Postmodern Uses Of Sex, Bauman
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On Postmodern Uses of Sex
Zygmunt Bauman
N HIS BEAUTIFUL book-long essay La llama doble ± Amor y erotismo,
published in 1993, the great Mexican thinker Octavio Paz explores the
complex interaction between sex, eroticism and love ± three close
relatives yet so unlike each other that each needs a separate language to
account for its own existence. The central metaphor of the book, most
®ttingly, is one of ®re: above the primordial ®re of sex, lit by nature long
before the ®rst stirrings of humanity, rises the red ¯ame of eroticism, above
which quivers and shivers the delicate blue ¯ame of love. There would be no
¯ame without ®re; yet there is more, much more, to the red and blue ¯ames,
and to each one of them, than there is in the ®re from which they arise.
Sex, eroticism and love are linked yet separate. They can hardly exist
without each other, and yet their existence is spent in the ongoing war of
independence. The boundaries between them are hotly contested ± alterna-
tively, but often simultaneously, the sites of defensive battles and of
invasions. Sometimes the logic of war demands that the cross-border
dependencies are denied or suppressed; sometimes the invading armies
cross the boundary in force with the intention of overpowering and
colonizing the territory. Torn between such contradictory impulses, the
three areas are notorious for the unclarity of their frontiers and the three
discourses that serve (or perhaps produce) them are known to be confused
and inhospitable to pedantry and precision.
Sex, so Octavio Paz reminds us, is the least human of the three.
Indeed, sex is natural, not a cultural product: we share it with a large part
of non-human species. In its natural form untainted by culture sex is always
the same; as Theodore Zeldin (1994: 86ff) observed, `there has been more
progress in cooking than in sex'. It is but the erotic sublimation of sex,
fantasy and sex-substitutes, that are in®nitely variable. All `history of sex' is
therefore the history of the cultural manipulation of sex. It began with the
birth of eroticism ± through the cultural trick of separating sexual experience
&
1998
Thousand Oaks and New Delhi),
Vol. 15(3±4): 19±33
[0263-2764(199808/11)15:3±4;19±33;006057]
I
20 Theory, Culture & Society Vol. 15 Nos 3±4
(in the sense of Erlebnis, not Erfahrung), and especially the pleasure
associated with that experience, from reproduction, that primary function
of sex and its raison d'etre. Nature, we may say, is taking no chances and for
that reason it cannot but be wasteful; it showers its targets with bullets so
that at least one bullet will hit the bull's eye. Sex is no exception; sexually
reproducing species are as a rule supplied with quantities of sexual energy
and capacity for sexual encounters far in excess of what reproduction proper
would require. And so eroticism is not just a purely cultural feat and in no
way is it an act of violence committed on nature, an `unnatural' act; nature
virtually tempted human wits into the invention, lavish as nature is in
turning out huge, redundant and untapped volumes of sexual energy and
desire. That surplus is a standing invitation to cultural inventiveness. Yet
the uses to which that reproductively redundant and wasted excess may be
put is a cultural creation.
Eroticism is about recycling that waste. It depends on ®lling the sexual
act with a surplus value ± over and above its reproductive function. Human
beings would not be erotic creatures were they not ®rst sexual beings;
sexuality is the only soil in which the cultural seeds of eroticism may be
sown and grow ± but this soil has limited fertility. Eroticism begins from
reproduction, but it transcends it from the start; reproduction, its life-giving
force, soon turns into a constraint. To freely manipulate, to process at will
the surplus capacity for sexuality, eroticism must be `replanted' into other
soils of greater potency and additional nutritional power; culture must
emancipate sexual delight from reproduction, its primary utilitarian appli-
cation. Hence the reproductive function of sex is simultaneously the
indispensable condition and a thorn in the ¯esh of eroticism; there is an
unbreakable link, but also a constant tension between the two ± that tension
being as incurable as the link is unbreakable.
Theoretically speaking, there are several tension-management strat-
egies. They were all tried, and the `history of sex' may be told in terms of the
focus shifting from one strategy to another, different strategies gaining
temporary cultural dominance in various historical eras. The choice,
however, is limited. By and large it is con®ned to the redeployment of
cultural forces either on the sex/eroticism or eroticism/love frontier, and
certain combinations between the troop movements in both territories.
