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Sociology and the Problem of Eroticism

Chris Shilling and Philip A. Mellor
Sociology 2010 44: 435
DOI: 10.1177/0038038510362475
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Sociology
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Volume 44(3): 435452
DOI: 10.1177/0038038510362475

Sociology and the Problem of Eroticism

Chris Shilling
University of Kent

Philip A. Mellor
University of Leeds

A B S T RACT

Sociology has traditionally been concerned with problems of social order and
meaning, and with how modern societies confronted these challenges when religion was in apparent decline, yet classical sociologists struggled to reconcile within
their analyses the (dis)ordering and meaningful potentialities of eroticism. This article examines how eroticism has been viewed as a source of life-affirming meanings
and as personally and socially destructive. Utilizing the contrasting theories of
Weber and Bataille, we explore sociologys ambivalence towards eroticism, and criticize contemporary sociological approaches to the subject, before turning to the
writings of Cixous, Irigaray and Kristeva for alternative models of the religiously
informed eroticization of daily life. The perspectives these French theorists bring to
the subject, and the issues that remain unresolved in their work, identify new lines
of inquiry and re-emphasize the importance of building a sociology of eroticism
that can address adequately its relationship to questions of order and meaning.
K E Y WOR D S

classical sociology / embodiment / eroticism / French feminism / religion

Introduction
rom its origins, sociology has been concerned with the problems of social
order (the difficulties associated with maintaining social stability), meaning
(the difficulties individuals and collectivities confront in imparting significance to their actions), and, certainly in its classical period, with how modern

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societies confront these issues when religious authorities and beliefs were in
apparent decline (e.g. Nisbet, 1994). Comte and Durkheim, for example, suggested that social groups stimulated among their members emotions and norms
that bound individuals into moral communities (Comte, 1853, Vol. II: 3502,
5556; Durkheim, 1995[1912]). Webers and Simmels focus on acting and
interacting individuals, in contrast, explored how meaningful action involved
reflexivity towards others, and how individuals developed coherent personalities by acting in line with their ethical beliefs (Levine, 1995). In each of these
cases, furthermore, social orders and meanings were understood to be vulnerable
because of the increasing fragility of religion.
This vulnerability was evident in Comtes dual conception of sociology as
a science and a religious project, a conception that reflected his concern that
the decline of institutional religion could result in social degeneration; while
Durkheim expressed similar anxieties about the social consequences of religions decline. For Weber (1948[1919a]), the quality of meaningful action was
also threatened, as religious disenchantment undermined peoples capacity to
pursue passionately ethically consistent action. Relatedly, Simmel (1990[1907]
1997[1912]) charted the spread of a cynicism that eroded individuals sense of
possessing a soul, which thereby undermined their ability to experience relationships or moral values meaningfully. A philosophical questioning of the
modern viability of any socially emboldening and life-affirming values reinforced these sociological concerns. Nietzsche (2003[18835]), in particular, was
convinced that the death of God (the demise of Christian-moral frameworks
and belief in divine absolutes) risked a period of life-stultifying pessimism.
This background to sociologys concern with order and meaning provides
an important context for the disciplines analyses of eroticism as it highlights as
particularly important three aspects of these analyses. First, despite later theorists such as Marcuse (1987[1955]) investing erotic impulses with revolutionary potential, key classical sociologists tended to ignore eroticism. Durkheim
paid no attention to the erotic potential of collective effervescence (Friedland,
2005), while Simmel (1971[1910]: 135) reduced eroticism to coquetry, a shadow
form of serious matters. Second, however, other sociologists saw eroticism as
possessed of religious dimensions, an identification of especial significance
given disciplinary concerns about the decline of institutional religion. Comte,
for example, associated fetishism, an issue related to eroticism, with religious
values conducive to human development, but it is Webers concerns about individual action and Batailles neo-Durkheimian theory that most comprehensively
dealt with eroticism as a dimension of religious life key to issues of order and
meaning. Third, while Weber and Bataille dealt most comprehensively with
eroticism, they invested its religious dimensions with a thoroughly ambivalent
power: they recognized these as life-enhancing sources of meaning, but also identified them as personally oppressive, especially to women, socially unpredictable,
and often dangerous.
In what follows, we suggest that these particular ways of engaging with
eroticism remain significant for sociology and continue to render problematic

