Introduction

The title of this collection might be viewed as a conundrum: what does it mean to speak of erotic politics, and what is the relationship between politics and desire? There are theoretical assumptions in these juxtapositions: that the inter-subjective realm of desire connects to the public, political domain; that the English Renaissance stage foregrounds the multiple possibilities of this conjunction, shapes each in terms of a ‘dynamics’ that is available to critical scrutiny. These premises, in turn, suggest a larger problem concerning the production of eroticism, one with particular relevance to the cultural criticism represented in this volume. The crux of this problem may be stated in terms of two related issues: whether it is possible to historicize Renaissance eroticism-or Renaissance sexuality, the larger category of analysis to which eroticism is obliquely but interdependently related1-in a wholly synchronic manner; and whether eroticism itself may be anatomized without recourse to psychoanalytic theory.