Greatly simplifying, we may say that throughout the modern era two
cultural strategies vied with each other for domination. One ± of®cially
promoted and supported by the legislative powers of the state and ideologi-
cal powers of the Church and the School, was the strategy of reinforcing the
limits imposed by the reproductive functions of sex upon the freedom of
erotic imagination ± relegating the unmanageable surplus of sexual energy
to culturally suppressed and socially degraded spheres of pornography,
prostitution and illicit ± extramarital ± liaisons. The other ± always carrying
a tinge of dissent and rebelliousness ± was the romantic strategy of cutting
the ties linking eroticism to sex and tying it instead to love.
In the ®rst strategy, eroticism had to justify itself in terms of its sexual
Bauman ± On Postmodern Uses of Sex 21
(reproductive) utility, with the third element ± love ± being a welcome, yet
supernumerary, embellishment. Sex was `culturally silent' ± it had no
language of its own, no language recognized as public vernacular and a
means of public communication. Mid-19th-century intercourse, as Stephen
Kern (1992) noted, was by comparison with 20th-century sex `deadly
serious' and `abruptly over'; it was `abruptly over' since `the post-coital
interlude was particularly embarrassing, because eyes opened, lights came
on, and couples were obliged to look at one another or else away and begin
to speak or else endure a nerve-breaking silence'. In the second strategy,
love was accorded the sole legitimizing power, and eroticism was cast in the
image of a handmaiden of love, while its link with sexuality was either
frowned upon or reduced to the role of a non-essential, even if pleasurable,
attribute. In both strategies, eroticism sought anchorage in something other
than itself ± either in sex or in love; both strategies were variants of the
policy of alliance, and the potential allies were sought beyond the borders of
eroticism. Both strategies assumed that the cultural manipulation and
redeployment of surplus sexual energy needed a functional justi®cation,
not being able to stand on its own and be `its own purpose' or a value in its
own right. Both strategies stemmed as well from the tacit assumption that,
left to itself, human erotic inventiveness would easily run out of control,
playing havoc with the delicate tissue of human relations; it needs therefore
outside, authoritative and resourceful powers to contain it within acceptable
limits and stave off its potentially destructive potential.
Seen against that background, the late modern or postmodern ren-
dition of eroticism appears unprecedented ± a genuine breakthrough and
novelty. It enters alliance with neither sexual reproduction nor love,
claiming independence from both neighbours and ¯atly refusing all re-
sponsibility for the impact it may make on their fate; it proudly and boldly
proclaims itself to be its only, and suf®cient, reason and purpose. As Marc
C. Taylor and Esa Saarinen (1994) put it, with a wonderful epigrammatic
precision, `desire does not desire satisfaction. To the contrary, desire
desires desire.' When (seldom, and in a whisper) voiced before, such
claims were classi®ed as the heresy of libertinism and exiled to the Devil's
Island of sexual disorder and perversion. Now the self-suf®ciency of eroti-
cism, the freedom to seek sexual delights for their own sake, has risen to the
level of cultural norm, changing places with its critics, now assigned to the
Kunstkammer of cultural oddities and relics of extinct species. Nowadays
eroticism has acquired substance it was never before able to carry on its own
shoulders, but also an unheard-of lightness and volatility. Being an eroti-
cism `with no strings attached', untied, unbridled, let loose ± the postmodern
eroticism is free to enter and leave any association of convenience, but also
an easy prey to forces eager to exploit its seductive powers.
It has become the folklore of social science to lay the responsibility for
the `erotic revolution' at the door of the `market forces' (an address all the
more convenient for the mystery surrounding its notoriously elusive resi-
dent). Eager to ®ll the void left by the Divine Providence and laws of
22 Theory, Culture & Society Vol. 15 Nos 3±4
progress, scienti®cally oriented study of changing human behaviour seeks a
candidate for the vacant position of `main determinant' ± and `market forces'
are no worse, and in many respects better, than the others. I for once am not
particularly worried by the void staying empty and the position remaining
un®lled. `Market forces' can be blamed, at the utmost, for exploiting without
scruples the resources already at hand, and for exploiting them while being
guided solely by their commercial potential and oblivious to all other,
including the culturally devastating or morally iniquitous, aspects of the
matter. Charging them with the powers to conjure up the resources them-
selves would be like accepting the alchemist's authorship of the gold found
in the test-tube: an exercise in magical rather than scienti®c reasoning
(though, frankly, the difference between the two within social studies is far
from unambiguous). It takes more than the greed for pro®t, free competition
and the re®nement of the advertising media to accomplish a cultural
revolution of a scale and depth equal to that of the emancipation of eroticism
from sexual reproduction and love. To be redeployed as an economic factor,
eroticism must have been ®rst culturally processed and given a form ®t for a
would-be commodity.