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the disciplines analyses of the subject. Following Durkheim and Simmel, many
influential writings simply ignore erotic phenomena, neglecting their consequences for social order and meaning. What particularly interests us about contemporary sociological engagements with the subject, however, is the selective
way they respond to core aspects of the view of eroticism bequeathed to the discipline by Weber and Bataille. On the one hand, Webers and Batailles focus on
the ambivalent consequences of eroticism has given way to a series of onedimensional visions of its character and insufficiently critical assumptions
about its domestication. On the other hand, sociology has also neglected the
links they established between erotic and religious phenomena, thus underestimating the power, attraction and importance of the potentially life-affirming
but also socially disordering effects of eroticism. With regard to both these
issues, we argue that sociology can look to developments within French feminist theory to re-engage creatively with the potential for a sociology of eroticism
whose importance was established in the work of Weber and Bataille.
After outlining the analytical basis on which eroticism became important
for Weber and Bataille, and exploring the partial convergence that exists between
their writings in depicting the erotic as a transcendent escape from everyday life,
we consider how contemporary treatments of eroticism have overlooked the
complexity of their work. Following this, we examine Cixous, Irigarays and
Kristevas visions of the positive potential of eroticism, and their focus on religious dimensions of erotic experiences and relationships. By moving away from
patriarchal and sacrificial conceptions of eroticism towards positive forms of
religious eroticism, they engage with key themes in the work of Weber and
Bataille, and suggest new lines of sociological inquiry relevant to traditional disciplinary concerns with the problem of social order and meaning. We conclude,
however, by suggesting that elements of their work remain problematic and by
identifying key questions for the further development of a satisfactory sociology
of eroticism.

Weber, Eroticism and Religious Regulation

Influenced deeply by Nietzsche, Webers interest in eroticism (and his conclusion that erotic relationships needed religious regulation) developed alongside
his conviction that the human search for meaning devalued this-worldly activity. Christianity was central to this devaluation, encouraging its followers to live
on the basis of other-worldly considerations, and contributing towards the
general emergence of a self engaged, to an unprecedented degree, with an introspective search for meaning (Chowers, 1995). While Puritans scrutinized the
self for sin or godliness in relation to other-worldly concerns of salvation, this
search was even more difficult for subsequent generations left in a disenchanted world without faith. Trapped within the iron cage of modernity, characterized by the rationalization of life-spheres unconnected by overarching values
(Whimster, 1995: 44950), life easily appeared devoid of significance.

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In exploring this loss of meaning further, Weber (1948[1915]) scrutinized

the value-spheres of aesthetics, intellectualism, politics, religion and eroticism.
Aesthetic and intellectual pursuits possessed meaningful potential. Art could be
experienced as charismatic salvation from routines, while intellectualism
marshalled energy (and the experience of what James (1956[1897]) referred to
as a feeling of sufficiency) into rational achievement, albeit one that contributed
eventually to disenchantment (Weber, 1948[1915]: 342, 350). Both were
restricted by their elitism, however, and by a culture which had become inassimilable and in which the proliferation of self-contradictory and mutually
antagonistic values led to devastating senselessness (Weber, 1948[1915]:
3567). Politics provided wider opportunities for individuals to join meaningful causes transcendent of the self, and reached its culmination during war. In
the unconditional, sacrificial collectivity of combatants fighting for their country there was an evaporation of naturally given barriers of association and the
release of a sentiment of community (1948[1915]: 335). There were limits to
such nationalism, however, becoming clear to Weber with Germanys defeat in
the war and the retreat from the public sphere of values associated with
national greatness (Bologh, 1990: 193). Religion devalued this-worldly pursuits,
with its world-denying forms causing the largest clashes with other valuespheres, even if the churches still comforted those unable to bear the fate of the
times (Weber, 1948[1915]: 330, 1948[1919b]: 155), and though they still sought
wider regulatory functions.
It is against this background of the fragility of meaning that Weber considered erotic experiences and relationships. Weber (1948[1915]: 347, 345]) refers
to eroticism as an embodied creative power that facilitates a sensual experience of unique meaning through a boundless giving of oneself radically
opposed to functionality and rationality. Erotic relations offer a complete unification of individuals who would otherwise be separated by the unbrotherliness of bureaucracy (1948[1915]: 347). This is because their intense physical
and emotional character not only effaces individuality, but offers the experience
of being rooted in the kernel of the truly living, which is eternally inaccessible
to any rational endeavour, and enjoying an inner, earthly sensation of salvation
by mature love (1948[1915]: 347).
Eroticism constitutes a flight from rationalized society, but not an
unmediated return to biological life for Weber. Indeed, eroticism garnered its
power by rejecting the nave naturalism of animal sex, and consciously cultivating sexuality as key to meaningful social existence. Eroticism maintains
links with biology, however, as it would lose its vitalism if it became overrefined. The cultural refinement of sex has a long history, gaining momentum
with the Christian Churchs attempt to remove sex from religious celebrations
and regulate sexual life by containing it within marriage. Significant episodes
in this history included pre-Christian endorsements of sacred harlotry, the
eroticization of young males in the Greek ceremony of love, troubadour love
poetry of the Middle Ages, salon culture, and modern extra-marital affairs
(Weber, 1948[1915]: 3456).

