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 ADVANCE PRAISE FOR

Resisting Nudities: A Study

in the Aesthetics of Eroticism

“In her well-documented cultural and philosophical book, Florence Dee

Boodakian warns us against the danger of a society of auto-surveillance, a
coded society where the individual has gradually and naturally internal-
ized rules that make freedom an illusion, depriving him/her of being a
‘subject’ in the unknown (and rich) land of eroticism. In addition, she
guides us with great panache toward this no man’s land of the uncon-
scious that separates the erotic from pornography.”
Isabelle Pagot-Votelet
Professor, IAV d’Orleans (Institute of Visual Arts)
and Sefco, University of Orleans, France

“Florence Dee Boodakian's Resisting Nudities proposes a new apprecia-

tion of eroticism based on a re-conception of what eroticism is. The erotic
is that which interrupts itself, producing desire through moments of the
’discontinuous‘ that promise a continuity of ground between subject and
object that is never there. The erotic is the fugitive wholeness of the ob-
ject that is never won and the subject whose desire is never lost. Desire
withholds in order to give, and gives in order to receive. As in the arts,
eroticism makes the familiar unfamiliar, and renders desire itself un-
canny—its purest state.”
Perry Meisel,
Professor of English, New York University
Resisting Nudities
 PETER LANG
New York ! Washington, D.C./Baltimore ! Bern
Frankfurt am Main ! Berlin ! Brussels ! Vienna ! Oxford
 Florence Dee Boodakian

Resisting Nudities

A Study in the Aesthetics

of Eroticism

PETER LANG
New York ! Washington, D.C./Baltimore ! Bern
Frankfurt am Main ! Berlin ! Brussels ! Vienna ! Oxford
 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Boodakian, Florence Dee.
Resisting nudities: A study in the aesthetics of eroticism /
Florence Dee Boodakian.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Body, Human—Erotic aspects. 2. Nudity—Social aspects.
3. Eroticism in literature. I. Title.
HQ460.B67 306.77—dc22 2008003456
ISBN 978-0-8204-8614-7 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4331-0415-2 (paperback)

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek.

Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data is available
on the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de/.

Cover design by Eric Fourmestraux

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability
of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity
of the Council of Library Resources.

© 2008 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York

29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006
www.peterlang.com

All rights reserved.

Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.

Printed in the United States of America

 This book is dedicated to
Jean Luc Nancy’s heart donor whoever s/he is

and my father who refuses to stop dancing

Boodakian.indd v 4/23/08 8:15:43 AM

 Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1

Chapter 1: The Resisting Nude 9

Chapter 2: The Bare Necessity of the Kiss 25
Chapter 3: The Sense Connection: Poesis Making
and the Erotic 39
Chapter 4: Porn and the Erotic: A Border of Impossibility 49
Chapter 5: Surveilled Body/Surveilled Mind 61
Chapter 6: Resistance, Revolt and the Poetry
of Jouissance 73

Conclusion 85
Afterword 89
Notes 91
Bibliography 99

Boodakian.indd vii 4/23/08 8:15:45 AM

 Acknowledgments

b.m.b., pour une tranche de vie érotique

et l’amour doux et fuyant

guy, for his Goldberg Variations,

J-L Nancy’s “Shattered Love”
and his singular beauty

ricardo, for his incredible vision

emily, for her friendship, tech assistance

and humor

christine & michel, pour 5 rue Parrot

eric, pour sa touche artistique

SUNY at Nassau, for the sabbatical

Boodakian.indd ix 4/23/08 8:15:45 AM

 Introduction

In Literature and Evil, Georges Bataille wrote that the base

of the erotic instinct could only form itself in the inhuman
conditions of a prison; therefore, Marquis de Sade was able
to write Les Cent Vingt Journées de Sodome (One Hundred and
Twenty Days of Sodomy) locked up in the Bastille. This base of
eroticism for Bataille and others who followed in his think-
ing issued forth from a clear and distinct consciousness. In
this work, I attempt to reconceive the erotic, its imaginative
manifestations and an aesthetic which is ultimately brought
about through desire’s disruption. Essentially, I take Ba-
taille’s notion that “consciousness of desire is hardly acces-
sible: desire alone alters the clarity of consciousness, but it
is above all the possibility of satisfaction that suppresses it”
and extend it to include the idea that since (using Bataille’s

Boodakian.indd Sec1:1 4/23/08 8:15:45 AM

 2 Resisting Nudities

construct) the possibility of satisfaction only happens con-

sciously, the erotic (that tenacious piece that is not necessar-
ily equated to satisfaction) may only come into being vis à
vis the unconscious. This would follow his idea that Sade,
in the Bastille reached a point when the conscious limita-
tions of being were slowly destroyed, so most of Sade’s
ideas grew out of unconscious mentation. Jean-Luc Nancy’s
idea of the “Technique of the Present” in Multiple Arts: The
Muses II as well as Bataille’s Literature and Evil allow me to
establish the poetic nexus found in my own study. Most of
the philosophers and theorists, from Bataille, Barthes to Iri-
garay, Sontag, etc. insist on a clear and distinct conscious-
ness as the base of erotic instinct, but I’m interested here
in what develops between “instinct” and “aesthetic” and to
what degree unconscious mentation is at the forefront of
the erotic. What are the barriers to this unconscious menta-
tion, how do cultural imperatives, especially regarding the
nude body play into its development? I use both critical and
erotic narratives, some analysis of the nude body/bodies as
objects of resistance, applications of Julia Kristeva’s Revolt,
She Said and Jean-Luc Nancy’s Multiple Arts: The Muses II to
construct a parallel grounded in a theory of absence and the
psychosocial dynamic of physical and mental surveillance.
At the end of this book, my goal is to move the reader
to an understanding of the aesthetics of eroticism as seen
through the lens of something that transgresses conscious-
ness, at the least, and moreover create a necessary link be-
tween the poetry of jouissance and the revolt of body and
mind intrinsic to the erotic.
As a disclaimer, I repeat Georges Bataille’s words in his
Conclusion of Eroticism (1957), “Eroticism is the problematic
part of ourselves. The specialist can never tackle eroticism.”
(273) My project here is to revisit the erotic aesthetic in this

Boodakian.indd Sec1:2 4/23/08 8:15:45 AM

 Introduction 3

contemporary moment and contribute to the conversation

that has lapsed into a somewhat reductive discourse, for
reasons I will try to expose. I use my resisting nude and what
I establish as the present Absence of the Other to offer a new
reading of this most intense human moment, the erotic.
I am indebted to all those who have spent years think-
ing, writing, living this lovely dangerous enigma.

