Experts from fields as different as brain research, cognitive
science, and physiology agree that a distinct similarity between
the practical experience of self- constitution in sexual acts and
in creative efforts of art, scientific discovery, and political
performance can be established. It seems that they all involve a
progression, reach a peak, experienced as enormous pleasure and
relief, and are followed by a certain feeling of emptiness. Like
any creative experience, the erotic experience is one of
expression. To express means to constitute oneself authentically,
and to project hope that the experience can impact others. From
this stems the possible language, or semiotics, of the erotic:
how it is expressed, what the erotic vocabulary (of sounds,
words, gestures, etc.) and grammar are. The semiosis of the
erotic includes the participation of the language of sexual
relationships, without being limited to it.
Having reached this understanding, we can apply it to the
observation that Homo Eroticus is a subject who continuously
negates naturalness (from what and how we eat to how we dress,
etc.) while simultaneously regretting the loss. Not surprisingly,
sexuality is continued in the practice of producing, reading,
viewing, and criticizing erotic literature, printed images,
video, film documentaries, CD-ROM, or virtual reality. Real- time
interactive erotic multimedia captures even more attention. In
parallel, humans try to be authentic, unique, and free in their
intimate sphere. They scan through image- dominated books, some
more than vulgar, subscribe to magazines, face their own
sexuality on videotapes, register for sex initiation seminars, or
take advantage of group sex encounters. Millions land on
pornographic Websites or create their own sex messages in the
interconnected world. They do all this in an attempt to free
themselves from natural necessity and from the conformist frame
of literate Eros, including the many complexes explaining
painful real or imaginary failures.
Living in an environment in which science and technology
effectively support human experiences of overcoming the
constraints of space, time, and material existence, humans freed
sexuality from the influence of natural cycles. These, as we
know, can even be altered as pragmatic conditions might require
for sportswomen and ballerinas. New totems and taboos populate
this environment in which Eros, as a reminder of distant phases
of anthropological evolution, continues to be present. Like any
other creative act, the sexual act involves imagination, and the
urge to explore the unknown. It is irrepeatable, yet another
instance of discovering one's identity in the uniqueness of the
experience.
Although continuously programmed through endlessly refined means,
humans maintain a nostalgia for the authentic, but accept, more
often unconsciously than not, a mediocre syntax of the sexual
impressed upon them from the world of celebrity and success.
This syntax is a product of erotic experts, writers, and
imagemakers. It is a contentless semantics-the meaning of
erotic encounters fades in the meaning of the circumstance-and
an absurd pragmatics-sexuality as yet another form of
competition, deliriously celebrated by mass media.
While artificial insemination was a scientific breakthrough, it
is also symptomatic of the process analyzed here, in particular
of the changes in the underlying structure leading to the
civilization of illiteracy. Artificial insemination is part of
this background; so is the entire genetic research that resulted
in our ability to design not only new plants and animals with
expected characteristics, but also human beings. Specialization
reached a point where the market can satisfy a new type of
consumption, in this case represented by artificial
insemination, under acceptable economic conditions. Whether a
pill, or aesthetic insemination, will ever make those who desire
to be artists become creative is still to be seen. (The same
holds true for science, politics, and any other creative
career.) But we have already seen the dissemination of tools
(mainly computer- based) that give many the illusion of becoming
abruptly talented, as some women discover that they are abruptly
fecund because they found the right pill, or the right
gynecologist, to make the impossible happen.
As part of contemporary society's generalized illiteracy, erotic
illiteracy is eloquently illustrated by the pervasiveness of sex
in art. The transition from pornography to artistic pornography
corresponds to the search of those human obsessions that
legitimize art's appropriation of territories considered taboo.
As some see it, once freed from the constraints implicit in the
pragmatic framework relying on literacy, art and sexuality
intensified their reciprocal influence. Aesthetic concerns
changed from elaboration and method to improvisation and process.
The expectation of education or therapeutics gave way to
triggering excitement, more obliquely sexual excitement.
Striptease has moved from the back alleys of bigoted enjoyment
into movie theaters, museums, prime time television, the
Internet. And so has the language of arousal, the voice of
pleasure, the groan of post-coital exhaustion, or disappointment
from teleporn services to the pay-per-session Websites, where
credit card numbers are submitted without fear of their being
used beyond payment for the service. In certain countries still
under a literate regimen, the problem of pornography has been
solved by administrative prohibitions; in others, a solution
arises from blind market logic.
The market acknowledges the various aspects of sexuality in the
civilization of illiteracy through products and services geared
towards all those involved. Many market semioses work in this
direction-from the pornographic sites on the Internet to the red
light districts where risk can be generously rewarded. Sometimes
the market's attention leads to unexpected changes in what is
marketed, and how previous acceptable codes of sexual behavior
are revised and new codes publicly sanctioned. The many forms of
advertisement catering to homosexuals, sexploitation, gendered
sexuality, group experiences, while never using one qualifier or
another, are quite explicit in identifying their public and the
patterns of behavior characteristic for this public. Means used
for this purpose correspond to those of the civilization of
illiteracy. There is, probably, no other medium of more precise
narrow casting of sexual wares, from legitimate to scandalously
base, than that of the networked world.
In the framework of literacy, the erotic (as all other creative
contributions) was idealized in many respects. Language
projected the erotic experience as one that transcended
sexuality, leading to stable and selective male-female
relationships within the boundaries of the family
characteristic of industrial society. In time, various value
representations, symptomatic of a peculiar understanding of the
differences between man and woman, and stored in the language of
customs and rituals, took over the substance of the erotic and
made form predominant. Literacy and the ceremonies celebrating
the erotic-especially marriage and wedding anniversaries-are
connected far beyond what most would accept on first reflection.
The fact that the civilization of illiteracy took over these
ceremonies, and created a service sector able to provide a
substitute for an instance that used to signify commitment only
proves how ubiquitous the expectation of high efficiency is. The
vows that made marriage a social event, sanctioning the implicit
sexual component of the contract, and sometimes celebrating
more prejudice than tolerance, are expectations expressed in
literate language and submitted for public validation. Whether
newlyweds knew what they signed-or did not know how to sign-does
not change the fact that the institution was acknowledged in
the integrating reality of language.