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Despite the attraction of eroticism as a response to the icy darkness and

hardness of modernity (Weber, 1948[1919a]: 128), however, Weber could not
endorse it unequivocally. This is because the fusing of souls within eroticism
threatens generalized ethics and social orders, such as the religious ethic of brotherhood, in its exclusivity and potential brutality (Weber, 1948[1915]: 348). This
was manifest not only in a will to possession that excludes others, but also in an
egoistic enjoyment of oneself in the other involving the most intimate coercion
of the soul of the weaker partner in the erotic relation (1948[1915]: 348). This
is why Bologh (1990: 204, 21718) can depict the erotic relation as a patriarchal
arrangement in which the stronger party accepts and expects the devotion of the
weaker one, in which the will and subjectivity of the other is effaced in a physical and emotional process all the more damaging because it is unrecognized.
Weber himself remains ambivalent about eroticism. He argues that humans
can only achieve meaning by serving external goals (1948[1919a]). Here, erotic
experiences provide a gateway through which individuals can recognize the
unique significance of someone else, a joyous sensation of an inner-worldly salvation from rationalization providing an alternative to organized religion or the
warrior ethic as a source of meaning (Weber, 1948[1915]: 346). However,
Weber is also wary of the spiritual violence that can characterize erotic relationships, and did not view eroticism as a general foundation for social order. This
is perhaps why he has been accused of never satisfactorily integrating eroticism
into his thought (Mitzman, 1971), and why he displays uncertainty about
whether eroticism is best viewed as a relationship or sublimated experience.
In the final version of his 1915 intermediate essay on Religious rejections
of the world, indeed, Weber appears to confine eroticism to three contrasting
locations suggestive of its regulation by religion or its marginalization within
private life. These involve the Lutheran notion of Gods allowance of marital
sex, the Quaker submergence of eroticism within modernized, egalitarian marriage, and extra-marital affairs (Whimster, 1995: 459). We could identify these
locations as involving distinctive types of eroticism: a religiously sanctioned
physical eroticism within marriage, a religiously sanctioned emotional eroticism
of unity within marriage, and a secular physical eroticism in extra-marital relations. The incipient distinctions Weber makes between religious(ly sanctioned),
physical and emotional eroticism appear to be his attempt to regulate the disordering potential of this phenomenon. Paradoxically, despite his argument that
Christianity devalued this-worldly meaning, Weber attributes religion with a
key role in limiting eroticisms damaging potential, and in harnessing its expression within religiously sanctioned relationships. This close association between
eroticism and religion parallels the work of Bataille.

Bataille, Eroticism and Religious Sacrifice

While Weber explored eroticism and the loss of meaning in modernity from the
methodologically individualist starting point characteristic of German thought

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(Levine, 1995), Bataille (1992[1945]) engaged with Nietzsches warnings about

the death of God from a Durkheimian concern with the collectivity as well as
the social actor. Despite pursuing Durkheims focus on the health of society
being dependent on the generation of effervescent powers, however, there is significant convergence between Batailles and Webers reflections on the experiences and relationships characteristic of eroticism and its consequences for the
individual search for meaning.
Bataille, like Weber, associated modernity with a loss of meaning occasioned by Christianity in general and Protestantism in particular. Following
Durkheim (1995[1912]), Bataille (1991, 1993) argued that the most important social processes were not the restricted economy of work or acquisition
promoted by Puritanism, but the sacred energies connecting people emotionally and intellectually to a reality transcendent of their organic needs. For
Bataille, transcending energies were at their height during periods of useless
expenditure, including sacrifice, war, mystical fervour, potlatch, and sexual orgies.
Protestantism prohibited these releases, however, by instituting an asceticism and
private accumulation that undermined the social basis of the sacred, endangering this-worldly meaning (Bataille, 1991: 124; Richardson, 1994: 75). This is
the context in which Bataille (1996[1936]: 179) talks about the devitalizing
consequences of a world that cannot be loved to the point of death, a world
Protestantism and capitalism reduced to self-interest and the obligation to
work, a world in which eroticism becomes a key issue.
In a definition comparable to Webers view of eroticism as embodied creative power, Bataille treats eroticism as an exuberance of life; a commitment
to living as vitally as possible up to death, and in which the boundaries associated with the discontinuity of individual existence are dissolved (2006[1957]:
11). The whole point of erotic experiences and relationships, indeed, is to
destroy the self-contained character of participants in their normal lives
(2006[1957]: 17). Thus, while Bataille identifies three types of eroticism (physical, emotional and religious), these share the capacity to substitute for the individual isolated discontinuity a feeling of profound continuity in which life
becomes deeply meaningful (2006[1957]: 15).
Physical eroticism involves the eroticism of bodies a passionate conjoining of flesh in a dance of desire and consummation in which a sacrificial violation of individual being is experienced, resulting in a glimpse of the possibility
of infinity (Richardson, 1998). Here, nakedness constitutes a prelude to a
fusion that is also a destruction of participants in their daily lives culminating
in the temporary obliteration of difference during orgasm. Physical eroticism is
not immersion in unmediated biological life, though, but mirrors Webers cultivated sexuality, a distinctively human return to animal life (Bataille, 1993:
342, 2006[1957]: 11, 29).
Emotional eroticism involves the eroticism of hearts in which the lover
perceives the loved in their totality, prolonging physical eroticism into interpersonal
communion (Richardson, 1994: 109). The fusion of lovers bodies persists on
the spiritual plane, but this does not end the violation of individual being

