{"title":"Epicures in Kissing: Asexuality in <i>Venus and Adonis</i>","authors":"Steven Swarbrick","doi":"10.1215/10407391-10713833","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Freud’s readings of Shakespeare are notorious for their universalizing claims about human sexuality. What is less commonly noticed, and what this article foregrounds, is the asexuality that underwrites psychoanalytic theories of sex. Venus and Adonis shows that Shakespeare’s poem is replete with asexual encounters. In other words, it is not Adonis alone who spurns sexual romance. Venus’s insatiable kissing is a textbook example of Freud’s point about the paradoxicality of sex: when it comes to the pleasures of kissing, Freud says, “It’s a pity I can’t kiss myself.” This essay reads asexuality not as a particular orientation; rather, it asks how asexuality, psychoanalysis, and Shakespeare disorient our readings of sex.","PeriodicalId":46313,"journal":{"name":"Differences-A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Differences-A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1215/10407391-10713833","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"CULTURAL STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Freud’s readings of Shakespeare are notorious for their universalizing claims about human sexuality. What is less commonly noticed, and what this article foregrounds, is the asexuality that underwrites psychoanalytic theories of sex. Venus and Adonis shows that Shakespeare’s poem is replete with asexual encounters. In other words, it is not Adonis alone who spurns sexual romance. Venus’s insatiable kissing is a textbook example of Freud’s point about the paradoxicality of sex: when it comes to the pleasures of kissing, Freud says, “It’s a pity I can’t kiss myself.” This essay reads asexuality not as a particular orientation; rather, it asks how asexuality, psychoanalysis, and Shakespeare disorient our readings of sex.
期刊介绍：
differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies first appeared in 1989 at the moment of a critical encounter—a head-on collision, one might say—of theories of difference (primarily Continental) and the politics of diversity (primarily American). In the ensuing years, the journal has established a critical forum where the problematic of differences is explored in texts ranging from the literary and the visual to the political and social. differences highlights theoretical debates across the disciplines that address the ways concepts and categories of difference—notably but not exclusively gender—operate within culture.
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