Boodakian.indd Sec1:3 4/23/08 8:15:45 AM

 But why does the beautiful never let us go?
—“Paean for Aphrodite”
J.L. Nancy

She pressed her cool mouth against mine. I was in a state

of intolerable joy. When her tongue licked mine, it was so
wonderful I might have wished my life over.
—Blue of Noon
“The Feast of the Dead”
Georges Bataille

He spends a long time kissing me. He’s on top of me I

feel the weight of his body. The sweetness and warmth
of his mouth are intoxicating. . . . .Later, much later, I fall
asleep, curled in the hollow of his body. I’m happy and I
want to cry.
—Submission
Marthe Blau

To touch oneself, to be touched right at oneself, outside

oneself, without anything being appropriated. That is
writing, love, and sense.
—“Elliptical Sense”
J.L. Nancy

Boodakian.indd Sec1:5 4/23/08 8:15:45 AM

 [ . . . ] no the flesh is never a liar
And the most vicious body remains pure.
Robert Desnos

Boodakian.indd Sec1:7 4/23/08 8:15:46 AM

 CHAPTER ONE

The Resisting Nude

The discourse surrounding the body, especially pertaining

to power relations has typically taken Foucault’s cue straight
through to the 21st Century with little distinction between
the clothed body and the nude body. Contemporary liter-
ary and cultural criticism has certainly raised issues proble-
maticized by resistances to networks of power/knowledge,
gender, and the central role of the culturally constructed
human body and the power that resides in, around and
against it. However, this study moves in a different direc-
tion in order to establish a closer inspection of the nude
body, its connection to the erotic, revolt and transgression.
There is of course an inherent political tension in this analy-
sis, so beginning with some discussion of the nude body in
a Foucaultian context is a starting point.

Boodakian.indd Sec1:9 4/23/08 8:15:46 AM

 10 Resisting Nudities

Since Foucault’s treatment of the body and sexuality, bio-

power has generally been understood to denote the “politics
of the body.” Deleuze, in Negotiations1 identifies Foucault as
the thinker who gave birth to biopolitics, a post-disciplinary
situation where power is thought of in terms of control. The
nude body in Western culture is subject to this control, usu-
ally involving variations due to gender and or identity pa-
rameters. For example, in Unbearable Weight, feminist critic,
Bordo juggles both Foucault’s disciplinary and biopoliti-
cal tenets to discuss the objectifying of women’s bodies.2 In
other gender studies, such as Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble,
Butler argues, “There is no gender identity behind the ex-
pressions of gender; . . . identity is performatively consti-
tuted by the ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results.”3
One’s gender is a performance, it is what one does at certain
moments, rather than a universal who you are. Stretching
Foucault’s idea that ‘real’ identity doesn’t exist, that it’s just
a way of talking about the self, a discourse, Butler confirms
the idea that ‘identity’ is communicated to others during in-
teractions, but this isn’t a fixed thing within a person. It is a
shifting, evolving temporary construction. Both Foucault’s
theory and the gender critics reading and extension of Fou-
cault create a basis for some of the inquiries found here.
For example, what happens in the case of the nude body
when the interaction is erotic, who is reading, interpreting,
playing with, controlling, surveilling and/or exerting power
over it, how does this body perform differently in relation to
the erotic impulse? Is there a possibility for transgression?
On the way to understanding the erotic aesthetic, the nude
body, its identity, coupled with the power relations that sur-
round it and the inevitable revolt it must go through are
first steps.
It has been accurately observed that Foucault’s body- as-

Boodakian.indd Sec1:10 4/23/08 8:15:46 AM

 The Resisting Nude 11

inscribed site trope allows him to consider the discursive con-

flicts that are part of his analysis, “but the body itself never
provides an actual text that is interpreted . . . at no point
does [he] actually observe physical bodies.”4 So the physi-
cal body is never seen by the spectator, Foucault; he makes
no interpretation of the body. Using Foucault’s framework
described by Punday above, we may consider the physi-
cal body he does not directly observe, specifically, a kind
of “pre-cultural nude”, implying the possibility of a nude
body existing prior to its interpretation and commodifica-
tion by the culture to which it belongs, not inscribed with
meaning, existing and reacting as its own entity. If a per-
son’s identity is simply a way of talking about the self, a dis-
course, as he suggests and considering his body-as- inscribed
site trope, how does the pre-cultural nude body fit into this
design? It doesn’t. The pre-cultural nude body is the physi-
cally nude human body, male and female that exists outside
a cultural context. It is not seen, it is not the subject of any
gaze. The presence of multiple cultures and various power
structures in most cultural groupings, along with the con-
sistent presence of a gaze, even if it’s only one’s own makes
the existence of a pre- cultural nude body impossible. If it
did exist, how could we explain the disparity between the
reactions to Janet Jackson’s partial breast exposure during
the half time show of the 2004 Super Bowl which caused a
huge scandal in the United States, and when televised in the
Netherlands and other EU countries for example, it barely
elicited any commentary? The cultural component must
exist for the nude body to exist, meaning in effect that the
culturally constituted gaze defines the nude body it sees. So
the nude body that could manage to construct or conceive
itself outside this cultural backdrop would be an aberration,
a resisting mechanism, and as such, this is the only way for