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(Bataille, 2006[1957]: 20). Indeed, the search for fusion can result in an
anguished urge to possess, entailing a partner preferring to kill rather than lose
their lover. Bataille explains this by noting that only in the destruction through
death if need be, of the individuals solitariness can there appear that image of
the beloved object which in the lovers eyes invests all being with significance
(2006[1957]: 21).
Resonating with Webers discussions of mysticism, Batailles third form of
eroticism, religious eroticism, involves eroticism of the spirit in which there is
no dependence on a partner to reveal continuity above the discontinuity of individual existence. Historically, this has been exemplified by religious sacrifice in
which individual separateness is violated by an act that fuses the sacrifices and
other participants together with their victim. The victim dies and the spectators
share in what death reveals. As Bataille (2006[1957]) explains, the sacredness
of this is the revelation of continuity through the death of a discontinuous
being to those who watch it as a solemn rite. What is particularly important
about religious eroticism is the sense in which this sacrificial aspect underpins
all forms of eroticism for Bataille. There is always a violation of individuality
in eroticism, in reaching beyond the present in search of transcendent meaning,
and there is always a sacrificial component in the possession and merging central to erotic experiences and relationships.
As Batailles comments about religious eroticism and sacrifice suggest,
eroticism might be compared with that effervescence central to Durkheims
account of how individuals are forged into collectivities. In each form identified
by Bataille, however, it constitutes transcendence without limits. Irrespective of
whether individuals are in an erotic relationship, erotic experiences constitute
an emotionally disorientating void associated with the bottomless and boundlessness of the universe (Bataille, 1993: 168). Discontinuous identities are
blown apart, yet this transcendence of individuality is one in which the experience of life confronts death. The anguish that Bataille (1989) associates with
our awareness that we are incomplete and condemned to death is removed, only
to be replaced by a limitless abyss. Life also meets death prosaically in the physical eroticism of sex, where the possibility of biological reproduction is linked
to the inevitability of death. Thus, while effervescence for Durkheim adds to the
individual, typically securing them to a collectivity, eroticism for Bataille obliterates the individual, propelling them towards non-existence through relationships
that can be violent and inimical to ordered socialities.
Batailles developments of, and departures from, Durkheims work are evident further in his dealings with the ambivalence of eroticism when he focuses
on Durkheims (1995[1912]: 213) fleeting comments on the impure sacred.
For Bataille, eroticisms force occurs because of its doubled-edged character: it
is not an unambiguously joyous escape from discontinuity, but places one
beyond comfort and comprehension. To begin with, given its association with
the boundaries of life and death, the experience of eroticism involves fascination and horror, affirmation and denial, and the wish to escape isolation without
falling irrevocably into a void (Bataille, 2006[1957]: 211, 244). The meaning

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provided by erotic continuity is, then, compromised by its opening onto an

experience beyond meaning. Additionally, Bataille recognizes there is something
heavy, sinister and male-dominated about how physical eroticism destroys
the self-contained character of the participants (2006[1957]:19). Eroticism is
not egalitarian: the effacements occurring in sexual relations often result in the
victimization of the female partner. As Bataille (2006[1957]: 90) observes,
reminding us of the ubiquity of sacrifice in eroticism, The lover strips the
beloved of her identity no less than the blood stained priest his human or animal victim. The woman is despoiled of her being. Batailles recognition of
this exploitation culminates when analysing Sades sexual morality as a ruinous
form of eroticism in which refusal to recognize the value of the other results
in murder (2006[1957]: 107, 171). The Janus-faced character of physical eroticism is also manifest through the paradox lying at the heart of this experience:
while it involves a fusion which travels beyond the limits of a person, its immediate focus is an object, a body, usually an objectified female body. Here,
though, the body is not eroticism in its completeness but a vehicle for eroticism (2006[1957]: 12930). As Simone de Beauvoir (1993[1949]) argued in the
case of social and intimate life, it is the body of the woman reduced to immanence
that provides for the transcendence of the man.
If the ambivalence of eroticism for Weber revolves around its potential to
mitigate modern disenchantment, Batailles considerations are based on a reevaluation of Durkheims analysis of the sacred. Despite this, there are striking
similarities between their analyses. Both identify Christianity as central to the
increased importance of eroticism. By disenchanting the world, or blocking the
circulation of surplus energy and restricting contact with the sacred, Puritanism
accentuates problems associated with the meaning of life and the anguish people experience living with knowledge of certain death. In this context, Bataille
and Weber view the various forms of eroticism as modes of connecting and
transporting individuals beyond isolated, routinized daily life. Eroticism here is
a positive force. It is the extent of this connection, though, that highlights the
ambivalence of eroticism.
For Weber, immersion within erotic relationships is socially ambivalent
because of their restricted, often dyadic, size. For Bataille, in contrast, erotic
connection opens individuals to the shared experience of meaningful continuity, yet this experience is more disorienting than ordering in its consequences.
Neither theorist associates eroticism with the creation or consolidation of general social orders. Relatedly, both recognize the brutalizing potential of physical eroticism; an eroticism in which female identity stands to be effaced. As
Bologh (1990: 218) argues, erotic couplings may involve a sacrifice from both
parties, but women bear the brunt of violation in its physical and emotional
forms. In this sense, Weber and Bataille also have a clear view of eroticism as a
negative force that is socially disruptive and personally damaging. Finally, both
theorists view religion as increasing the potency of eroticisms ambivalence. It is
not simply that erotic experiences and relationships possess a transcendent
potentiality ordinarily associated with religious phenomena. Instead, Weber

