so cold, so sweet, so fair...



went down to the st james infirmary
saw my baby there
she stretched out on a long white table
so cold, so sweet, so fair
Let her go, let her go, god bless her
wherever she may be
she can look this wide world over
but she'll never find a sweet man like me
When i die want you to dress me in straight lace shoes
i wanna a boxback coat and a stetson hat
put a twenty dollar gold piece on my watch chain
so the boys'll know that i died standing flat

Problemas de Filosofía de la Historia y de las Ciencias Sociales - Programa 2010-2

unam4
UNAM

FAC. FILOSOFÍA Y LETRAS

COL. FILOSOFÍA

PROBLEMAS DE FILOSOFÍA DE LA HISTORIA Y DE LAS CIENCIAS SOCIALES II

2010-2

Lic. Edgar Morales Flores

Filosofía y sexualidad: ontología, lenguaje, poder y nihilismo en Georges Bataille y Michel Foucault

El curso pretende abordar algunas de las problemáticas que suscita el fenómeno de las relaciones sexuales humanas en cuatro líneas de problemas filosóficos:

· ¿Cómo afecta la sexualidad al ámbito de la representación de la realidad?

· ¿Cómo afectan las redes semánticas socialmente establecidas a la comprensión y experiencia de la sexualidad?

· ¿Cómo se desarrollan las relaciones de poder a las relaciones sexuales, constituyéndolas?

· ¿Qué tipo de relaciones se establecen entre sexualidad y generación-transformación de modelos culturales, de manera especial contextos nihilistas?

El objetivo, y el reto filosófico, es poder dar una respuesta válida a cada una de las cuatro preguntas planteadas. Sin embargo el curso permitirá ventilar otra serie de temas: placer erótico y cultura dualista, dionisismo y sexualidad, sensualidad y mística, trabajo y reproducción, historia y sexualidad (especialmente el expediente de los griegos antiguos), placer y represión, ciencias de la sexualidad y formación de modelos patológicos. Estos temas, y los que surjan, serán abordados bajo la condición de su subordinación a las cuatro líneas arriba planteadas.

Sesiones

Temas y Textos básicos

6

La hipótesis transgresora

· BATAILLE Georges, La experiencia interior, Taurus, Madrid

· BATAILLE Georges, El erotismo, Tusquets, Madrid

· BATAILLE Georges, Las lágrimas de Eros, Tusquets, Madrid

3

Interludio

· SAVATER Fernando (coord.), Filosofía y sexualidad, Anagrama, Barcelona

· BLAKBURN Simon, Lujuria, Paidós, Barcelona

6

La hipótesis represiva y la genealogía de la sexualidad occidental

· FOUCAULT Michel, Historia de la sexualidad.1: La voluntad de saber, Siglo XXI, México

· FOUCAULT Michel, Historia de la sexualidad. 2. El uso de los placeres, Siglo XXI, México

Evaluación:

a) Dos réplicas de clase (20%)

b) Dos presentaciones de lecturas asignadas (20%)

c) Tres avances de investigación y/o redacción (30%)

d) Entrega de un artículo publicable (30%)

Fechas, materiales y otras comunicaciones se harán mediante el blog: http://atopiablog.blogspot.com

Requisito para evaluación final: asistencia sistemática durante el curso

'I am about to eat sushi off a naked woman's body'


Tomado de The Guardian, 12 de Febrero de 2010.

***

As I booked a ticket for the most expensive meal I have ever eaten, it did occur to me that I don't like sushi. But this was not the only problem for someone who has been a lifelong feminist campaigner against the sexual exploitation of women: I was about to eat raw fish off a naked woman's body.

I first noticed the publicity for a monthly series of British "nyotaimori" evenings last summer. Nyotaimori, or body sushi, is Japanese, and it isn't normally on offer in London. But periodically temporary operations do pop up in cities around the world, each time sparking newspaper headlines. The word nyotaimori is usually translated as "female body presentation", but a friend who has studied Japanese tells me it means something more like "piling something on top". Which sounds significantly less appetising.

"Flash Sushi will offer a limited number of places to this unique ­experience," the advance publicity for these new British evenings said. "Places are extremely limited and demand is high. Guests will ONLY be informed of the location of the next Flash Sushi dinner once they have paid for their sitting in full."

What did the organisers expect to happen? Hordes of hungry sushi devotees turning up at the venue begging for a pair of chopsticks? No, they simply wanted to avoid the kind of scenes witnessed in Seattle in 2003 when a group of angry feminists waved placards and shouted as diners made their way in for a nyotaimori dinner.

Anyway, on Wednesday, this angry feminist arrived at the London address she had been sent after shelling out £250. I had to walk through a hippy cafe serving bean stew and carrot salad, and then finally – after going up and down a filthy fire escape and getting lost in a dark corridor smelling of cats – I pushed open a door and found myself in a dark room festooned with purple velvet and filled mostly with men in their 20s sipping champagne.