Boodakian.indd Sec1:11 4/23/08 8:15:46 AM

 12 Resisting Nudities

it to achieve the status of erotic object (see Chapter 2). We

must obliterate culture, and culture here should be read in
a broad sense; it refers to that large pool of overseers, norm
setters, social and political mandates, that act as ‘audience’
and in some cases, voyeurs of the nude body. Some might
argue that the cultural component described above is always
present and that’s also true or the resistance would never
come about. So, the question we are left with is, without
the cultural lens, in whatever form it may take, observing
the nude body, interpreting, and creating a frame for it to
be critiqued does this nude body then become a subjectless
object? Furthermore, does it matter?
Although the discussion of resistance as part of the erot-
ic aesthetic will be picked up in Chapter 6, there is a two-tier
resistance at play in this study which can be identified here.
One part of the resistance comes from this sociopolitical di-
mension involving the pre-cultural nude body that is the
aberration described above. The second part of this resis-
tance comes from a more profound, internal tension that is
key to eroticism and is detailed in Chapter 2. In a sense this
pre-cultural nude body that is an aberration of sorts is the
precursor to the resisting nude. However, the former high-
lights an externalized resistance while the latter points to an
internalized one.
Turning back to some of the socio-political components
involving the nude body, the obvious distinction between
genital display and the display of the rest of the body rais-
es some interesting points. In Armstrong’s “Dispensary”5
utilized in medical institutions during the late eighteenth
century, we find an interesting framework for understand-
ing this phenomenon. It involves Armstrong’s findings con-
cerning the ‘anatomical atlas’:

The anatomical atlas directs attention to certain struc-

Boodakian.indd Sec1:12 4/23/08 8:15:46 AM

 The Resisting Nude 13

tures, certain similarities, certain systems and not to oth-

ers, in so doing forms a set of rules for reading the body,
and for making it intelligible . . . the reality of the body is
only established by the observing eye that reads it.6

Like Armstrong’s ‘anatomical atlas’, attention is pivoted to-

ward certain structures and not toward others. In selecting
certain structures, similarities and systems and not others,
an immediate distinction is made. “I will look at this, but
not that.” Therefore, what gets attention seems important,
but what doesn’t get read also draws attention to itself, sim-
ply because it isn’t observed. This is key to holistic medicine
which the ‘anatomical atlas’ seems to move against and it is
key to seeing the whole nude body. However, the culturally
constituted gaze, as I’ll refer to the gaze of the culture in the
larger sense established earlier, directs the viewer/reader
away from the genitals; yet, the very attempt to pivot at-
tention in one direction may lead the viewer/reader in the
opposite. For example, across most Western cultures, the
majority of restrictions are found for exposure of those parts
of the human body that put in evidence sexual arousal or
sexual dimorphism between male and female adults. How-
ever, the attempt to hide the genitals, to suppress a sexual
viewing/reading often has the reverse effect. This fact dates
back to the Middle Ages when men wore codpieces,7 later
tights and then, tight pants; all these were intended to cover
the male genitals but at the same time display them. In the
early twentieth century, exposure of male nipples was also
considered indecent at some beaches. Ironically, as in the
Middle Ages, certain men’s bathing suits, while covering
the genitals make them quite obvious. This is also the case
with the thong, which covers yet simultaneously exposes.
The attempt at hiding certain body parts draws increased

Boodakian.indd Sec1:13 4/23/08 8:15:46 AM

 14 Resisting Nudities

attention to those parts, in the same way that Armstrong’s

‘anatomical atlas’ pivoted attention toward certain struc-
tures and systems to read the body. Here the hiding can be
paralleled to Armstrong’s pointing, “here this is important”,
“here are the set of rules for reading this.” Rules follow that
basically restrict the exposure of genitals. Since the mid-
twentieth century, for example, the exposure of genitals is
restricted to nudist areas in European countries while top-
less sunbathing is acceptable on the beach and at outdoor
pools. The one exception to the restriction on genital dis-
play was Eastern Germany where nude bathing was one
of the generally tolerated liberties people could take in the
communist GDR.8 In most Latin cultures, for the most part,
genital nudity is not admitted, but women’s breasts are now
commonly exposed without scandal. In most of the United
States, exposure of female nipples (even on mannequins and
in lingerie ads) is still not allowed. Public breast- feeding,
seen as functional, may be looked upon more mildly, but it
is still problematic in most parts of North America. How-
ever, Ontario, Canada and New York have legalized the ex-
posure of women’s nipples on Equal Protection grounds.
So the mandate to cover the genitals is in fact a restric-
tion on freedom as evidenced by the example of Eastern
Germany. The tolerated liberty of exposing genitals freely
in public was seen as a relatively minute gesture in the face
of a people whose other liberties had been stripped. This
would mean that in countries where people have a great of
freedom and enjoy many liberties, there is no need to enjoy
the right to expose one’s genitals in public. This act would
be frivolous and marginalized to nudist colonies or the like.
The entire nude body becomes less visible in free countries
such as the United States. We could also speculate about
the correspondence between democracy and the visibility

Boodakian.indd Sec1:14 4/23/08 8:15:46 AM

 The Resisting Nude 15

of the nude based on this notion of the liberties granted in a

free society. That is, the free democratic society erects itself
as a barrier to the nude body and this will later contribute to
the impossibility of the erotic in such a place.
In addition, in some cultures, the repeated attempts to
cover up the nude body, especially the genitals turns the
culturally constituted gaze into something more dangerous,
more powerful, that is, the development of a taboo and a
symbolic system which equates exposed genitalia to the sta-
tus of medical disorders (localized to a distinct point within
the body) of the nineteenth century, that is “dismembered
and separated from the rest.”9 The covering in effect acts as
a kind of localizing, drawing attention to the genitals rather
than away from them. In fact, this is often evident in cam-
era shots that zoom in on tight jean-covered crotches, often
“disappearing” the area above the waist. The act of cover-
ing itself creates the breaking down of the nude body into
pieces, dismembering it, so that what is seen and what is
not seen creates the taboo status of the exposed genitalia.
As soon as this status is reached, you have what Bernardo
Bertolucci describes, “when you go and cover a naked body,
then it becomes titillating, obscene.” (on The Dreamers)10 It
is the covering/clothing that creates the sexual titillation,
rather than the fully nude body itself, something fashion
designers have been using to their advantage for decades.
And while this works to enhance sexual titillation, it has
nothing to do with erotic power. As Bataille puts it,