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looks to religion as a means of regulating erotic experiences within, or at the

margins of, sanctioned relationships, while Bataille identifies violent sacrifice
as religious eroticisms height. In an age when religious authorities and beliefs
were in apparent decline, eroticism provided evidence of their continued
importance to human life.

Contemporary Sociology and New Visions of the Erotic

Weber and Bataille exerted a significant influence on the discipline, but the
complexities of their analyses of eroticism have been overlooked in contemporary sociology. This is perhaps most surprising in the sociology of emotions, a
sub-discipline concerned with the consequences of various emotions for social
order and meaningful action (e.g. Stets and Turner, 2008), yet which has
marginalized eroticism. The related sociological concern with love and intimacy
in recent years has also downplayed the double-edged nature of eroticism in
favour of such issues as ideology and inequality (e.g. Felmlee and Sprecher,
2007; Jackson, 1993). Those sociologically informed writings that do engage
with issues raised by Weber and Bataille, moreover, usually focus on domesticated or rationalized forms of eroticism.
Writers such as Giddens (1992) and Bauman (2003), for example, provide
visions of pure relationships or liquid love in the intimate realm as superseding eroticism: here, eroticism has been tamed into a manageable resource that
can enhance those reflexively constituted life-goals that constitute the dominant
framework of modern intimacy. Similarly, McNair (2002), Paasonen (2007)
and other analysts of the sexualization of the public sphere argue that physical eroticism has become appropriated by consumer culture (Garber, 2000: 23).
Within this perspective, culture has rationalized and commodified physical
communion, emptying it of what Weber and Bataille regard as its potential for
life-affirming meaning, and largely robbing it of the capacity to reshape, or radically disrupt, social orders.
What is also of note is the lack of engagement with religious themes in such
studies. This lack signals a reduced conception of eroticism, and ignores the significance of religion for the sociological concern with order and meaning.
Studies into the global rise of religious extremism, for example, draw upon
Batailles focus on sacrifice and engage, albeit pessimistically, with Webers
interest in the generalizability of an ethic of brotherly love, particularly with
regard to the destruction that can follow unconditional commitments to transcendent causes in which other people are reduced to sacrificial objects (e.g.
Catherwood, 2003; Juergensmeyer, 2003). Such analyses invite sociologists to
explore the erotic dimensions of religion, yet this is ignored by those studies
that highlight instead reflexively appropriated or devitalized forms of eroticism.
It is for this reason that we have to look outside the boundaries of sociology, to contemporary French feminism, to find explorations of erotic experiences and relationships that might engage more creatively with the positions

