The kindness of posterity

[ahorbinski]

The discursive process is a complex negotiation of knowledge, practice, and power, whose work lies precisely in obscuring the ontological gap that separates reality, in all its multiplicity and polysemy, and its representation, whose effect is to close off certain forms of meaning in favor of others. All this is a rather complicated way of saying that readers of this book should not assume that sexual behavior actually took place, in all instances and for all individuals, in the way that written texts describe it. Let us ourselves hope that future generations will not judge what we do in bed, or who we are as people, simply on the basis of the portrayals in our fiction, the proscriptions in our law codes, or the diagnoses of our physicians and psychiatrists.

       --Gregory Pflugfelder, Cartographies of Desire: Male-Male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse, 1600-1950 (9)

Comments

[oyceter]

I really do like that book a lot, though I keep meaning to reread it to see if I still like it. (Oh thesis....)

Btw, let me know if you still want to borrow Embracing Defeat! I should be around your area next weekend or something...

[ahorbinski]

Oh, thanks, but I don't need it anymore! (Well, I do, but I"m going to go hunt up my copy at my dad's house at Christmas, so no worries!)