I was greeted by a Japanese woman in traditional dress and, down a steep set of stairs, caught a glimpse of the dining room. It was 7.05pm, dinner was due to begin in 25 minutes, but the naked women were already in situ, laid out as if in a morgue, awaiting a postmortem.

I stood out a little amid the assembled diners. There were two other women, but they were hanging on to the arms of their partners and were dressed to the nines. Soon, however, I was chatting to Ben, a money ­broker, recently divorced and in his 50s. He was at my table with two young bankers and their partners. The other table was all male, and, like everyone on my table, all white.

As we sat down, I realised the claims that "demand is high" for such dinners are rubbish: the trestle tables were easily long enough for 24, but there were only 12 diners. In fact, nyotaimori may take place inJapan, but it is stigmatised there and usually only found in seedy sex clubs. But wherever and whenever it is launched overseas, it is marketed as a form of Japanese food culture, and this was, ostensibly, what the meal on Wednesday night was about.

Our human plate was olive skinned, with (as far as I could gather) no body hair and naked except for a few strategically placed banana leaves and rose petals. Her eyes were shut. If it was not for the fact you could see her breathing – and the odd flutter of her eyelid – she could indeed have been a body in a mortuary. There was nothing remotely erotic about the sight.

The first course arrived, plus more champagne and sake. Soon the men were getting sloshed. I started to worry about their chopstick use, so much so that I offered to serve the salmon sashimi to the banker sitting furthest away from the plate. Loud guffaws from the other table, followed by clapping, came in response to one of the men dropping his piece of sushi on the woman's groin area.

Ben spent most of the evening telling me how nyotaimori is not ­demeaning to the women. "So long as they get paid," he argued, it is no different from being an artist's model. "In fact, it is art," he said, warming to his theme.

Our human platter did not look warm. I was dressed for the freezing cold weather outside and was slightly chilly. She had goose bumps, and it was not yet 8pm. The dinner was due to finish at 10.30pm. If it was torture for me being here, what was it like for the plate?

"What I like about her," said Ben, indicating our plate – who, playing dead a mere two feet from our mouths, could obviously hear every word we said – "is that occasionally she has a very slight smile on her face." I could only imagine that she was fantasising about sticking chopsticks in the eyes of each and every one of us.

At one point I moved my notebook and accidentally knocked the plate's ­fingers. She remained impassive. Andy, one of the bankers, told me a story he had heard the day before about nyotaimori. "Some geezer told me you can cop a feel of the birds, you know, slide your hand under the leaves when you are getting the food. So I called the organisers and asked if that goes on, and she tells me, 'No way. It is art.' So I knew it was OK to bring the missus."

Eventually, a break was announced in order for the "models", as our host referred to the human plates, to "stretch their legs". We were led upstairs. I asked how much the plates are paid. "I don't know," said the host. "We hire them through an agency." Do they have any special training? One often reads about how the plates involved in body sushi are "trained" to lie still for hours. "No, but we don't take women with large breasts as the food would slide off."

Were these events usually men-only? "Yes, but when there are ladies present it civilises the men." What happens when they are not being ­civilised? "Oh, nothing much, just boys' stuff."

Ben told the host how much he was enjoying himself. "And the presence of these ladies has totally legitimised it – I no longer feel like a dirty old man."

One of the men from the adjoining table approached Ben and the ­bankers. "Can we swap tables with you? Your model is gorgeous." But there was no need. As we were led back downstairs I saw that the plates had swapped already. Our new one had a tattoo on her upper arm facing me and her feet were bigger than the previous one's. Her eyes were closed and she too looked dead except for the breathing. I wondered what would happen if she got a terrible itch. More food ­arrived, this time hot, and the banker, in his haste, dropped a piece of hot cod on one thigh. "I wonder if, when she gets home, her husband says, 'Christ, woman, you stink of fish!'" said Ben.

I asked the women at my table what they thought of the evening. "Great," they chorused. "The food is lovely, the candles are beautiful and I love the atmosphere," said one. But what about the human plates? "I'd forgotten about them," she said, unconvincingly.

Not for the first time that evening, I wished I was outside in the freezing cold, shouting and waving a placard.


Names have been changed.


Julie Bindel

Textos IV- Programa 2010-2

 

unam4
UNAM

FAC. FILOSOFÍA Y LETRAS

COL. FILOSOFÍA

TEXTOS FILOSÓFICOS IV

2010-2

Lic. Edgar Morales Flores

edgarmo@unam.mx

 

La erótica en el Renacimiento, las fuentes platónicas y sus variantes

 

El objetivo del curso es rastrear las fuentes del peculiar erotismo que se desarrolló en la filosofía neoplatónica renacentista, lo cual implicará revisar textos de Platón y testimoniar la instauración de una tradición simposíaca y mística en el seno de las culturas latina, cristiana y musulmana, que desemboca, y explota, en el Renacimiento.