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outlined by Weber and Bataille. While their methods and styles are not easily
assimilated to the usual formalism of sociological theory or research, the work
of Cixous, Kristeva, and Irigaray warrants attention as it can be read as an
attempt to bridge the individualist and collectivist traditions represented by
Weber and Bataille, and to engage with their interests in eroticism and religion
in a manner that brings a distinctive concern with the feminine to the subject.1
In terms of bridging these traditions, Cixous, Kristeva and Irigaray seek to
uncover the collective foundations of western social orders by analysing the
repression of passionate and libidinous energies.2 Engaging critically with
Lacan (1977), they portray these foundations as symbolic orders of language,
law, custom and traditional religion in which the feminine and maternal are sacrificed in order to facilitate subject formation consistent with masculine culture.
Their related excavations of these masculine foundations excavations which
sometimes reveal Batailles influence result not only in a revalidation of collective feminine principles and energies, however, but of the individual. This is
not the individual conceived of as an autonomous, masculine project of the
Enlightenment, or as one who gains transcendence only through sacrifice and
at the expense of others. Instead, Cixous, Kristeva and Irigaray suggest that a
cultures foundations should be judged on the basis of whether they enable individuals to be nurtured, respected and fulfilled as distinct yet interdependent
beings able to grow within loving relationships.
In terms of engaging with eroticism and religion, Cixous, Kristeva and
Irigaray explore how traditional religion discredited femininitys link with
nature and fecundity, and constructed an image of transcendence and desire
privileging a (masculine) God as the centre and source of all truth (Joy et al.,
2002: 9). In contrast to Webers and Batailles views of religious eroticism as
regulatory and sacrificial, however, they argue that eroticism can assume religious dimensions that transgress the Symbolic Order, enabling a recovery of
universally beneficial feminine principles. Here, the erotic is not a dizzying
escape from daily life for some, at the expense of others, but a revitalizing
reconnection with drives and passions excluded from masculine culture that can
stimulate an ethical reformation of daily life. In this respect, the distinctive contributions of Cixous, Kristeva and Irigaray offer a potentially significant contribution towards a new line of sociological inquiry regarding erotic experiences
and relationships.
There exists a distinction between traditional religion and a divinity
released through desire and writing running throughout Cixous work (Hollywood,
2003: 147). Traditional religion is associated with a masculine economy of giving (based on the self-aggrandizement of the giver, situated at the heart of the
Symbolic Order), while divinity is linked to a feminine economy in which giving occurs without regard for self-interest (Cixous, 1986[1969], 1991a). In this
context, Cixous (1976) conceives criture fminine as a form of writing derived
from a libido able to avoid the masculine power of the Symbolic and facilitate
new relationships between self and Other (Cixous, 1991b; Duchen, 1986: 92).
Here, writing has an erotic and religious significance, a libidinous and

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transcendent durability, that has persisted despite Judeo-Christian attempts to

suppress its sources (suppressions reflected in the biblical story of Eves temptation, and explored by Cixous, 1991a, through the autobiographical figure of
the Jewoman). Writing is an act of faith containing the promise of revelation,
and able to conjure up the forbidden and make contact with the God that
escapes us and makes us wonder (Cixous, 1991a: 129, 1998).
This is the context in which writing for Cixous constitutes a literary eroticism enabling a libidinous break from the limitations of masculine culture and
creating a religious means of expression for the repressed feminine body. While
Weber and Bataille viewed the erotic as operating at the expense of others, as
partly sacrificial, Cixous views writing as a form of religious eroticism possessed of the potential to recover (feminine) identity and challenge the repression and binary oppositions characteristic of the symbolic order. Eroticism is
connected to the body, finds its expression through the creativity of writing, and
has through this activity the potential to reform the world (Cixous, 1998: 150).
Kristeva also examines religions role in regulating bodily drives and affects
as part of the Symbolic Order of language and culture. In her reading of
Leviticus, Kristeva (1982[1980]) analyses how the ancient Hebraic tradition
sought to make abject (to portray as vile objects of disgust) the fecund properties of the female body, and instilled sexual divisions into the heart of the
sacred. This abjection was apparent in how religious myth and ritual identified
women as threats to be vanquished by sacrifice (Greaney, 2008; Reineke,
2003: 114). Despite the alienating effects of institutional religion, however,
Kristeva (1987[1985]) argues that religious faith can be a creative resource
against oppression and a means of repairing the self through openness to the
Other (Joy et al., 2002: 87). The capacity of faith to be utilized in this way
results from the religious eroticism stimulated by the meeting of jouissance (the
excess to our affects that cannot be contained wholly by any social order) and
the Judeo-Christian discourse of love.
In contrast to Webers and Batailles models of eroticism involving escape
from everyday life at the expense of others religious eroticism for Kristeva
(1987[1985]) involves recognizing and experiencing interdependence. It is in
this context that Kristeva, discussing the role of the Virgin Mary in Roman
Catholicism, calls for an heretical ethics, based on maternal experience, in
which the feminine will not be sacrificed and in which there will be recognition,
accommodation and love for the other based on, and analogous to, the mothers
love for her child (Kristeva, 1987[1977]). Eroticism here manifests itself as a
religiously inflected maternal eroticism culminating in emboldening experiences
supportive of ethically defensible relationships that include rather than exclude
the other.
Irigaray (1993[1987]) shares Cixous and Kristevas concerns with sexual
difference and the repression of the feminine in western culture, and argues that
religion has designated women, and womens work, as primary objects of sacrifice. In seeking to go beyond religion as oppressive, Irigaray (1993[1987])
insists that women need their own God so they can appreciate their own

