Lawrence's Quarrel with Tenderness

Spilka, Mark

doi:10.1111/j.1467-8705.1967.tb00236.x

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The impersonal, ego-dissolving forces of sexual passion take a backseat in Lady Chatterley's Lover, a text that represents sex as only one among the a wall of ideas many manifestations of loving tenderness: "sex itself is only the closest touch, the closest form of natural communion." 34 So, although the ban on Lady Chatterley's Lover was lifted in 1960, it was in a way safe to do so. By that time, heterosexual love was equally caught up in the taboo that had already repressed same-sex tenderness by channeling love into sexuality.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Wall of Ideas: The "Taboo on Tenderness" in Theory and Culture

Miller¹

2007

nlh

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The dominant psychoanalytic theories in the humanities promote a myth of origins in which the infant is originally asocial, and motivated only by selfish hedonism, or by a desire to return to a state of syncretic merger with its environment. Developmental psychology, however, has demonstrated that infants are social agents, rather than selfish narcissists. Psychoanalytic theory of culture must therefore recognise the masculine "taboo on tenderness" which underlies its own early formulations, and which is apparent in a diverse range of cultural phenomena—from the eighteenth-century revolt against sensibility, to the commodification of sentiment, and the contemporary sexualisation of both love and touch.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%