Thursday, March 01, 2018

Prostitution


Prostitution

See Batailles Erotism chapter on Prostution: "Not every woman is a potential prostitute, but prostutution is the logical consequence of the feminine attitude. In so far as she is attractive, a woman is a prety to men's desire. Unless she refuses completely because she is determined to remain chaste, the question is at what price and under what circumstances will she yield. But if the conditions are fulfilled she always offers herself as an object. Prostutition proper only brings in a commercial element. By the care she lavishes on her toilet, by the concern she has for her beauty set off by her adronment, a woman regards herself as an object always trying to attract men's attnetion. Similarly if she strips naked she reveals teh object of a man's desire, an individual and particular object to be prized." (Bataille Erotism 131)

"It is not really payment that discgraces the prostitute. Payment coud well be involved in the round of ceremonial exchanges without the degradation of a commercial exchange. In the earliest societies the gift of her body that the wife makes to her husband (the presentation of sexual service) may itself be the occasion of a figt in return. But the low prostitute, because she has become a strange to the taboo without which we should not be human beings, falls to the level of the beasts; she generally excistes a disgust like the one most civilizations claim to feel for sows"  (Bataille 134) interesting...arguable, but interesting...chastity and sexual discrimination are required in order for a woman to be deemed worth of inclusion within the human species according to this man...hmmm...

See AP--prostution and gambling chapter--include bit from "Presence of Mind" on prost.

The unmediated gambler. The body as commodity without a currency to symbolize/disguise the relationship.

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