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genealogy a representation of the divine enabling women to prefigure their

subjectivity and fulfil their potential. As women come to possess themselves, it
is further possible to envisage divinity anew as a form of inter-subjective eroticism involving an interval (a phenomenon illustrated with images of the angel
as an intermediary between body and spirit), and mucosity (viewed as the permeability of the borders marking inside and outside) (Irigaray, 1993[1984]).
Divinity as interval constitutes a space between man and woman in which
genuine interaction can occur on the basis of Descartes first passion, wonder.
Here, admiration and awe in the face of something unknowable can be
returned to its proper place: the realm of sexual difference (Irigaray, 1984:
124). The sense of the divine with which this is associated has the potential to
result in new human relationships based on respect and nurturing rather than
the masculine suppression of the feminine (Roy, 2003). Divinity as mucosity
suggests that this mutual recognition does not leave the partners to a relationship untouched, but open to growth and transcendence. Genuinely intersubjective female/male communication begins via acceptance of the others
identity as distinct, yet develops via a passion and love that can nurture transcendence without obliterating the individual (an obliteration that usually
occurs at the expense of women) (Irigaray, 1996[1992]). Instead of being based
on violence and suppression, then, the erotic becomes an inter-subjective foundation on which lovers build a bridge not only between themselves but also to
the wider social and natural environment (Irigaray, 2002). Through respect for
their differences, woman and man can aspire to being co-redeemers of their
bodies, the world and the cosmos.
Taken together, then, these new and related visions of the erotic contrast
with the tendency for contemporary sociology to concentrate on devitalized
forms of eroticism, and engage with the positive potential of the relationship
between eroticism and religion. Given the psychoanalytic, philosophical and
theological underpinnings of many of their arguments, Cixous, Kristeva and
Irigaray might not be assimilated easily within the disciplinary canon. In what
follows, however, we assess their potential sociological significance relative to
the arguments of Weber and Bataille.

Sociology and the Problem of Eroticism

In common with Weber and Bataille, these French feminist visions of the erotic
emphasize its religious character and its socially transgressive potential.
Recognizing that religion has traditionally been associated with repressive,
male-dominated orientations towards eroticism (Roy, 2003: 17), they nonetheless re-engage critically with Christian themes and symbols to articulate a new
form of religious eroticism centred on the libidinous female body and feminine
principles of interdependence. While Weber and Bataille judged the passions
released by eroticism as erasing individual subjectivity and offering escape from
the rationalism and disenchantment of worldly life, however, Cixous, Kristeva

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and Irigaray look to the release of these erotic energies (through writing, the
jouissance that can be expressed through a religious discourse of love, or the
creation of a divine space in which can occur new relations between women and
men) to transform daily life. In contrast to Bataille, but in a manner similar to
Durkheim, they identify sacred effervescent energies as being able to add to
rather than efface individual identities.
Of particular note is the fact that, in imparting the religious character of
erotic experiences and relationships with a generalizability and an ethical
grounding, they conceive of eroticism not as an escape from rationalized life,
but as an ethically supportable and religiously imbued way of reforming social
relationships and eroticizing daily life.3 Eroticism becomes in their hands something that imparts the world with new meaning via an overcoming of those
binary oppositions on which the Symbolic Order is predicated, and a release of
those feminine energies previously repressed by masculine language and law.
For Irigaray in particular, it also becomes the grounding for a new space in
which women and men can meet to establish new relationships possessed of an
affinity with Judeo-Christian notions of love and passion.
There are two aspects of their treatment of eroticism that remain problematic, however. First, there is the danger that these writers, in focusing on the
feminine, reproduce the binary phallocentric logic they oppose (Joy, 2003;
Poxon, 2003; Wenzel, 1981: 272). They identify erotic religiosity as a force that
could prompt changes throughout culture, but, read sociologically, their
links between eroticism, religion and the feminine risk inverting rather than
deconstructing much of the traditional Christianity they oppose. For Irigaray
(1993[1984]: 54), for example, the accomplishment of female subjectivity
requires a (female) God as the symbol of the perfection of femininity, just as the
(male) God of Christianity allowed men to orient their finiteness with reference
to infinity (Beattie, 1997: 170). This echoes Durkheims notion of the sacred as
societys symbolic representation of itself to itself. However, since the masculine sacrificial eroticism discussed by Weber and Bataille is clearly considered
repressive and intolerable, it also implies that only feminine religiosity can
provide the ethical basis for the eroticization of everyday life. Thus, while the
erotic becomes an ostensibly inter-subjective foundation on which lovers build
a bridge not only between themselves but also to the wider social and natural
environment, questions remain about the subjectivity of men, within Irigarays
own account, if they can only represent themselves religiously through the feminine (Irigaray, 2002).
Second, Irigaray, Kristeva and Cixous lay considerable emphasis on religious eroticism as transgression, but Webers and Batailles emphasis on the religious regulation of eroticism refers to more than male-dominated hegemony
over women: for them, regulation is a necessary component of any social
engagement with eroticism. For Bataille (2006[1957]: 65), for example, the regulation of eroticism is essential for the creation of meanings and relationships.
Rooted as it is in the body, eroticism can escape, overflow or undermine the
social because of its general associations with chaos and animal violence

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(Bataille, 2006[1957]). Thus, Irigaray, Cixous and Kristeva not only offer a
highly benign view of eroticism, in so far as it is not associated with masculinity, but, in so doing, direct attention away from important sociological questions
about the nature of the relationship between eroticism and its regulation within
stable social orders.

