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Desire as a Means of Production
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 March 2021
Traditionally known as “the good book” and certainly a rich treasury of wide-ranging wisdom and poetic beauty, the Bible is not a good source for erotic artistry. Despite its frequent accounts of sexual encounters whose diversity extends to same-sex relations and incest, we find no substantial vision of ars erotica and indeed almost no concern for the aesthetics of lovemaking. Given the Bible’s enormously formative influence on Western culture, its ancient neglect of sexual aesthetics has cast a very long historical shadow, discouraging even nonreligious thinkers from theorizing lovemaking in aesthetic terms while even leading some to view the aesthetic and the erotic as fundamentally in conflict. Before examining, in Chapter 8, how Western erotic thought has struggled with its biblical roots, we should explore the Bible’s treatment of sexuality and probe deeper into some of the logical reasons for its neglect of aesthetic eroticism.
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