by thecollective Aug 19, 2024

There's much to disagree with regarding this polemic from (non-anarchist) artist Jenny Holzer—who's "we"? Is sex meant to save us? Do we even need saving? Why is this bench $70k?!? Nevertheless, I find the thrust of the question provocative and relevant for anarchists.

While rebellion and pleasure are inextricably linked, the radicality of this arrangement grows more dicey with the rise of dating apps, in-vogue slutty aesthetics, literal fucking machines, VR porn, and AI girlfriends. Sex is of course not exempt from the ever-changing reality of Everything. The popularity of arrangements like relationship anarchy, polyamory/non-monogamy, and the renaissance of queer revolt show anarchists experimenting with these urges in nebulous ways.

How do you feel about this provocation as it relates to anarchists? If we're to entertain it at face value, has sex failed as a political project? Has the well dried up or been poisoned? What urge, if any, might follow?

Listen to the conversation here!

Tags

Comments

anon (not verified) Mon, 08/19/2024 - 16:47

Wait, were urges supposed to save "us" ? It's not April so one assumes this is an actual totw question.
Is sex the only pleasure? Why are rebellion and pleasure inextricably linked, rather, are they? Rebellion can come from trauma & pain as well, yes?

If sex is a political project I think you are having bad sex.

anon (not verified) Mon, 08/19/2024 - 17:17

"the radicality of this arrangement grows more dicey with the rise of dating apps, in-vogue slutty aesthetics, literal fucking machines, VR porn, and AI girlfriends. Sex is of course not exempt from the ever-changing reality of Everything. "

...

"the radicality"

Say wat?

And these trends in sexy consumerism are hardly anything more than just sexual *substitution*. not sexual relations between physical humans. And then you got polyamory that are completely the opposite... being about people actually fucking and being super-effective at dating, while the other activities are for people that alienate themselves even further due to having issues getting laid with others. So no... alienation, radicality... two very different qualities. If not opposite, according to some radleft critiques.

anon (not verified) Mon, 08/19/2024 - 17:26

"with the rise of dating apps, in-vogue slutty aesthetics, literal fucking machines, VR porn, and AI girlfriends"

Tell us you're a boomer incel (boomcel!) without explicitly saying it.

anon (not verified) Mon, 08/19/2024 - 18:57

Boomers are at the nursery home and went past their Viagra rejuvenation these days.

And "literal fucking machines, VR porn, and AI girlfriends" are typically the stuff of InCels... so why would they be against these?

anon (not verified) Tue, 08/20/2024 - 12:37

so only boomers would criticize dating apps, VR porn, and AI?
that's sad. so technology, fuck yeah?

but ok, "in-vogue slutty aesthetics " that's stupid and moralistic.

but i'll take a little of that for a lot more critique of technology.

EmmaAintDead Mon, 08/19/2024 - 18:03

Referring to sex itself as an urge seems minimizing.

That aside, sex has only failed to save us insofar as anyone believed it would have saved us. I think that sentiment falls way, WAY short of anarchists and finds itself firmly in the humanist-feminist LGBT activist type crowds. The people who believe that romantic love is a revolution in itself, and that every act of compassion is sacred. You know the type. Christians.

Sex can only fail to save us in the same sense guns can fail to save us, or graffiti can fail to save us, or reading groups can fail to save us, or DIY t-shirt printing can fail to save us. We will be interacting with all of these things at some point or another, but none of it is the totality of anything we're doing.

Either that or I'm entirely misunderstanding the artist's intent here and this is a suuuper weird bench about white birth rates.

As far as what urge might save us, i would wager it'll be the urge to eat even though we're not really that hungry.

alex (not verified) Mon, 08/19/2024 - 23:07

considering the other message on the marquee is "YOU ARE TRAPPED ON THE EARTH SO YOU WILL EXPLODE," and given that this is a theater marquee, my read is that the piece is encapsulating what you're saying here and suggesting that people are being sold the idea that their positive drives have failed them (as tragedy, the main attraction) on the one hand, and that their positive drives are doomed to destroy them (as horror, the secondary attraction) on the other, which seems correct to me. in both cases, it's a sense of failure being reflected back at us in terms that are aesthetically satisfying ("urges") that, on my read anyway, is meant to challenge the viewer to ask why they would buy a ticket to either of those shows.