“The whole business of eroticism is to destroy the self-

contained character of the participators as they are in
their normal lives. Stripping naked is the decisive action.
Naked- ness offers a contrast to self-possession, to discon-
tinuous existence.”11

Boodakian.indd Sec1:15 4/23/08 8:15:46 AM

 16 Resisting Nudities

The self-possessed removes only what’s ‘safe’, keeping in

tact the continuity that comes with sexual titillation that
is always ordered by some formula evident in Bertolucci’s
observation. Not to mention the fact that this marginaliza-
tion of the genitals via cover-up actually hinders the erotic
power of the whole nude body. A dismembered, fragment-
ed corpus cannot carry out its erotic potential.
Another socialized trend worth mentioning here is the
naked body of a child in public spaces. In New Zealand,
for example, in previous decades, naked children in news
and magazines was acceptable; today, it would evoke hor-
ror and revulsion. This is due primarily to a shift in social
awareness of pedophilia and child porn. In addition, chil-
dren themselves often absorb parental attitudes about nu-
dity. For example, in the case of children, uninhibited by
such concerns, freely walking around nude in Western soci-
ety, we now see the development of a auto-surveillance (dis-
cussed in Chapter 5) where children mimic the “covering
up” they see in the adult world around them. In cultures
where adults freely expose themselves in public places, like
on beaches and public pools in most of Europe, Sweden
and Norway, children run around nude without the reflex
to cover up any part of their bodies. This observation is in-
teresting since it emphasizes how the culturally constituted
gaze controls the behavior of a child who is still quite young
into conceptualizing his/her own nude body in terms of a
viewer/reader. However, this study is primarily concerned
with the adult nude body.
Sexual difference and the politics of gender of course
figure into this discussion of the nude body. The culturally
constituted gaze takes on a sexualized dimension that is dif-
ferent for men and women. Susan Bordo, in The Male Body:
A New Look at Men in Public and Private, writes about Sartre

Boodakian.indd Sec1:16 4/23/08 8:15:46 AM

 The Resisting Nude 17

and Beauvoir’s attitudes about the “Look of the Other.”

Men and women are socially sanctioned to deal with the

gaze of the Other in different ways . . . Women learn to an-
ticipate, even play to the sexualizing gaze . . . It’s feminine
to be on display. Men are taught to be a moving target.
Get out of range of those eyes, don’t let them catch you-
even as the object of their fantasies (or, as Sartre would
put it, don’t let them “possess”, “steal” your freedom).12

The power relationship Sartre fears here is obvious. The

one who is the subject of the sexualizing gaze has lost his
freedom. This phenomenon is certainly not new to women.
Women are subject to the sexualizing gaze continuously
and the difference with the sexualizing gaze in reference to
the nude male body is also obvious.

The ‘full Monty’- the naked penis-is not merely a body

part in the movie (hence it doesn’t really matter that the
film doesn’t show it). It’s a symbol for male exposure,
vulnerability to an evaluation and judgment that women-
clothed or naked- experience all the time.”13

The nude male does suffer from the threat of actual punish-
ment. Display is the punishment. “It seems that it has been
intolerable, unthinkable for male evolutionary theorists to
imagine the bodies of their male ancestors being on display,
sized up, dependent on selection (or rejection) by female
hominids.”14 The power relation shifts here, once the nude
male is on display, he is totally seen and the bearer of the
sexualizing gaze is in control. There is a sexist tenet which
underlies Sartre’s concern. For example, John Ashbury in
New York magazine said of the entire genre of male nude
photography, “’Nude women seem to be in their natural
state; men, for some reason, merely look undressed . . . When

Boodakian.indd Sec1:17 4/23/08 8:15:46 AM

 18 Resisting Nudities

is a nude not a nude? When it is a male.’(Substitute “blacks”

and “whites” for “women” and “men” and you’ll see how
offensive this statement is).”15 There is an overt desire by
heterosexual men to contain the nude male body, to keep it
from view and this is directly connected to the power rela-
tions in contemporary Western culture. In Foucault’s words,
keep him out of the “peripheric ring”16 which can be read
as a form of protection for the nude male body, protection
against his own surveillance (Is my penis too small? Am I
muscular enough? Too fat? . . . ) and protection of the pow-
er he possesses as the one who is typically the “gazer.” Of
course, to say that a nude woman is in her “natural” state,
implies also that the nude man is in an unnatural state. He
is not only “merely undressed” but unnervingly sexual and
this is culturally inscribed as unnatural unless referring to a
naked homosexual male.
The sexualized male nude body has its cultural roots in
gay male aesthetics apparent through the Gucci and Calvin
Klein ads Bordo and other gender critics have analyzed. In
most cases, homosexual men do not share the heterosexual
man’s desire to keep the nude male body from view particu-
larly because homosexual men do not fear the loss of pow-
er/control by being gazed at, since in most cultures, they do
not hold much power in comparison to heterosexual men;
they do not bear the traditional role of the male “gazer.”
This distinction may be directly linked to the homoerotic,
that while holding a marginalized site, has a much wider
playing field and a freer one.
The propensity to keep the heterosexual nude male
body out of the “peripheric ring” might explain the dispar-
ity between male and female full frontal nudity in art and
media as well. A few general cultural notes are worth men-
tioning first: the Roman Catholic Church held a “fig- leaf

