In May 2011 a small group of scholars from different nationalities came together in Warsaw for the First Global Conference: Queer Sexualities, organized by Inter-Disciplinary.Net. We were a diverse bunch, working from different academic disciplines and at different points in our academic careers. What we had in common was a desire to interrogate and challenge the notion of “the normal” and its effects on sexed subjectivities, identities, and sexual practices. Were we investigating the “old normal” in contrast to the ways we live now during a global pandemic, when the notion of the “new normal” seemingly suggests a radical change? Today, following the initiative of the Sexuality and Spirituality Research Network (s&srn) and the Prague group associated with Progressive Connexions’ global conferences on The Erotic, I am heartened to see again a group of scholars from different disciplinary fields and backgrounds coming together to investigate the current globalized social state designated as “new” but somehow “normal” all the same.
Of course, this group of scholars have come together in a published volume rather than meeting together physically at a conference, although we hope that this will be one day again be possible. At the Warsaw convening, the proceedings commenced in a way familiar to all conference goers. We were advised as to the location of the toilets, the availability—or otherwise—of refreshment and lunch, and of course the fire escapes and where to assemble, to be counted/accounted for in the event of such an emergency—the “house-keeping” information required to be announced by those who hire-out the venue. It was an announcement that drew attention to the bodies at the event, accompanied by a little threat of a possible disaster, a fire perhaps, a need to interrupt proceedings and evacuate, to remove ourselves from danger. A familiar announcement—at all sorts of events and in all sorts of venues—which also indicate something of the structural differences between “organizers” and “participants,” between “hosts” and “guests” underpinned by the basic, ordinary rules. My own association of such announcements is to the ancient Greek concept of xenia: hospitality. The sum of the rules of xenia were underpinned by statutory and legal requirements, but the basic rule of xenia for the host is to provide for the bodily needs of the guests—food, a bath and drink. Importantly, the host was required to ensure the visitor’s wellbeing including safe passage to the guest’s next destination. The ancient Greek rule was centred on the divine—gods were thought to mingle in disguise amongst the people of ancient Greece and it was always a risk that one might incur their wrath,
While not rules of xenia, the covid-19 pandemic regulations and rules introduced by the UK government—and others—in 2020 were focussed on the body and keeping safe. The slogan here in the UK, “hands, face, space,” called our attention to the threat of contamination of the body, the threat of contamination from bodies—to touch, even to breathe seemed to constitute great risk. Images of the preparation of the Nightingale hospitals designed to cope with up to 4,000 critically ill people and images of the preparation of burial grounds gave weight to the injunction “stay at home.” Our friends, families and neighbours were seen to constitute a risk of contagion, and yet commonly reported both in the media and in the privacy of the consulting rooms of therapists there was a fear of the harm we might pose to them and others.
In response to the viral threat and to the official rules—whether legally underpinned or not—many analysts and psychotherapists all over the world closed their consulting rooms and began negotiations with each patient as to how the work might continue or whether the work might be suspended until the pandemic was over. Working from home was familiar to those whose consulting room was in their home, but now we were working at home alone. Psychoanalysis was characterised as a “talking cure” by Anna O1 and as that case study shows, the talking was aimed at having some effect on the body. But—as one colleague asked—, what happens to talk, to words when they are mediated through technology, spoken on the phone or on an internet platform? For some, words lose their weight without the support of a physical presence, of bodies that breathe and make almost imperceptible gestures, often unknown to the gesticulator: what is known as “the tell” in poker, that change in a player’s behavior or demeanor that is claimed by some to give clues to that player’s assessment of the cards in their hand. Reduced to talking heads, much has been lost—the special private place of the consulting room, the couch, the journey to the analyst, the moment of the payment—which for some separated the consultation from everyday demands. Interpretation, equivocation, the enigmatic and silence—the very stuff of the technique of psychoanalysis, are somehow more difficult on the screen or through the phone. Something of the transference too is lost, seemingly diluted without the presence of the
The UK in 2020 was inundated with rules: the rule of 6 being the number of people who could meet outside; the 2-metre rule followed by 1 and half-metre rule designating the amount of space between bodies in a queue; the 30 people rule being the number of people who could attend a funeral or a wedding; the two-household rule; face coverings in some indoor spaces but not when sitting and eating and drinking. There were masses of them. Some were “must” rules, underpinned by law and others were “should rules,” instituting strong advice as the government website distinguished them. While the rules are aimed at keeping us safe from infection and explicitly at ensuring that the health services can cope, they also reinforced inequalities—stay home unless you work in transport or food distribution or the other essential services; don’t travel abroad unless you own property abroad. We are familiar with the place that rules, prohibitions and their transgression have in the shaping of our subjectivity. We are familiar too with frequent responses to the imposition of rules, that they don’t really apply to us, or the pleasures of the moral high ground in which rules are rigidly adhered too, along with the particular enjoyment of discovering that the rule-maker has breached the rule of his or her own design. As I write, members of the British government reluctantly start to assume the consequences of their acts after the 2022 publication of the Sue Gray report,2 giving details of gatherings in Downing Street while covid restrictions were still in force, as videos and photographs of illicit parties—both of the Christmas and cheese and wine varieties—were leaked to journalists, unleashing the political scandal known today as “Partygate.”3
I have become particularly interested in hearing the many inventive ways in which it has been possible to convince yourself that you have obediently complied, only to discover that you are only compliant to your own convenient re-interpretation of the rules. I am not referring to those conscious rationalizations as to why you on this particular occasion are an exception to the rule, but to those ordinary everyday delusions in which you can’t see what is in front of your eyes—when the word “household” morphs into the word “family” and your adult children who have lived in their own homes for years are now part of your household, again; or when the line in the rule about personal “bubbles” that explains that a bubble is for people who live on their own, is not seen, but is
But there are other losses resulting from the pandemic that seem to be becoming forgotten: lost jobs, lost incomes, lost contact with family as many people have been unable to go home, lost senses—of smell and taste—, lost stamina, and the ability to take deep breath as well as the deaths of friends and relatives from covid-19 that many of us have experienced. While the message “hands, face and space” is changing to an exhortation to “learn to live with covid,” many are left learning to live with such horrid losses.