So let me leave aside the `commercial' uses of eroticism, not really
surprising in a society in which the care for whatever is seen as a human
need is increasingly mediatized by the commodity market ± and concentrate
instead on the somewhat less obvious, and certainly less fully described and
much too little discussed links between the erotic revolution and other
aspects of the emergent postmodern culture. Among such aspects, two in
particular seem to be directly relevant to our topic.
The ®rst is the collapse of the `panoptic' model of securing and
perpetuating social order. That model, as you know, has been described in
detail by Michel Foucault, in reference to Jeremy Bentham's idea of the
universal solution to all tasks requiring the instilling of discipline and so
obtaining the desirable sort of conduct from a great number of people. That
solution, according to Bentham, was seeing without being seen, a surrepti-
tious surveillance with its objects made aware that they might be closely
scrutinized at every moment yet having no way of knowing when they are
indeed under observation. Foucault used Bentham's idea as a paradigm of
the order-making activity of modern powers. Factories, workhouses, prisons,
schools, hospitals, asylums or barracks, whatever their manifest functions,
were also throughout the modern era manufacturers of order; in this lay their
latent, yet arguably their paramount social function. Among all the
panoptical institutions two were decisive for the performance of that latter
function due to their vast catchment area. The two panoptical institutions in
question were industrial factories and conscript armies. Most male members
of society could reasonably be expected to pass through their disciplining
treadmill and acquire the habits that would guarantee their obedience to the
order-constituting rules (and later to enforce those habits on the female
members in their capacity of the `heads of families'). Yet in order to perform
their role such panoptical institutions needed men capable of undertaking
Bauman ± On Postmodern Uses of Sex 23
industrial work and army duties ± able to endure the hardships of industrial
work and army life. Industrial invalidity and disquali®cation from army
service meant exclusion from panoptical control and drill. Ability to work
and to ®ght became therefore the measure of the `norm', while inability was
tantamount to social abnormality, deviation from the norm, alternatively
subjected to medical or penological treatment. Modern medicine gave that
norm the name of `health'. A `healthy man' was a person capable of a certain
amount of physical exertion, required by productive work and/or military
exploits; the norm guiding the assessment of the state of health and the
in®nite variety of possible abnormalities was therefore `objectively measur-
able'. It could be easily set as a target; hitting or missing the target could be
de®ned with considerable precision.
Contemporary society needs neither mass industrial labour nor mass
(conscript) armies. The era when factories and troops were the decisive
order-sustaining institution is (at least in our part of the world) over. But so
is, as well, panoptical power as the main vehicle of social integration, and
normative regulation as the major strategy of order-maintenance. The great
majority of people ± men as well as women ± are today integrated through
seduction rather than policing, advertising rather than indoctrinating, need-
creation rather than normative regulation. Most of us are socially and
culturally trained and shaped as sensation-seekers and gatherers, rather
than producers and soldiers. Constant openness to new sensations and greed
for ever new experience, always stronger and deeper than before, is a
condition sine qua non of being amenable to seduction. It is not `health',
with its connotation of a steady state, of an immobile target on which all
properly trained bodies converge ± but `®tness', implying being always on
the move or ready to move, capacity for imbibing and digesting ever greater
volumes of stimuli, ¯exibility and resistance to all closure, that grasps the
quality expected from the experience-collector, the quality she or he must
indeed possess to seek and absorb sensations. And if the mark of `disease'
was incapacity for factory or army life, the mark of `un®tness' is the lack of
Âlan vital, ennui, acedia, inability to feel strongly, lack of energy, stamina,
interest in what the colourful life has to offer, desire and desire to desire. . . .
`Fitness' as a de®nition of a desirable bodily state, however, presents
problems of which the norm of `health' was free.
First ± `health' is a norm, and norms are clearly delineated from
above and below alike. `Fitness' has perhaps its lower, though rather
blurred and murky threshold, but cannot, by de®nition, have an upper
limit; `®tness' is, after all, about the constant ability to move further on, to
rise to ever higher levels of experience. Hence `®tness' will never acquire
the comforting exactitude and precision of a norm. `Fitness' is a never-to-
be-reached horizon looming forever in the future, a spur to unstoppable
efforts, none of which can be seen as fully satisfactory, let alone the
ultimate. Pursuit of ®tness, its little triumphs notwithstanding, is shot
through with incurable anxiety and is an inexhaustible source of self-
reproach and self-indignation.
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