Diary of a Conference on Sexuality (1982)

“Diary of a Conference on Sexuality is a conference program booklet designed by Hannah Alderfer, Beth Jaker, and Marybeth Nelson and published in conjunction with the ninth “Scholar and the Feminist” conference, “Towards a Politics of Sexuality,” held at Barnard College on April 24, 1982. Better known as the Barnard Sex Conference, the conference was a key event in the feminist sex wars of the 1980s. Organized by Carole Vance to explore the politics of sexuality, the conference was picketed by antipornography groups. While these protesters focused their objections on issues of pornography, S/M, and butch/femme, the conference addressed a much wider array of questions about women’s experiences of sexuality, some of which are represented here.

No ordinary conference program, the Diary included Vance’s invitation to presenters, a coauthored “Concept Paper” that described the conference’s aims and guiding questions, a list of speakers and schedule of events, as well as minutes from planning meetings, bibliographies of suggested reading, and a page devoted to each workshop. The Diary was, as Gayle Rubin later wrote, “intended to be something of an archival document.” Each speaker created a page in the Diary to represent her workshop; many of these included a “postcard” featuring some image that she found meaningful personally or in the context of the workshop. These images added to the visual impact of the program. With its striking images, its combination of politics, scholarship, and personal reflection, and its moments of insight, polemic, and humor, the Diary remains a compelling record of feminist collaboration.

In the days leading up to the conference, members of antipornography groups contacted the Barnard administration and issued a warning about what they saw as the “antifeminist” nature of the proceedings. In response, Barnard administrators confiscated 1,500 copies of the Diary two days before the conference. Despite subsequent reprinting, the Diary remains exceedingly rare.” (Heather Love, 2011)

Edited by Hannah Alderfer, Beth Jaker, and Marybeth Nelson
Publisher Faculty Press, New York, 1982
72 pages
via Dark Matter Archives

Commentary: Carole S. Vance (1984), Gayle Rubin (GLQ 2011).

WorldCat

PDF, PDF (18 MB)
See also conference proceedings (Pleasure and Danger, ed. Carole S. Vance, 1984, 462 pp)

Mario Perniola: The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic: Philosophies of Desire in the Modern World (2000/2004)

“We live in a world where the one-time opposition between things and humans has been transformed, where the center of contemporary sensibility is the encounter between philosophy and sexuality, where sex extends well beyond both the act and the body. We live in a world where to be sexy is to ignore the distinctions between animate and inanimate objects of desire, where the aesthetics of sex are being revolutionized.

An organic sexuality, based on sex difference and driven by desire and pleasure, is being replaced by a neutral, inorganic and artificial sexuality, a sexuality always available but indifferent to beauty, age or form, a sexuality freed by thought from nature.

The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic takes the reader on a radical, new tour of Western philosophy-from Descartes, Kant and Hegel to Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Sartre-to reframe our understanding of personal experience and the aesthetic, to examine how, if we are to remember how to feel, we must become a thing who feels, we must think ourselves closer to the inorganic world and move further from our bodies.”

First published as Il sex appeal dell’inorganico, Einaudi, Torino, 2000.

Translated by Massimo Verdicchio
Publisher Continuum, London/New York, 2004
Athlone Contemporary European Thinkers series
ISBN 0826462448
vi+147 pages

Reviews: Stella Sandford (Radical Phil 2004), Farris Wahbeh (J Aesthetics & Art Criticism 2006), Patricia Marino (J Hist Sexuality 2010).
Interview with author (1996-97)

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (7 MB)

Georges Bataille: Blue of Noon (1957–) [FR, EN, ES]

“Set against the backdrop of Europe’s slide into fascism, this twentieth-century erotic classic takes the reader on a dark journey through the psyche of the pre-war French intelligentsia, torn between identification with the victims of history and the glamour of its victors. One of Bataille’s overtly political works, it explores the ambiguity of sex as a subversive force, bringing violence, power and death together in a terrifying unity. Written in 1935.”

Publisher Pauvert, Paris, 1957
215 pages

English edition
Translated by Harry Matthews
Publisher Marion Boyars, London, 1979
This edition Paladin Books, 1988
ISBN 0586086242
155 pages

Review: Kirkus (1979).
Commentary: David Fieni (2003).

WorldCat (EN)
Wikipedia (EN)

Le bleu du ciel (French, 1957/1971)
Blue of Noon (English, trans. Harry Matthews, 1979, HTML, PDF)
El azul del cielo (Spanish, n.d.)