as for the prompt i agree that sex has no intrinsically liberatory or revolutionary character. no "urge" does, and any attempt to reduce a project to one seems like a pathologizing recipe for abuse, failure, and as the flag on the prompt notes, despair

anon (not verified) Tue, 08/20/2024 - 06:13

Pronounced -BUT/TAY- bruh!
Some may say that contraceptive/abortion practises will halt the population growth,, but then the surplus energy that would have been devoted towards children and their needs would be directed towards other luxuries and urges which would still drain the remaining life forms such as feasting and obesities. The energy of the sun and vegetation are converted to concentrations of body fat, and the dissatifactions that would arise from a world without children would concentrate into a mass neurosis of narcissistic rage, or warfare. Without a generation to replace the fallen, yes, we are ALL DOOMED!

anon (not verified) Tue, 08/20/2024 - 08:51

NIce Hollywood premise! But when anarchoids talk about contraception, and worse, gayness as solution against population growth I'm wondering if they're still stuck in the '50s? Real estate gimmicks these days have done better than any of such absurd progressive policies to tackle with natality rates in developed countries, with the spread of insipid shoe-box condos and ever-increasing gentrification of more liveable housing spaces.

Regardless, the prompt of this TOTW is rather more of a critique of what some liberal intellectual artist spewed out of their privileged ass, not brain. We're not suffering from how our sex urges have failed us, but how these very urges are the byproduct of a bad "sexual economy", partly driven by repression/redirection/sublimation of sexuality and the systematic discouragement of not only sexual behavior, but more widely physical affection and sensuality. Which puts so much work load and complications on the goal of having sex.

So Holzer saying it's the sex urge that failed to save us... she has it the wrong way all over, and in such a cringe fashion. Neoliberal artists are so mediocre...

anon (not verified) Tue, 08/20/2024 - 09:55

Oh yes do not these liberal artistés all have self-absorbed cerebral necrosis? Also I applaud your mention of the suppression and redirection of human energies into unsavoury habits of consumption which feed into industrialized slavery, a hell of a work load directed towards factories rather than the ecstasies of BED and affectionate sensuality!
I sHaLL wRiTe a sCRipT fOr hOLliWoOd!

anon (not verified) Thu, 08/22/2024 - 10:34

To Have Done With the Massacre of the Body, Felix Guattari, 1973:

"We have decided to break the intolerable seal of secrecy which the power structure has placed on the reality of sensual, sexual, and affective practices; thus we will break the power structure’s ability to produce and reproduce forms of oppression."

There was definitely a view among the early queer theorists that the separation of the sexual from the social - that Eros is a fundamental aspect of interaction always present between human beings and one that capitalism demands we suppress except in particular forms favorable towards its reproduction - was a load-bearing function of capitalism. They thought that if one could knock it out, if one could so fundamentally reunite the sexual with the social such that we stopped talking about sexuality as this separate thing altogether, we could achieve a sexual revolution that would liberate us.

anon (not verified) Fri, 08/23/2024 - 14:18

I think it's not just capitalism but also religious doctrines or any authoritarian community which oppresses the individual will. Mostly by quantifying the instinctual urges, they have created the urge by giving the emotion a time co-efficient, an "urgency". For instance, the organism's physiological cycle is corrupted by work, stress, and the pre-occupation with transactional economic pressures to survive. In a natural state, sex, eating etc occurs on an unstructured timetable on a spontaneous joyful whim.

anon (not verified) Tue, 08/20/2024 - 10:10

I think that it isn't sex per se that will "save us", but rather people developing their capacities for clear communication, active listening mutual respect and trust within their relationships. Once, these things are established, the foundation is set for all kinds of wild sex stuff and non-monogamy, if that's what the people involved are wanting, but that isn't the point of it all.

anon (not verified) Tue, 08/20/2024 - 12:40

is anyone even having sex anymore?

it seems like everyone performs so much of their life that they have forgotten or are too exhausted to even get off any more.

sucks for y'all

i'm in the woods fuckin' like a rabbit on molly

anon (not verified) Fri, 08/23/2024 - 14:30

It is the pressure of living within the modern urban tech/data dominated fog which has diverted and stunted the libido which in an uncomplicated environment would be more focussed on survival and reproduction. Luxuries impose a pressure upon us. Sure, a workerist can slave away to afford a luxurious spa and multiple sex workers to satisfy their urgency. Life for them is a pain/pleasure cycle, a work/reward equation devoid of intricate interrelational interplay. Sex has become--Wham, Bam, Thankyou mam, transaction, devoid of love.

