ABSTRACT
The spermatic economy is an individual bodily economy, but, however, only that: in important ways the spermatic economy is transindividual, collective: seminal resources are a communal property. Bostwick’s On Seminal Diseases is replete with the intimate details of men’s bodies, even as it preaches against most of those bodies’ pleasures. Laqueur is right to cite this literature as corroboration for Foucault’s now familiar claim that the institutions of moral and erotic discipline do not merely repress or control sexual desire, but incite it in order to shape it. Parkman’s demotion of scent in rose culture matches his embarrassment or self-consciousness in The Oregon Trail about his own body odor when he can’t bathe and when he’s suffering from chronic diarrhea. Parkman’s aversive desire for the odor of these young men is notably not for the natural smell of their bodies, but for a concocted fragrance that they wear to replace or mask their own odors.
