Eroticism in and of the City: The Question of Approach

• Authors: Ewa Kębłowska-Ławniczak
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Discussions of eroticism usually commence with references to Georges Bataille and his L’Erotisme, whose first English edition was published under the title Death and Sensuality: A Study of Eroticism and the Taboo (1962), thus encouraging analyses in terms of transgression. This article opens with a quotation from Zygmunt Bauman’s essay, “On Postmodern Uses of Sex,” which reflects on the instability of the concept and emphasizes its contextualization. This openly declared incongruity raises questions of applicability. What is meant by eroticism today, i.e. in and after postmodernism? The article seeks to explore the relevance of the term in studies of urban drama and tries to suggest a workable approach that would differentiate between the commonly observable erotic material found on display within the premises of the city and the eroticism of the city itself. In the latter case the erotic relationship involves the materiality of the urban context and its user. The essay, focusing on drama, assumes that plays are written for the stage-their proper mode of existence-and deems it necessary to include the city/theatre and city/drama interdependence as well as the nexus of concepts such as urban drama and its genre restrictions into the following analysis.

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 3
• Pages: 139-153

Dates

published

2013-11-01

online

2013-11-01

Contributors

author

Ewa Kębłowska-Ławniczak

• University of Wrocław

References

• Barthes, Roland. “Semiology and the Urban.” The City and the Sign: AnIntroduction to Urban Semiotics. Ed. M. Gottdiener and Alexandros Ph. Lagopoulos. New York: Columbia UP, 1986. 87-98. Rpt. in RethinkingArchitecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory. Ed. Neil Leach. London: Routledge, 1997. 166-72. Print.
• Bataille, Georges, and Stuart Kendall. “Beyond Seriousness.” The UnfinishedSystem of Non-knowledge. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2001. Print.
• Bauman, Zygmunt. “On Postmodern Use of Sex.” The Individualized Society. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2001. 220-37. Print.
• Cabanne, Pierre. Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 1987. Print.
• Carlson, Marvin. Places of Performance: The Semiotics of Theatre Architecture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1993. Print.
• Churchill, Caryl. Serious Money. London: Methuen, 1988. Print.
• Coverley, Marlin. Psychogeography. Harpenden: Pocket Essentials, 2010. Kindle edition.
• Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things. London: Routledge, 2003. Print.
• Foucault, Michel, and Jay Miskowiec. “Of Other Spaces.” Diacritics 16.1 (Spring 1986): 22-27. JSTOR. Web. 10 Apr. 2011.[Crossref]
• Frug, Gerald E. City Making: Building Communities without BuildingWalls. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001. Print.
• Garner, Stanton B. “Urban Landscapes, Theatrical Encounters: Staging the City.” Land/Scape/Theatre. Ed. Elinor Fuchs and Una Chaudhuri Una. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2002. 94-120. Print.
• Gibbons, Brian. Jacobean City Comedy: A Study of Satiric Plays by Jonson,Marston and Middleton. London: Rupert Hart-Davies, 1968. Print.
• Gregory, Paul. “Eroticism and Love.” American Philosophical Quarterly 25.4 (1988): 339-44. JSTOR. Web. 10 Apr. 2011.
• Gupta, Tanika. The Country Wife: A New Version. London: Oberon, 2004.Print.
• Harvey, David. The Urban Experience. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989. Print.
• Harvie, Jen. Theatre and the City. Houndmills: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009. Print.
• Highmore, Ben. Cityscapes: Cultural Readings in the Material and SymbolicCity. Houndmills: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005. Print.
• Howard, Jean E. Theatre of a City: The Places of London Comedy, 1598-1642. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2007. Print.
• Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Capitalism. Duke UP. 1990.
• Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991 [1974]. Print.
• Lehan, Richard. The City in Literature: An Intellectual and Cultural History. Berkeley, Los Angeles: U of California P, 1998. Print.
• Leinwand, Theodore B. The City Staged: Jacobean Comedy, 1603-1613. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1986. Print.
• Mahon, Alyce. Eroticism and Art. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007. Print.
• Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge, 1945 [2002]. Print.
• Michelson, Peter. Speaking the Unspeakable: The Poetics of Obscenity. Albany, NY: SUNY, 1993. Print.
• Mumford, Lewis. The City in History. Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1979 [1961]. Print Munro, Ian. The Figure of the Crowd in Early Modern London: The Cityand Its Double. Houndmills: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005. Print.
• Neilson, Anthony. “The Wonderful World of Dissocia.” Plays 2. London: Methuen, 2008. 193-286. Print.
• Paetzold, Heinz. “Rethinking Key-concepts of Modern Urban Culture: Flânerie and the City as Theatre.” Senses and the City: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Urban Sensescape. Ed. Mădălina Diaconu. Münster: Literary Verlag, 2011. 33-47. Print.
• Pile, Steve. The Body and the City: Psychoanalysis, Space, and Subjectivity. London: Routledge, 1996. Print.
• Rewers, Ewa. Post-Polis. Wstęp do filozofii ponowoczesnego miasta. Kraków: Universitas, 2005. Print.
• Roberts, Philip, and Max Stafford-Clark. Taking Stock: The Theatre of MaxStafford-Clark. London: Hern, 2007. Print.
• Soja, Edward W. Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Print.
• ---. Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. Print.
• Stoppard, Tom. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. London: Faber, 1988. Print.
• Thomas, Ed. Stone City Blue. London: Methuen, 2004. Print.
• Ubillúz, Juan Carlos. Sacred Eroticism: Georges Bataille and Pierre Klossowskiin the Latin American Novel. Cranbury, NJ: Associated UP, 2006. Print.
• Utell, Janine. “Erotic Life and the Reimagination of Urban Space in Blitz London Literary London.” Studies in the Representation of London 7.2 (2009): n. pag. literarylondon.org. The Literary London Society. Web. 11 Apr. 2011.
• Ward, Graham. Cities of God. London: Routledge, 2001. Print.
• Westgate, Chris J. Urban Drama. The Metropolis in Contemporary NorthAmerican Plays. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011. Print.
• Wolfreys, Julian. Writing London: Materiality, Memory, Spectrality. Houndmills: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2004. Print.
• Young, Iris Marion. Justice and Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2011 [1990]. Print.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/texmat-2013-0031