Boodakian.indd Sec1:18 4/23/08 8:15:46 AM

 The Resisting Nude 19

campaign” (the genitals of the nude figures in Michelange-

lo’s paintings in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel were covered
with over-painted cloth until the twentieth century) to cov-
er nudity in art, Islam prohibits any illustrations of human
beings so the question does not arise there. Scenes of nu-
dity were forbidden in mainstream American films by the
Hays Code, until the late 60s-70s when the Motion Picture
Association of America film rating system was instituted.
Full frontal nudity of both sexes has gained much wider
acceptance in European cinema, where the audience per-
ceives non-pornographic nudity as less objectionable than
the depiction of excessive violence. Digital imagery may
now be used to clothe nude actors avoiding full frontal nu-
dity. “Most movie stars and models are fully dressed even
when naked” since they are “purified of ‘flaws’, all loose
skin tightened, armored with implants [and ] digitally en-
hanced.”17 However, the disparity between male and female
full frontal nudity is best seen in film. In Hollywood, male
frontal nudity is still lingering in its taboo status while the
same is not true for women on screen. The full frontal nude
shot of Liam Neeson as Alfred Kinsey, in “Kinsey” was cut
due to budgetary reasons, a full frontal nudity scene in Co-
lin Farrell’s “A Home at the End of the World” was cut after
producers thought it was too distracting, in “Bad Educa-
tion,” Gael Garcia Bernal comes close to a full frontal nude
shot while preparing for a swim, but he doesn’t bare all. In
“Sideways”, actor M.C. Gainey runs out of the house na-
ked; however, as Jim McBride, who runs mr.skin.com, (that
chronicles nude scenes in films), observes, “full frontal male
nude scenes appear every few years, and most are limited
to art-house releases that are rated R or NC-17.”18 Occasion-
ally, a film such as Larry Clark’s “Bully” (2001) is released
as unrated or non-mainstream films like the New Zealand

Boodakian.indd Sec1:19 4/23/08 8:15:46 AM

 20 Resisting Nudities

film, “Twilight of the Gods” include full frontal male nu-

dity. Certain full-frontal male nudity scenes, like the Robert
Deniro, Gerard Depardieu, epileptic hooker one from Ber-
tolucci’s European Art House (4+hour film), “Novecento”
(Nineteen Hundred) (1977) come to mind, but again these
are footnotes in cinema history and as such support the
very marginalization described here. Even in countries like
France where full frontal nudity enjoys a more relaxed am-
bience, on French prime time television, full frontal male
nudity is not common.
Some film studies critics have argued that a “growing
eroticism about the male body that hasn’t quite existed be-
fore” (Linda Williams, UC-Berkeley) is slowly emerging
and the presence of full frontal male nudity “may be a form
of rebellion in this post-Janet Jackson environment” (G.A.
Foster, University of Nebraska.19 While Williams and Fos-
ter offer possible interpretations of the current status of full
frontal male nudity, we cannot ignore the obvious systems
of power at play. As Foucault suggests, “power is not pos-
sessed; it is exercised. And where there is power, there is al-
ways resistance.”20 Consistent with the cultural imperative
to keep the heterosexual nude male out of the “peripheric
ring” in order to maintain his power as primary “gazer”
and keeping his body from being viewed/read, the male-
dominated film industry has predominantly followed suit,
putting female frontal nudity center stage while the over-
seer in the tower sits in his protective darkness. The resis-
tance to the power, in the form of more full frontal nudity
scenes for men in mainstream film may be slowly emerging,
but it is no surprise that Hollywood’s old taboo: full fron-
tal male nudity still lingers on considering Foucault’s far-
sighted biopolitical tenet and the politics of gender which
follows from it.

Boodakian.indd Sec1:20 4/23/08 8:15:46 AM

 The Resisting Nude 21

This Foucaultian analysis, in a more contemporary Hol-

lywood frame along with the socio-political aspects consid-
ered here are starting points for this study. In order to un-
derstand how the nude specifically addressed comes about,
and its relation to the erotic aesthetic, the general status
of the nude in a cultural context becomes a factor. Culture
must be recognized and obliterated which is the impossible
tension that gives rise to an aberration and subsequently to
the resistance and revolt that evidently follow. So the pre-
cultural nude can’t exist, but must exist and therefore re-
sults in a resisting nude.
Culture has not been obliterated from the previous dis-
cussion, if anything, it has been invoked, so the structure of
the erotic aesthetic proposed must have as one of its pos-
sible features, an aberration, a resisting nude that takes on
the status of erotic object. Since so much research, especially
in gender studies, has been done on the “gaze” itself which
comes from the subject, we must draw attention away from
it and examine the object in its authentic bareness. Essen-
tially the resisting nude itself will throughout the course of
this study become more and more necessary to the erotic
aesthetic. The erotic object will transform into a subjectless
object completely bared/dénudé while simultaneously being
denuded/l’être-à - nu.
The next step is to move into the nudity, from the inside
as a pathway to understanding what enables the erotic to
live. A direct dependence is not at issue, but rather a thread
of necessity that must be continually present, always bared
while simultaneously being in the nude.

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Boodakian.indd Sec1:22 4/23/08 8:15:46 AM
 I betrayed my astonishment at a particular caress using
the hand as well, whereas I thought the result was sup-
posed to be obtained only by using the mouth [ . . . ]
Paul Léautaud

Boodakian.indd Sec1:23 4/23/08 8:15:46 AM

Boodakian.indd Sec1:24 4/23/08 8:15:47 AM
 CHAPTER TWO

The Bare Necessity

of the Kiss

If one could ‘enter’ nudity as such, this entrance would be

marked by a baring, and in the case of the resisting nude sug-
gested here that means completely bared/ dénudé while
simultaneously being denuded/l’être-à-nu. This level or de-
gree of bareness is the key marker in ascertaining the con-
nection between nudity and the erotic object, as well as how
the resulting erotic tension may be understood in terms of
poesis or poetry-making picked up in Chapter Three.
So what constitutes the ‘bareness’ of the erotic object
that leads it to its subjectless status postulated earlier? What
is the texture of this nudity? How can we view/read it in
reference to/or as the erotic object? Keeping in mind that the
resisting nude is an aberration from the common nude that
is always subject to the culturally constituted gaze, it has the

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 26 Resisting Nudities

capacity to become the erotic object or not, unlike the com-

mon nude which never reaches the level of ‘bareness’ con-
stituted here and subsequently is not fully eroticized. This
enables the resisting nude to take on a variety of forms as the
erotic object, including a subjectless object, thereby perpetu-
ally transgressing itself. As for example, the egg becomes
Simone’s eroticized object in Bataille’s, Story of an Eye:

Simone settled on the toilet, and we each ate one of the

hot eggs with salt. with the three that were left, I softly ca-
ressed her body, gliding them between her buttocks and
thighs, then I slowly dropped them into the water one by
one. Finally, after viewing them for a while, immersed,
white, and still hot (this was the first time she was seeing
them peeled, that is naked, drowned under her beautiful
cunt) . . . 1

Of course, the eggs later transform into eyes; of the corpse,

of the mannequin with a blonde wig and later the bulls
‘raw-balls’, Granero’s dangling right eye and finally the
dead priest’s eye which Simone calls an egg.2 One could ar-
gue that Simone is the subject gazing in this instance, but
the object is never pinned down, or definitely defined by
her, even at the end, the eye is not an egg, merely a trans-
gression of itself.
Bareness is the essential component and whether this
bareness is borne by a nude body or an egg or an eye, what
is important and threatening is that, as Jean-Luc Nancy
notes of speech, in particular, poetic utterance, “grappling-
with-what-lies-beyond-+[l’être-aux-prises-avec-ce-qui-
n’est-pas-soi], . . . there is being that lags behind itself-being
in deficit and excess of its own identity and singleness as
being.”3 This is how we can begin to understand the bare-
ness found in the erotic aesthetic. That is the bareness of the

Boodakian.indd Sec1:26 4/23/08 8:15:47 AM

 The Bare Necessity of the Kiss 27

resisting nude implies a resistance to its own indefiniteness,

as does the eye in Bataille’s Story of an Eye. It is the indefi-
niteness that comes from both deficit and excess of being.
The texture of bareness in the first instance extends in both
directions simultaneously. Bareness is essentially character-
ized by both what is missing, absent and the “too much” of
being. The simultaneity of these features creates an erotic
tension much like the imagistic superimposition of poetry
that is further discussed in Chapter 3. However, the parallel
I make here finds support in Nancy’s contemplation of the
following in Michel Deguy’s Gisants,

Palms rolling out the pastry of buttocks

Or the left hand supporting the right breast
And the thumb softly excising you . . .
The horizon of thighs displays purple nymphs
Without an image the sex appears
And then like a face it is . . . 4

Nancy suggests that “coincidence as coitus superimposed

upon its own image like an ocular-not oracular-bloom”5 is
in fact a proposition that allows for everything and nothing
to be revealed simultaneously through

“the as such of being . . . it is this “as such” itself emerging

from its concept and discourse, the “as” as [“en tant que”
en tant que ] gesture, showing, deixis, the presentation of
being. And this presentation itself as desire. The show-
ing of being is desire for being, desire for the [as such ]of
being, for what is desirable is never (naked) being on its
own, but the showing in which it comes to be offered up
as such”6

The gesture, showing, deixis is the movement in both poetry

and eroticism which keeps the deficit and the excess, if not

Boodakian.indd Sec1:27 4/23/08 8:15:47 AM

 28 Resisting Nudities

comparable, then concurrent. As the discussion connecting

the poetic and erotic develops later in Chapter 3, I would
like to now consider texture, as in the texture of nudity, the
texture of bareness, not in stasis, but in movement, as in
touching and more specifically, in the gesture of the caress.
The only way to get to the texture of nudity, of bareness
is through touch, allegedly the most “superficial of senses.”7
This texture, on the one hand, appears tangible, but it is si-
multaneously intangible as a result of the absent and excess
battling it out in the act of showing. There is both something
‘too little’ and ‘too much’ intrinsic to bareness. It feels like
something is missing in the midst of sensory overload. This
is the tension of resistance embodied in the nude discussed
herein which is later transformed into the perceived erotic
tension. However, the texture of nudity, of this level of bare-
ness must be considered first, in movement, that is through
touch. It is impossible to consider the magnitude of this
sense, even for its specific application in this study, without
relying on Jean-Luc Nancy’s tactile corpus8 and Jacques Der-
rida’s reading and rethinking of Nancy’s contemplation of
touch. The subtlety of touch for the purposes of this analysis
utilizes and redefines their thinking in light of the resisting
nude and the level of bareness that lead to the erotic. Touch
becomes a link between the nude body and erotic poten-
tial.
The importance of touch is that it does not necessarily
have a limit; it does not begin or end in a fixed sense, but
it is “only touch (contact, caress, kiss) [that can ] interrupt
the mirror reflection in its visual- ocular, optical, or hapti-
cal dimension.”9 Since it is a movement, it remains fluid.
It communicates something, if we read this in conjunction
with Bataille’s definition of “stripping naked” . . .”a quest
for a possible continuance of being beyond the confines of

Boodakian.indd Sec1:28 4/23/08 8:15:47 AM

 The Bare Necessity of the Kiss 29

the self.”10; there is the invitation to exceed the self through

the body, to what, remains unknown.
An early characterization of the caress, by Emmanuel
Levinas, “that where I touch without touching, in caress-
ing,”11 and his observation that

the caress is a mode of the subject’s being, where the

subject who is in contact with another goes beyond this
contact . . . But what is caressed is not touched, proper-
ly speaking. It is not the softness of warmth of the hand
given in contact that the caress seeks. This ‘not knowing’,
this fundamental disorder, is the essential12

brings us back to Nancy’s [l’être-aux-prises-avec-ce-qui-

n’est-pas-soi ] grappling with what lies beyond which
helped define the bareness of the nude earlier and explain
its resistance to its own indefiniteness. It is the fundamental
disorder of the caress, the not knowing, “an expectation [of
something ], with no content”13 that renders the intangibil-
ity of the sense itself and this echoes the intangibility of the
texture of nudity, of bareness.
This echo, this reverberation of unknowns creates a
charged interplay, a place where what lies beyond the in-
definiteness meets the contact beyond contact of the caress.
And what is this exactly? Using Bataille’s terminology, it is
where “the rupture of the discontinuous individualities”14
begins. It is here, that we enter the realm of eroticism. The
resisting nude is fighting its own indefiniteness, but also des-
perately needing it to break past itself, its own self-posses-
sion. Bataille would call this movement of the resisting nude
obscene:

