Introduction

After outlining some of the central theoretical explanations and impasses that have shaped Deleuze's understanding of desire, pleasure and the orgasm, and before moving on to how specific pleasurable configurations of bodies in literature and culture challenge this understanding, this chapter offers a preliminary exploration of what a Deleuzian theory of the body and pleasure might look like. It also tests such a theory against contemporary conceptualisations of pleasurable bodies more generally. The body as other, as that which bleeds, and leaks, and comes back to haunt us in its glorious but fallible construction, has been of interest to theoretical discourse and cultural expression for centuries. If Descartes broke from earlier Greek philosophies in which the body was not conceived as separate from the mind, Descartes's own mind-body dualism has, in turn, been shattered by modern theories of embodiment. Contemporary research, both in fields such as technology and medicine and in philosophy and culture, increasingly renders any conception of the body as a permanent and separate entity impossible to uphold.