Troubled Pleasures: Writings on Politics, Gender and Hedonism

by Kate Soper

What happens when ‘life’s simple joys’ become complicated? When pleasure is transformed as a function of consumption, the innocent comforts of food, nature and place are embedded in complex practices of distribution and exploitation. Exotic and diverse objects of pleasure are made available only at the price of a heightened awareness of their origins, genealogies and possible effects; ‘authenticity’ recedes behind objects produced as pleasures.

Troubled Pleasures considers the ways in which modern pleasure is fraught with unhappy implications, at the same time as contemporary critical arguments put into question the touchstones of identity, morality, subjectivity and desire. It brings together writings which explore the sources of pleasure’s ‘loss of innocence’, and which argue the case for a scrupulous ‘alternative hedonism’. Including essays on human needs, socialism and gender, a feminist response to Joyce’s Ulysses , and a fictional reflection on appetite and excess, Troubled Pleasures plots an Epicurean path between righteous asceticism and conspicuous consumption.

Genres: Philosophy, Feminism, Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Kate Soper is a British philosopher and the author of and contributor to over a dozen books on feminism and Continental Philosophy, addressing the works of Jean-Paul Sartre, Karl Marx and Simone de Beauvoir, among others. She has also been involved in several environmentalist and peace movements in both the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe and some of her work addresses ecological issues. She regularly contributes columns or editorial content to the journals Radical Philosophy, New Left Review and Capitalism, Nature, Socialism. She is known to be a critic of post-structuralist feminism.

She has lectured on many of the above topics at University of North London (which became part of London Metropolitan University in 2002) since 1987. Previous to this she worked in the field of journalism and had studied at the University of Oxford.

Reviews

[John Oakley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very possible that I’m just too dumb for this, but overall it felt a little untethered. It gets lost in comparison and dismantling OTHER theories and essays, so I didn’t get a grip of what THIS essay was about. The last one was less academic and more personal, and does much better cuz of can relate to what she is saying. Amazing thoughts and takeaways, but overall was lost. Reminder for anyone reading to ignore this review and read her other book, Post-Growth Living