anon (not verified) Tue, 08/20/2024 - 17:06

neither urges, nor Reason are inherently freeing, and there is no fixed easy recipes for living freely

sex is a quality of a lot of life on this planet, so its unjustified self-importance goes deeper and beyond ideological projects

it’s easier to grasp and pin anarchism when it’s concerned with the state and capitalism as problems, as things to oppose, of being against them and against rulers and servitude

it’s more slippery and almost irrelevant when concerns itself with everything and anything people want talk about, particularly when it comes to the minutia of preferences and personal morals (no long ethical principles)

i think instrumentalizing urges is not anarchic, and codifying morality into law isn’t either. prescribing how to sex towards you-name-it is workerist, it’d be a form of sex work. maybe it is “good work” in the activist sense, which is yuck in the anarchist (according to me) sense

anon (not verified) Wed, 08/21/2024 - 01:35

The primary urge for survival is to eat and receive the nutrients required for growth and organ function. Sex and reproduction are a luxury. Many animals only reproduce after favourable rainfall and vegetation has grown for them to utilize the surplus energy they receive by consumption of photosynthesized green fodder. Carnivores also thus benefit from the bounty of prey that result from this. Humans are no different, however our bounty was a result of the industrial revolution and mechanized agriculture, oil, and modern medicine which put a check upon previous overpopulated pockets of humans. All civilizations have grown with the explicit desire to pursue luxurious standards of living by utilizing this surplus energy towards hot water, electricity, roads, ships for transport, furniture production airconditioning. But the cost of producing this luxury comes with the price of burdens and workloads, for every high there is a low, physics maintains its law, the more urge- desire that exists to live comfortably requires an expenditure of energy and a pressure-stress upon the organism. It would be more in equilibrium to live a simple non-tech existence like our ancient ancestors minimizing our surplus energized lusts and accessories.
What will save us is to just hunt and gather for our immediate needs with one fur cloak and our wits, or in an urban modern environment to only copulate after a bountiful dumpster diving or theft of food, a thick blanket and piece of canvas, and a concealed garden bed or abandoned house inwhich to squat, and enjoy the sensuous embrace of another kindred spirit.
The urge to be frugally autonomous and live without burdensome pressures upon your consciousness requires a tough and joyful fearlessness of life, similar to the mountainman of yore.

anon (not verified) Wed, 08/21/2024 - 03:22

sex as reproduction is not a luxury, rather it’s contraceptive measures, sex education, and abortions which are treated as luxuries. the poors are to reproduce the workforce, while the rest can enjoy non-procreative sex.

anon (not verified) Wed, 08/21/2024 - 19:34

NoOo, irregardless of wealth or poverty, contraception , abortion, morality and all other civilized accessories, fornication is a luxury compared to the NECESSITY of food. Let me explain the context which obviously misled you,,,If you don't have sex, you don't die, if you don't eat, you DIE!
Shall I continue, hmm? If you don't have a hot shower, you don't DIE! If you don't get on a jet plane and fly to Rio, you don't DIE! If you don't have airconditioning, you don't DIE, because if you have a brain, you sit under a shady tree and not inside a metal box, which is a luxury, which won't kill you, unless someone drops it on your head, that's murder if it's intentional, but laws are a luxury, maybe it was deserved, and sometimes with death sentences, the luxury of law will KILL someone sometimes.

anon (not verified) Wed, 08/21/2024 - 21:00

Miss Mirriam Webster states ---"Irregardless was popularized in dialectal American speech in the early 20th century. Its increasingly widespread spoken use called it to the attention of usage commentators as early as 1927. The most frequently repeated remark about it is that "there is no such word." There is such a word, however. It is still used primarily in speech, although it can be found from time to time in edited prose. Its reputation has not risen over the years, and it is still a long way from general acceptance. Use regardless instead."
Thankyou!

anon (not verified) Fri, 08/23/2024 - 16:21

but if you live long enough, you do die. that’s the function of reproduction, and life, to perpetuate itself. cancer cells keep on replicating after the telomeres get too short on genes from aging, which places a limit on longevity.

anon (not verified) Fri, 08/23/2024 - 17:13

Of course, the rate of entropy of the living cell exceeds its reproduction and death becomes a luxury, thus completing the circle, reproduction, life and death. Cellularly, the process of death begins at birth.

anon (not verified) Sat, 08/24/2024 - 06:10

In layman's terms to answer the question--- What will save us now is if a majority of people had a sudden urge to abandoned tech and excessive comforts and take on a lifestyle akin to that of a Mountainman/woman,

Add new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
About text formats

Filtered HTML

  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
CAPTCHA
k
G
B
w
P
t
S
G
Enter the code without spaces.
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.