ABSTRACT
But what if we do not assume that we already know what sexuality is? Then it becomes possible to understand Freud’s claim at a much deeper level. Other parts of the body are ‘claiming that they should be regarded as the genitals’ not merely in the sense that they should be the locus of familiar sexual activity, but rather in the sense that they are exemplary of what sexuality means. This will take time to explain. But it clearly goes beyond the familiar idea that for some people the mouth and oral cavity can become the focus of their sexual life: that their sense of excitement, sensual pleasure, and imaginative activity are located there. That may all be true, but in addition there is the idea that what sexuality means itself gets tinged with orality. In this case there is no assumption that the genitals provide any paradigm for sexuality. Thus there is no claim, for instance, that the mouth is functioning as though it were the vagina. Rather, the mouth and oral cavity are putting themselves forward as the paradigm of what sexuality is. This is a difficult idea. Perhaps we can grasp it by approaching another difficult idea: that infants have a sexual life.
