Images of Bliss: Ejaculation, Masculinity, Meaning

by Murat Aydemir

Aristotle believed semen to be the purest of all bodily secretions, a vehicle for the spirit or psyche that gives form to substance. For Proust’s narrator in Swann’s Way, waking to find he has experienced a nocturnal emission, it is the product of “some misplacing of my thigh.” The heavy metal band Metallica used it to adorn an album cover. Beyond its biological function, semen has been applied with surprising frequency to metaphorical and narratological purposes.

In Images of Bliss, Murat Aydemir undertakes an original and extensive analysis of images of male orgasm and semen. In a series of detailed case studies—Aristotle’s On the Generation of Animals; Andres Serrano’s use of bodily fluids in his art; paintings by Holbein and Leonardo; Proust’s In Search of Lost Time; hard-core pornography (both straight and gay); and key texts from the poststructuralist canon, including Lacan on the phallus, Bataille on expenditure, Barthes on bliss, and Derrida on dissemination—Aydemir traces the complex and often contradictory possibilities for imagination, description, and cognition that both the idea and the reality of semen make available. In particular, he foregrounds the significance of male ejaculation for masculine subjectivity. More often than not, Aydemir argues, the event or object of ejaculation emerges as the instance through which identity, meaning, and gender are not so much affirmed as they are relentlessly and productively questioned, complicated, and displaced.

Combining close readings of diverse works with subtle theoretical elaboration and a keen eye for the cultural ideals and anxieties attached to sexuality, Images of Bliss offers a convincing and long overdue critical exploration of ejaculation in Western culture.

Murat Aydemir is assistant professor of comparative literature at the University of Amsterdam.

384 pages, Hardcover

First published February 8, 2007

Reviews

[Michael A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strange book. I've joked that this is "cum theory" or a "philosophy of cum" but thats pretty much what it is: an analysis of ejaculation and what it means for masculinity, and therefore gender. Utilizes theorists and philosophers such as Barthes, Derrida, Bataille, Lacan, Irigaray, and Aristotle, but also analyzes art and media. He performs a Lacanian analysis on Holbein's "The Ambassadors". My favorite part of the book was whenever he was analyzing pornographic films: seeing academic language used to talk about pornos was humorous... after his chapter on Bataille (which is good) I wondered if he was trying to "lateralize" or "flatten" the high (academic jargon) with the low (pornography) into something "base". I did feel some of the analyses were a bit of a stretch at points (the Lacanian analysis of the Holbein painting seemed a bit much from what I could grasp and he puts a lot of thought into cum and how it splatters in porn films). It was pretty enjoyable to read, though it is a pretty dense and well-researched academic text considering the subject is orgasm and semen...don't expect a light, easy read.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, not enough "images" for a book that is entitled as such.

[Kel · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book was a little heavy on the theory and psychoanalysis for my taste

[Ellison · Rating 3 out of 5]

examines the impact of man milk on society as it appears in various works or art, movies, and writings. occasional insights and some useless b/w images.