The Perverted Consciousness
Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks 1989 DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-20298-0_5 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that Sartre's theorisation of desire cannot support a concept of perversion, since all sexual attitudes reduce to variations on desire's essential aim of an embodied consciousness coming to terms with others, an aim Sartre deems impossible a priori; only a Utopian 'element of the same' would escape this, and present alienation forecloses it. |
Abstract
Sartre’s theorisation of desire does not permit of a concept of perversion. All sexual attitudes, from algolagnia to zoophilia, are ultimately reducible to variations on the essential aim of sexual desire: the ‘perpetual attempt of an embodied consciousness to come to terms with the existence of others’.1 In L’Etre et le néant this aim is stated to be impossible a priori. In later works such as the Cahiers a glimmer of hope appears on the horizon in the form of a Utopian society where conflict would no longer form the basis of human relations: ‘the element of the same’.2 But the present reality of alienation (economic, ontological, social, and so on) effectively extinguishes this ray of hope. Human relations continue to unfold under the sign of alterity; it is the presence of the Other — original and sempiternal — which ensures that the original purity of desire will be defiled, deviated and perverted.