, of forbidden desires, of flesh constrained by taboos and morality. In this major new book Robert Muchembled uncovers a fascinating history of sexual pleasure and the repression of pleasure that lies at the heart of Western civilization. Contrary to Foucault, he argues that a powerful repression of the carnal appetites was established at the very heart of our civilization around the middle of the sixteenth century, and that it only really lost ground in the 1960s. Producing a fundamental tension between the libido of each individual and collective ideals, it was a process that constantly promoted a powerful labour of sublimation throughout this long period, under the successive cultural covers of religion, philosophy and the laws of the capitalist market. The coercive system laid down in the seventeenth century formed the basis for alternate cycles of liberation and constraint, whose fluctuations were fundamental to the general dynamism of the West because they created the need to compensate for the mental disequilibrium they caused. Today, argues Muchembled, the United States remains deeply marked by the old repressive system, while in Europe this system has been shaken by the emergence of new forms of hedonism. Anchored in the dogma of shameful sensuality and the concealed body, the repressive system has been disrupted by the sudden irruption of the female orgasm onto the public stage. Whereas the United States continues to cultivate a nostalgia for the familial and sexual archetype bequeathed by the repressive tradition, Europe finds itself in uncharted territory facing new questions about sexuality, pleasure and the good life. Zusammenfassung Can the orgasm be explained in historical terms? An almost incommunicable individual emotion yet also a cultural reality! the orgasm is part of! but also escapes! collective experience. The history of the orgasm is that of the hidden body! of forbidden desires! of flesh constrained by taboos and morality. Inhaltsverzeichnis Contents. Preface. Introduction. Part 1 Orgasm and the West. Chapter 1 Carnal Knowledge. The birth of the individual. The Renaissance or capitalism?. The individual and transgression. The envelopes of the self. Beyond the Subject. Is everything sex?. Foucault's paradigms. The three stages of sexuality. The family and the flesh. Frustrated young men. Sodomites: a 'third sex'. A new sexual system. The conquest of female pleasure. The erotic revolution of the sixties. 'Cherchez la femme!'. The fountain of pleasures. Part 2 Imprints. Pleasure in Pain (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries). Chapter 2 Masculine, feminine: the person and their body. Representing and talking about oneself. The individual enmeshed. The fragility of the Self. The role of women. Weak women. Female roles. Women rebels. The fluidity of bodies. Chapter 3 Carnal Pleasures, Mortal Sins. Forbidden passions. The joys of sex. Peasant eroticism in Somerset. Bawdy culture in France. L'École des filles, a libertine gem. Pleasure and sin. Homosexuality in transition. Repression. The burning of a pornographer. Pleasure and the disruption of the established order. Part 3 Cycles. Vice and Virtue (1700-1960). Chapter 4 The Eroticism...
