4: Stimulating Dissolution of Boundaries: The Literary History of the Obscene and Ludwig Marcuse’s Program of Writing “Without a Safety Helmet”

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Translator’s Note vii
4. Abbreviations ix
5. Introduction: Stories of Ars and Eros xi
6. The Relation of Parts I and II of This Book: Liaisons stimulantes xxxiii
7. Part I The Aesthetic Ambitions of Sexual Theories
8. Introduction to Part I 3
9. 1: Literature as an Aid for Sexual Liberation: Wilhelm Reich’s Art of Manipulation 6
10. 2: Literature as an Attractive Reminder of a Pleasurable Future: The Orientation of the New Sexuality towards Art in the Work of Herbert Marcuse 28
11. 3: Sex Front, or The Ironic Art of Enlightenment: Sexuality as Pop Art 70
12. Conclusion to Part I 92
13. Part II Sexual Obsessions in Aesthetics
14. Introduction to Part II 95
15. 4: Stimulating Dissolution of Boundaries: The Literary History of the Obscene and Ludwig Marcuse’s Program of Writing “Without a Safety Helmet” 106
16. 5: Art or Pornography? For and against Contemporary Literature in the “Zurich Literature Controversy” 128
17. 6: Exclusive vs Popularizing Dissolution of Boundaries: Pro-Pornography as a Model Example of Extreme Literature (Susan Sontag) or of Mass Culture (Leslie A. Fiedler) 145
18. 7: Potentiated Dialectics: The Obscene as a Formal Principle of Anti-Pornographic Art in the Work of Peter Gorsen 174
19. 8: The Orgasm as a Model of Aesthetic Experience and the Masochistic Pleasure of Modern Art in the Work of Theodor W. Adorno 206
20. 9: “Le plaisir en pièces; la langue en pièces”: Erotic Fragments of a Theory of Textual Eroticism in the Work of Roland Barthes 242
21. Conclusion to Part II 271
22. Bibliography 277
23. Index 303