It is a state of communication revealing a quest for pos-

sible continuance of being beyond the confines of the self.
Bodies open out to a state of continuity through secret

Boodakian.indd Sec1:29 4/23/08 8:15:47 AM

 30 Resisting Nudities

channels that give us a feeling of obscenity. Obscenity is

our name for the uneasiness which upsets the physical
state associated with self- possession, with the possession
of a recognized and stable individuality.15

The recognized stable individuality is upset and this helps

us understand the dilemma of touch, especially of the plea-
sure of the caress: “Where does it come from? From the oth-
er or from me? Am I taking it? Am I giving it? Is it the other
who gives it to me? Or takes it from me? The time of this
pleasure-is it that I am giving it to myself.”16 In the midst of
the touch, stable individuality crumbles. The fundamental
disorder Levinas describes is vital, but the gender specific
assignment he gives as to who does the stroking and who
remains ‘untouchable’ undercuts the inherent disorder of
the caress. Levinas’s ideas have been reconstituted in post-
feminist critiques, such as Luce Irigaray’s, particularly his
line of thinking that leads to this idea that the one stroking
is always masculine and the one stroked (the untouchable)
feminine, it is important to consider this earlier use of ca-
ress minus Levinas’s gender stereotyping or as Irigaray puts
it, “his ethical interests [seeing] woman as something to be
used by man in his relation with other men.”17
Derrida observes in Levinas’s description, “one has
the feeling that she never caresses [and invoking] Jean Luc
Nancy’s tactile corpus, where he speaks of stroking, the latter
does not seem to grant a privilege to any one side of sexual
difference-and I should rather say sexual difference(s).”18
Dismissing the idea that Nancy might be neglecting or neu-
tralizing sexual difference, and supporting his analysis,
Derrida aptly questions whether we should “presume the
sexual identity of the signatory.” Assuming the sexual iden-
tity of the signatory in the midst of a rupture of discontinu-

Boodakian.indd Sec1:30 4/23/08 8:15:47 AM

 The Bare Necessity of the Kiss 31

ous individualities would dissolve the participation in the

erotic, defaulting into a sex game where identities are as-
signed, completely eradicating the instability of touch and
the dangerous ambiguity of the caress.
The texture of nudity, of bareness, in movement through
touch is a complex nuanced element of the erotic. Another
kind of touch, showing, movement, that is deixis of great
magnitude is the kiss.
In bareness, as I used to characterize the resisting nude,
as in Bataille’s rupture of discontinuous individualities and
Derrida’s observation that only “touch (contact, caress, kiss)
can interrupt the mirror reflection”19, we find something that
exceeds its own identity, a spilling over and maybe into an-
other possibility. This is a difficult point to pin down because
here I am speaking about an intangible space. I will appro-
priate Derrida’s language to call this the place where Touch
and Psyche meet20 or as he reads Nancy’s Corpus, a “kiss on
the eyes . . . a kiss of the eyes on the eyes of the other . . .”21,
but I want to step back here to the more literal kiss on the
lips to start with in order to raise a basic philosophical ques-
tion to further define the possibility alluded to above. Whose
lips are touching, and whose are being touched? Which lip
is touching, and which lip is being touched? Where is the
location of the sensation?22 Perhaps it is more likely that the
movement is from the kiss of the eyes on the eyes of the
other to the kiss on the lips; however, to speak about the
locus of sensation, this movement is examined in reverse,
that is, from the more concrete to the abstract, what Nancy
reminds us of, “the untouchable of touch”23 so that we don’t
over-simplify this sense by giving it some presupposed lim-
it. In this analysis, I do want to maintain Nancy’s generous
interpretation because the untouchable of touch allows for
the possibility of moving beyond the edge of the skin and

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 32 Resisting Nudities

ultimately later, beyond the edge of the self.

Starting where touch makes a concrete contact as in the
case of the kiss on the lips, there is still ambiguity. When lips
touch, there is no exactitude . . . where is the kiss? The sensa-
tion creates itself at the moment of contact, and before and
after. There is a continuum of sensation coming from a point
moving toward another point. Is the kiss the sensation? If
so, which sensation along the continuum, or all of them si-
multaneously. The dilemma of the touch is paramount in
the kiss where the locus of sensation and ultimately of the
pleasure remains unidentifiable. It is in this unidentifiable
space that thought, mentation slithers in bouncing off of ev-
erything and nothing. I will turn to Nancy’s description of
self-touch you to situate the unique positioning of the kiss.

To self-touch you (and not “oneself”) [ Se toucher toi (et non

“soi”]-or again, identically, to self-touch skin (and not “one-
self”): such is the thinking that the body always forces
to go further, always too far. In truth, it is thought itself
which forces itself in this way and dislocates itself: for all
the weight, all the gravity of thought-itself a weighing-in
the end goes toward nothing except consenting to the
body and bodies (Exasperated consent).24

Nancy’s self-touch you can be read as “the being of every

sense in general, the being-sense of sense, the condition of
possibility of sensibility in general, the very form of space
and time, and so forth.”25 The condition of possibility of sen-
sibility in general, the very form of space and time rather
than a definitive locus of sensation is exactly what is present
in the kiss. In fact, if we replace ‘touch’ with ‘kiss’ in Nancy’s
description, we have to self-kiss you (and not “oneself”), to
self-kiss skin (and not “oneself”), this is even a more exag-
gerated form of thought succumbing to the body. Thought

