ABSTRACT
In his provocatively titled article, ‘Is the Rectum a Grave?’ (1988/1987), Leo Bersani asks an important question of sexuality, namely: why would one desire to be penetrated? Bersani's paper was authored amidst the wave of the AIDS crisis, reflecting all of the anxiety and doubt that this crisis placed over sexual practices (particularly, but not exclusively, between men), and hence these questions possessed a poignancy and urgency that today seems lacking in the West. Nevertheless I believe this question is still relevant, not only because the AIDS crisis continues on a path of untold devastation through Asia and Africa, but also because I believe a satisfactory answer remains, so far, fundamentally lacking. Bersani's answer is stridently unapologetic, although I believe ultimately incorrect. He argues that sexuality aims to oscillate between sensations that solidify our sense of self and those which lose or ‘rupture’ the self (1988/1987, 218; 1986, 38). While I don't take issue necessarily with this portrayal of sexuality – particularly as so much of the potency of sexuality appears to revolve around the loss of control over the self – I am less satisfied with the way in which Bersani interprets the relationships of power that correlate to this dynamic. Bersani argues that sex almost inevitably moves towards domination. In his words the ‘effects of power … can perhaps most easily be exacerbated and polarised into relations of mastery and subordination, in sex’ (1988/1987, 216) … ‘as soon as persons are posited, the war begins’ (1988/87, 218). This assumes that sex involves a struggle for domination over the other, and unsurprisingly this leads to an unchallenged assumption in Bersani's article that the specific pleasure of being penetrated is associated with a loss of power or control: ‘to be penetrated is to abdicate power’ (1988/87, 212).