The researchers who have contributed to this volume are investigating sexuality and eroticism, love and transgression, pleasure and desire taking place during a 21st century global pandemic and in an era of technological change. Their contemporary topics remain reminiscent of Sigmund Freud’s, whose working life spanned the end of the 19th and the first third of the 20th centuries. He continued his research and clinical practice through two world wars and through the flu pandemic of 1918–1920. Freud’s daughter died during that flu pandemic while pregnant with her third child—as we also witness today, researchers and clinicians are not immune from viruses. But despite the pandemic of his day and such personal tragedy, Freud published Beyond the Pleasure Principle, completing the manuscript in May 1920.5 His thesis was that the pleasure principle aims exclusively at avoiding unpleasure and obtaining pleasure—unpleasure being related to an increase in quantity of excitation,
Jacques Lacan—after re-reading Freud—never equated pleasure with sensation; rather, he refers only to the pleasure principle and its regulatory function. While psychoanalysis is of course concerned with sex, the erotic, love, transgression and pleasure, central to its project is the concept of desire. Lacan importantly makes a distinction between desire, demand and need. Need is a biological instinct which is articulated by demand. Desire is the surplus produced from that spoken articulation. Many will be familiar with the oft repeated “desire is the desire of the Other.”6 It is a phase that can be understood in many complementary ways but, what is important for those of us working in the fields of the social and the political and across academic disciplines, is that desire is always a social product, a by-product constituted in a dialectical relationship with the perceived desire of the Other. The use of the capital letter “O” signifies several elements of Lacan’s theory but here it is used to signify the radical differences of this generalized Other, that desire is not necessarily a reference to another subject or person, but to the assumed values, virtues, and ideals of our culture.
Any notion suggesting that desire is merely a private matter is the starting point for the critical analysis of the ever-shifting content of “the normal” through diverse academic fields and perspectives. To challenge “the normal” whether old or new is to analyze the place from which we each desire, to analyze those ideals which perpetuate rather than resist their malignancy. This collection of interdisciplinary essays, Sexuality and Eroticism in a Post-pandemic World: Beyond the Biopolitics of the New Normal, pursues with rigour this project of analysis as it challenges the restrictions to desire and resist the established disciplinary, social and political boundaries of the times we are living in.
Bibliography
bbc. “Partygate: What’s in the Sue Gray Report.” May 25, 2022. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-60045126.
Duparc, François. “Nouveaux Développements sur l’Hallucination Négative et la Représentation.” Revue Française de Psychanalyse 56, no. 1 (January 1992): 101–121.
Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Translated by James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press, 1953–1974.
Freud Museum London. “Freud & Pandemic.” Accessed December 1, 2021. https://stories.freud.org.uk/exhibitions/1920-2020-freud-and-pandemic/.
Freud Museum London. “Freud in Focus Podcast.” Accessed December 1, 2021. https://www.freud.org.uk/2021/02/02/freud-in-focus-podcast/.
Institute for Government. “Sue Gray Investigation.” May 25, 2022. https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/sue-gray-investigation.
Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book X: Anxiety, edited by Jacques Alain Miller. Malden MA: Polity Press, 2014.
Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Bookxi: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Translated by Alan Sheridan, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller. New York: ww Norton, 1998.
Anna O is the name given to one of Freud’s first patients. The case history can be found in Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer, “Studies in Hysteria” (1895), in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 2., trans. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1964).
“Sue Gray Investigation,” Institute for Government, May 25, 2022,
“Partygate: What’s in the Sue Gray Report,” bbc, May 25, 2022,
François Duparc, “Nouveaux Développements sur l’Hallucination Négative et la Représentation,” Revue Française de Psychanalyse 56, no. 1 (January 1992): 101–102.
For further exploration of both Freud’s 1920 text and Freud and the pandemic:
Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book X: Anxiety, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller (Malden MA: Polity Press, 2014), 22.