The Politics of Pleasure Talk in 18th-Century Europe

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8001863
AutoresAlexander Cook (0000-0002-5005-1039, Australian National University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2009
Volumen12
Número4
Páginas451-466
Fecha de publicación2009-07-21
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSexualities (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1363-4607 • E-ISSN: 1461-7382
EditorialSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1363460709105710
OpenAlexW2164078619
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas14

This article provides an analysis of the role played by competing conceptions of pleasure in European cultural politics during the 18th century. Beginning with the `onanism' panic, which gripped western Europe in 1712, and with the apparent paradox that new concern about masturbation developed at a time when the pursuit of pleasure was increasingly legitimized in intellectual discourse, this article suggests that the panic can be understood as part of a wider process. This was a process in which a legitimization of pleasure was accompanied by a series of battles to define the concept in more socially useful ways. These battles can be traced across a range of literary fields from theology and aesthetics to physiology and political and moral theory

Aesthetics · Criminology · Moral panic · Pain and pleasure · Pleasure · Pleasure principle · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Rousseau and Enlightenment Thought