SaintTheodora

The body — with its display value— has become a commodity. At the same time, the Other is being sexualized into an object for procuring arousal. When otherness is stripped from the Other, one cannot love — one can only consume.

To this extent, the Other is no longer a person; instead, he or she has been fragmented into sexual part-objects. There is no such thing as a sexual personality. When the Other is perceived as a sexual object, “primal distance” (Urdistanz) erodes; Martin Buber claims that such distance serves as the very “principle of being-human” and constitutes the transcendental condition for any alterity existing at all.

“Primal distantiation” prevents the Other from being reified into an object, an “it.” The Other as sexual object is no longer a “Thou.” It is impossible to have a relationship with it. Primal distance brings forth the transcendental dignity and propriety that frees — that is, distances— the Other into his or her otherness.

Precisely this is what makes it possible to address the Other properly. One can call up, or out to, a sex object, but one cannot address it. A sex object also has no “countenance,” which is what constitutes alterity: the otherness of the Other commands distance.

Today, more and more, dignity, decency, and propriety —matters of maintaining distance— are disappearing. That is, the ability to experience the Other in terms of his or her otherness is being lost. By means of social media, we seek to bring the Other as near as possible, to close any distance between ourselves and him or her, to create proximity. But this does not mean that we have more of the Other; instead, we are making the Other disappear.

Nearness is negative insofar as remoteness is inscribed within it. But now, a total abolition of remoteness is underway. This does not produce nearness so much as it abolishes it. Instead of closeness, it entails crowding. Nearness acts negatively. Therefore, it is inhabited by tension.

In contrast, crowding acts positively. The power of negativity lies in the fact that things are enlivened precisely by their opposite. Mere positivity lacks any such power to animate. Today, love is being positivized into a formula for enjoyment. Above all, love is supposed to generate pleasant feelings. It no longer represents plot, narration, or drama — only inconsequential emotion and arousal.

It is free from the negativity of injury, assault, or crashing. To fall (in love) would already be too negative. Yet it is precisely such negativity that constitutes love: “Love is not a possibility, is not due to our initiative, is without reason; it invades and wounds us.”

Achievement society —which is dominated by ability, and where everything is possible and everything occurs as an initiative and a project— has no access to love as something that wounds or incites passion. The performance principle that dominates all spheres of life today also encompasses love and sexuality.

Thus, the heroine of the bestselling novel Fifty Shades of Grey is surprised when her partner construes their relationship as “a job offer. It has set hours, a job description, and a rather harsh grievance procedure.” The performance principle cannot accommodate the negativity of excess and transgression. Accordingly, the “agreements” the “submissive” pledges to observe include plenty of exercise, healthy meals, and ample rest.

She is not allowed to eat anything other than fruit between meals. She must avoid immoderate consumption of alcohol and may not smoke or use drugs. Even sexuality bows to the commandment of health. Every form of negativity is prohibited.

The list of forbidden activities includes using excrement, as well. Even the negativity of real or symbolic dirt is eliminated. Thus, the heroine signs on to “keep herself clean and shaved and/or waxed at all times.” The sadomasochistic practices the novel describes amount to nothing more than sexual diversions.

They lack the negativity of overstepping — such as occurs in Georges Bataille’s erotics of transgression. Thus, the partners determine in advance that they will not exceed “hard limits”. Socalled safewords guarantee that activities do not go beyond certain boundaries.

The overuse of the adjective “delicious” throughout the novel points to the dictate of positivity, which transforms everything into a formula for enjoyment and consumption. Even torture can be “delicious” in Fifty Shades of Grey. This world of positivity admits only things that can be consumed. Pain itself is supposed to be enjoyable. Here, negativity —which manifests itself as pain in Hegel— no longer exists at all.

if the oceans not enough, nor am i

rollin' in, i feel a dark swell

Run your morning bath in sea foam

Soak your milky skin in the tide

The Wisdom of the Pearlers. An Anthology of Syriac Christian Mysticism

The pearlers we meet in this book were early monks of Syria, Mesopotamia (Iraq), and Persia (Iran), They saw themselves as pearl-divers and pearl-merchants searching, through asceticism and prayer, for the precious pearls of mystical experience. Their quest led them into the wilderness, to a state of silent solitude in remote caves and hermitages. Working from Syriac manuscripts in the British Museum and the Vatican Library, and from the Greek monastery of Saint Catherine in the wilderness of Sinai and the Coptic monastery of the Syrians (Der es-Suriani) in the Egyptian desert, Brian E. Colless has produced a volume which draws modern readers into this little known world.

List of Mystics Included 

The Song [Hymn] of the Pearl (from the Acts of Thomas)  

Aphrahat the Persian

 Ephrem the Syrian

 The Book of Degrees

 Adelphios of Edessa

 John the Solitary

 Philoxenos of Mabbug

 Stephen bar Sudaili

 Abraham of Nathpar

 Gregorios the Hermit

 Sahdona-Martyrios

Simon Taibutheh

 Isaac of Nineveh

 Dadisho Qatraya

 Joseph the Visionary

 John the Venerable

 Abraham bar Dashandad

What is seduction? Baudrillard describes it as a kind of principle of evil, which is capable of reversing every value or emptying out every meaning. Seduction is the illusion that exposes production and power as illusions. It is virulent and irresistible, more generative than production and more powerful than power.

To be seduced is to be turned from one’s truth. To seduce is to lead the other from his/her truth. This truth then becomes a secret that escapes him/her.

The great paradox noted by Baudrillard is that sexual liberation, even as it has succeeded in breaking age-old prohibitions and taboos, is even more averse than traditional religion to recognizing the force of seduction. The inability of a sexually emancipated society to confront the powers of seduction is why desire keeps growing weaker across the developed world, why the more exhibitionistic and obscene a society grows, the less it is able to engage and intensify desire, and the more it drifts toward euthanasia. That is, until seduction remerges in unexpected forms to drive the stake into a shabby system of values that dooms human beings to boredom, disappointment, and frivolity.

Alchemical texts, Germany, between 1600 and 1800, Beinecke MS 309