Conclusion
Bataille (2006[1957]: 273) suggested that eroticism should be central to social
theory because it is an intrinsic part of what it is to be human that can either
underpin or overwhelm social life. Eroticism is the problem of problems as it
is always a problematic part of human social experience (2006[1957]: 273).
Webers (1948[1915]: 347, 345]) view of eroticism as an embodied creative
power rooted in biology yet reflective of the cultivation of sexuality as a key to
meaningful existence, expresses a similar view, particularly with regard to its
potential potency in a world dominated by rationality and bureaucracy.
Together, they thereby established the subject as a key one for the discipline to
engage with creatively.
As we suggested, however, the breadth and subtlety with which they
engaged with this subject have not been developed satisfactorily within contemporary sociology. This is the context in which we identified Cixous, Kristeva
and Irigaray as important sources for help in refocusing sociological attention
on vitalistic forms of eroticism in the modern era, and their consequentiality for
social order and the construction of meaning. In particular, these writers
explore the intimate link between eroticism and religion and use this to broaden
and diversify our understanding of the erotic by exploring its literary, maternal
and inter-subjective dimensions. In so doing, they supplement Webers and
Batailles earlier accounts of the physical, emotional and religious dimensions of
erotic transcendence. In moving away from patriarchal and sacrificial conceptions towards positive forms of religious eroticism, moreover, these French writers open up the possibility of new lines of sociological inquiry relevant to
traditional disciplinary concerns with the problem of social order and meaning.
Nonetheless, we have suggested that, in losing the emphasis on the sociological ambivalence of eroticism evident in the work of Weber and Bataille, such
writings leave us with further questions about the gendered nature of religious
eroticism (even if this is framed in symbolic rather than the essentialist terms
sometimes implied by these perspectives), and about the nature and implications of its regulation for various patterns of social order and social meaning.
Given the centrality of these concerns to the work of Weber and Bataille, and
despite the limitations evident in how they deal with them, many of which are
usefully highlighted by the developments in French thought we have considered,
we suggest that the further development of the sociology of eroticism can continue to engage fruitfully with their pioneering studies. Eroticism is an issue of
vital importance for the disciplines enduring concerns with order and meaning,

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yet it remains a problem for sociology and one that deserves to be given greater
attention.

Notes
1

While the term French feminists does not do their work full justice glossing
their ambivalence towards elements of feminism and the variable significance of
psychoanalysis, deconstruction, philosophy and literary theory to their writings
(Gambaudo, 2007) it usefully highlights the importance of gendered themes to
them and their distinctiveness from Weber and Bataille.
Wittig and Clment (who has written with Cixous) could also be included
within this category, but we confine our focus in this article to Cixous, Kristeva
and Irigaray as providing clear and related yet distinctive alternatives to Webers
and Batailles engagements with eroticism.
There is also an important ethical dimension to their arguments. There has
already been a tradition of sociological research concerned with how collective
effervescence enhances integration and symbolic meanings at the level of largescale groups (e.g. Maffesoli, 1996; Tiryakian, 1995), but there is also the possibility that emerging forms of eroticism may contain ethical dimensions that need
to be examined seriously. While Foucault (1990) analysed the ancients who
sought to regulate their sexuality and sexual relations on the basis of ethical
considerations before the age where juridical codes were used to regulate sex,
this issue of ethical forms of eroticism has not been prominent within sociology
and deserves greater study (see also Hardy, 2004; Weitman, 1998: 96).

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Chris Shilling
Is Professor of Sociology and Director of Graduate Studies (Research) for SSPSSR at
the University of Kent. He is editor of The Sociological Review Monograph Series, and
his recent publications include Changing Bodies. Habit, Crisis and Creativity (Sage, 2008),
Embodying Sociology. Retrospect, Progress and Prospects (editor, Blackwells, 2007), and The
Body in Culture, Technology and Society (Sage, 2005).
Address: SSPSSR, Cornwallis Building, University of Kent at Canterbury, Canterbury,
Kent CT2 7NF, UK.
E-mail: c.shilling@kent.ac.uk

Philip A. Mellor
Is Professor of Religion and Social Theory, and Head of the School of Humanities, at the
University of Leeds. His publications include Religion, Realism and Social Theory (Sage,
2004), and, with Chris Shilling, The Sociological Ambition (Sage, 2001) and Re-forming the
Body: Religion, Community and Modernity (Sage, 1997).
Address: School of Humanities, Hopewell House, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK.
E-mail: p.a.mellor@leeds.ac.uk

Date submitted February 2009

Date accepted September 2009

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