 

Sem.

              Temas y Textos básicos

1

 

Introducción: La revolución cultural del Renacimiento europeo

 

2-5

 

Eros y Filosofía I: Ficino y la erótica solar

·        PLATÓN, El banquete, varias ediciones

·        PLATÓN, Fedro, varias ediciones

·        FICINO, Marsilio, Sobre el amor, Comentarios al Banquete de Platón, UNAM, México, 1994

 

6-9

 

 

Eros y Filosofía II: Erótica heroica y erótica onírica

·        BRUNO Giordano, Los heroicos furores, Tecnos, Madrid 1987

·        Francesco da Colonna, Hypterotomachia Poliphili, Thames & Hudson, New York, 2003

·        CULIANU Iaon P., Eros y magia en el Renacimiento, Siruela, Madrid, 1999

 

 

10-11

 

Eros y Filosofía III: Erótica hermética

·        LEÓN HEBREO, Diálogos de amor, Tecnos-Alianza, Madrid, 2002

 

 

12-15

 

 

Eros y filosofía IV: Erótica mística

·        Ibn Arabi, El tratado del amor, Edaf, Madrid España, 1997

·        San Juan de la Cruz, Cántico Espiritual, varias ediciones

 

Evaluación:

 

a)     Dos entregas de fichas de investigación (20%)

b)     Aprobación de proyecto (20%)

c)      Trabajo final (40%)

d)     Defensa oral del trabajo final (20%)

 

·        Se pone al servicio de los estudiantes los materiales el blog: atopiablog.blogspot.com, que a su vez servirá como medio de comunicación (programa, avances, links de utilidad, record de puntos para la evaluación, fechas…)

 

Requisito para evaluación final: Asistencia sistemática durante el curso


 


Epigramas

Yo he repartido papeletas clandestinas,
gritando: ¡VIVA LA LIBERTAD! en plena calle
desafiando a los guardias armados.
Yo participé en la rebelión de abril:
pero palidezco cuando paso por tu casa
y tu sola mirada me hace temblar.

Ernesto Cardenal.

Éste es un amor

Éste es un amor que tuvo su origen
y en un principio no era sino un poco de miedo
y una ternura que no quería nacer y hacerse fruto.

Un amor bien nacido de ese mar de sus ojos,
un amor que tiene a su voz como ángel y bandera,
un amor que huele a aire y a nardos y a cuerpo húmedo,
un amor que no tiene remedio, ni salvación
ni vida, ni muerte, ni siquiera una pequeña agonía.

Éste es un amor rodeado de jardines y de luces
y de la nieve de una montaña de febrero
y del ansia que uno respira bajo el crepúsculo de San Ángel
y de todo lo que no se sabe, porque nunca se sabe
por qué llega el amor y luego las manos
-esas terribles manos delgadas como el pensamiento-
se entrelazan y un suave sudor de -otra vez- miedo,
brilla como las perlas abandonadas
y sigue brillando aún cuando el beso, los besos,
los miles y millones de besos se parecen al fuego
y se parecen a la derrota y al triunfo
y a todo lo que parece poesía -y es poesía.

Ésta es la historia de un amor con oscuros y tiernos orígenes:
vino como unas alas de paloma y la paloma no tenía ojos

y nosotros nos veíamos a lo largo de los ríos
y a lo ancho de los países

y las distancias eran como inmensos océanos
y tan breves como una sonrisa sin luz
y sin embargo ella me tendía la mano y yo tocaba su piel llena de gracia
y me sumergía en sus ojos en llamas
y me moría a su lado y respiraba como un árbol despedazado
y entonces me olvidaba de mi nombre
y del maldito nombre de las cosas y de las flores
y quería gritar y gritarle al oído que la amaba
y que yo ya no tenía corazón para amarla
sino tan sólo una inquietud del tamaño del cielo
y tan pequeña como la tierra que cabe en la palma de la mano.
Y yo veía que todo estaba en sus ojos -otra vez ese mar-,
ese mal, esa peligrosa bondad,
ese crimen, ese profundo espíritu que todo lo sabe
y que ya ha adivinado que estoy con el amor hasta los hombros,
hasta el alma y hasta los mustios labios.

Ya lo saben sus ojos y ya lo sabe el espléndido metal de sus muslos,
ya lo saben las fotografías y las calles
y ya lo saben las palabras -y las palabras y las calles y las fotografías
ya saben que lo saben y que ella y yo lo sabemos
y que hemos de morirnos toda la vida para no rompernos el alma
y no llorar de amor.

Efraín Huerta