Overcoming “the Penetration Model”: Rethinking Sexuality with Foucault, Shusterman, and Contemporary Feminism

Autor/innen

  • Stefano Marino

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.i36.7232

Schlagworte:

Michel Foucault, Aesthetics of Existence, History of Sexuality, Richard Shusterman, Somaesthetics, Contemporary feminism

Abstract

In the present contribution, dealing with the intellectual legacy of Michel Foucault forty years after his death, I offer an analysis of some possible relations between certain aspects of Foucault’s project of a history of sexuality, Richard Shusterman’s somaesthetic investigation of the experience of lovemaking, and some recent attempts to critically rethink sexuality in the context of feminist scholarship. My approach towards Foucault’s thinking in this contribution is not philological or attentively reconstructive but rather selective and interpretive. In the first section, I briefly examine Foucault’s general view of sexuality as a “limit-experience”; then, in the second section, I specifically focus my attention on his (critical) analysis of “the penetration model”—an expression coined by Foucault in the context of his inquiry into Greco-Latin sexual culture. In the third section, I take into examination the important influence of Foucault’s aesthetics of existence on Shusterman’s somaesthetics and, in particular, on his book Ars Erotica. Finally, in the fourth section, I make reference—without any ambition of completeness or systematicity—to the question of the relation between Foucault’s thinking and contemporary feminism, focusing my attention on some recent proposals for a critical rethinking of sexuality by feminist scholars such as Bini Adamczak, Ilka Quindeau, Amia Srinivasan, Tamara Tenenbaum, and bell hooks.

Autor/innen-Biografie

Stefano Marino

Stefano Marino is Associate Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Bologna. His main research interests and research fields are philosophical hermeneutics, critical theory of society, neo-pragmatism and somaesthetics, philosophy of music, and aesthetics of fashion. He is the author of the books Verità e non-verità del popular. Saggio su Adorno, dimensione estetica e critica della società (2021), La filosofia dei Radiohead (2021), Le verità del non-vero. Tre studi su Adorno, teoria critica ed estetica (2019), Aesthetics, Metaphysics, Language: Essays on Heidegger and Gadamer (2015), La filosofia di Frank Zappa (2014), and Gadamer and the Limits of the Modern Techno-Scientific Civilization (2011). He has translated from German into Italian two books of Hans-Georg Gadamer and a book of Theodor W. Adorno, and has translated from English into Italian a book of Richard Shusterman and a book of Carolyn Korsmeyer. He has co-edited several volumes and special issues of philosophical journals: Foucault's Aesthetics of Existence and Shusterman’s Somaesthetics (2024), Perspectives on Nancy Fraser’s Thought (2023), Varieties of the Lifeworld (2022), Popular Culture and Feminism (2022), Pearl Jam and Philosophy (2021), The “Aging” of Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory (2021), Popular Culture and Social Criticism (2021), Aesthetics and Affectivity (2021), Romanticism and Popular Music (2021), Kant’s “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment” in the 20th Century (2020), “Be Cool!” Aesthetic Imperatives and Social Practices (2020), Adorno and Popular Music (2019), Philosophical Perspectives on Fashion (2017), Theodor W. Adorno: Truth and Dialectical Experience (2016), Nietzsche nella Rivoluzione Conservatrice (2015), Domandare con Gadamer (2011), and I sentieri di Zarathustra (2009).

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Veröffentlicht

2024-09-01

Zitationsvorschlag

Marino, S. (2024). Overcoming “the Penetration Model”: Rethinking Sexuality with Foucault, Shusterman, and Contemporary Feminism. Foucault Studies, (36), 170–200. https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.i36.7232

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Rubrik

Special Issue: Foucault’s Legacy in Contemporary Thinking