Boodakian.indd Sec1:32 4/23/08 8:15:47 AM

 The Bare Necessity of the Kiss 33

ultimately consents to body in the kiss; it is impossible to

think the kiss. “It is already very difficult to think what hap-
pens- and just to think, no doubt, but this may be where
“thinking” begins- when a mouth comes in contact with
another mouth and when lips, and sometimes tongue and
teeth, get mixed up in it.”26 I would extend this to say that
the kiss consumes thought and as soon as this happens,
“oneself” becomes negligible in the exchange. One cannot
kiss (in the mouth-lips-tongue-teeth sense) oneself, and it
is this incorporation of the Other in a supremely silent mo-
ment when consciousness fails us and we are left with an
unconsciousness of continuity between Oneself and the
Other, that the erotic is palpable. It is this experience that
places the kiss in the most eroticized condition. The mouth-
lips-tongue-teeth kiss is the supreme form of touch which
cannot be duplicated autonomously as in the case of a mas-
turbatory act or self-arousal.
This extreme condition of the possibility of sensibility
shared by the bareness of the nude and the kiss pushes the
limits of possibility. The being of every sense in general, the
“being-sense of sense” as Derrida reads Nancy’s self-touch
you, opens a pathway to the erotic. The possibility of sensi-
bility is fluid and that could lead the limits of possibility to
impossibility, that is, the possibility present in the impos-
sible. We are then left with conditions that permit exceeding
identities, breaking down discontinuity, spilling over and
into other possibilities. The invitation to exceed the edge of
self through the body is played out in the gesture, the deixis
of the kiss.
This movement outside the edge of the skin can only be
recognized and identified, at least as present, by the Other.
Even in the case where the Other is absent, and perhaps
more so in this instance, when we actually witness Nancy’s

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 34 Resisting Nudities

“grappling with what lies beyond” [l’être-aux- prises-avec-

ce-qui-n’est-pas-soi], the movement beyond the self reso-
nates primarily because, as the resisting nude demonstrates,
a resistance to its own indefiniteness creates a tension pro-
pelling it beyond itself. Toward what? A presence of some-
thing else, another possibility that is there even if it’s not
there. This leads the kisser outward and inward simultane-
ously. Derrida’s use of the sexualized metaphor of day and
night to describe the precarious point of possibility ignited
by the kiss of the eyes will further clarify this point.
Derrida’s reading of the more abstract kiss mentioned
earlier, the “kiss on the eyes . . . a kiss of the eyes on the eyes
of the other”27 begins and ends essentially in its relation to
the Other, “I love it only inasmuch as it comes to me from
the other.”28 A presence of the Other is necessarily there,
even when it’s not there, when the Other is merely implied
as in this case.
The possibility present in the impossibility of this kiss is
read by Derrida as, “In the kiss of the eyes it isn’t day yet, it
isn’t night yet. A nightless, dayless point, still. But one day
and night themselves are promising each other. One says
to the other point-blank: I’m going to give you some. To the
point, the break of dawn.”29 In this metaphor, day is present
in night and night is present in day even when one is absent
from the other. The break of dawn is not dawn, but rather a
coming, brought about by the simultaneity of day and night.
This point necessitates a presence of the Other in the same
way the resisting nude battles against it own indefiniteness
moving out toward something not itself. In the latter case,
the ‘something not itself’ may or may not be a tangible, pres-
ent Other. It is simply the result of being completely bared/
dénudé while simultaneously being denuded/l’être-à-nu, a
bareness in motion that dissolves any definitiveness.
Even in the kiss of the eyes on the eyes of the Other,

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 The Bare Necessity of the Kiss 35

as Derrida’s metaphor demonstrates, day is only promised

and neither day or night can declare themselves fully pres-
ent. His description invoking a timeless, indefiniteness cre-
ates a space for the vibrant promise of continuity between
day and night, between eyes and lips.
As we have seen, this indefiniteness is shared by the re-
sisting nude through touch, the caress, and most importantly,
the kiss. It is further characterized in what I will henceforth
refer to as the present Absence of the Other. The present Absence
of the Other is in fact the presence of the Other through its
Absence. The very “presentness” of Absence characterizes the
Other, whatever form it may take. The “I’m going to give
you some,” described earlier in reference to the kiss of the
eyes is a promise that can only be rendered by the present
Absence of the Other. It’s out there in the realm of the pos-
sible but it is suspended, absent yet unnervingly present.
The present Absence of the Other is the proof of exceeding be-
ing through layers of possibility/ impossibility/possibility.
As such, it is the entranceway into the erotic.
As a tool for understanding the scope of the present Ab-
sence of the Other and its contribution to the erotic aesthet-
ic, the closest parallel to draw upon is found in the poetic.
Notwithstanding the esoteric nature of this discourse, po-
etry-making offers us a way into an aesthetic that has been
undercut over time. The imaginative thread that links poe-
sis-making and the erotic for the purposes of this study is
primarily based on an extension of Nancy’s access to sense,30
especially making an access be and Bataille’s access to inner
experience,31 along with the more critical literary doctrine of
impossibility found in Bataille’s reading of Baudelaire, and
Sartre on Baudlaire in Literature and Evil. In bringing these
two thinkers together in the following chapter, the present
Absence of the Other, that is, the proof of exceeding being
may be read as an access to the erotic.

Boodakian.indd Sec1:35 4/23/08 8:15:47 AM

Boodakian.indd Sec1:36 4/23/08 8:15:47 AM
 I only remember the scent of pine trees [ . . . ],
the taste of salt under my tongue [ . . . ]
And the imminence, the unbearable imminence of pleasure
Suspended at a point in time that was vaster than eternity
Maïssa Bey

Boodakian.indd Sec1:37 4/23/08 8:15:47 AM

Boodakian.indd Sec1:38 4/23/08 8:15:47 AM
 CHAPTER THREE

The Sense Connection:

Poesis Making and
the Erotic

The proximity of the publication of Bataille’s Eroticism and

Literature and Evil, in France, in 1957 by Les Editions de
Minuit and Editions Gallimard respectively mark a conver-
gence that I would make note of here, in addition to Jean
Luc Nancy’s later work, “Making Poetry” in Muses II first
published as “Faire, la poésie”, in Nous avons voué vie a des
signes1 that come together to demonstrate the erotic as a ce-
rebral dance played out by the senses. The erotic is estab-
lished through the intersection of sense and imagination,
and in both this way and its representative function shares
an interesting correspondence to poesis making.
Bataille uses the same line in both Eroticism and Litera-
ture and Evil, “Eroticism, it may be said, is assenting to life
up to the point of death.”2 He uses this same description

Boodakian.indd Sec1:39 4/23/08 8:15:47 AM

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