Transgressive assemblages

Holmes, Dave; O’Byrne, Patrick; Murray, Stuart J.; Hammond, Chad; Mercier, Mathieu

doi:10.4324/9781315399546-9

Cited by 2 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…The various forms of nonverbal communication inherent in group sex settings prevented participants from focusing on established social or sexual scripts, and instead, allowed their physical sensations to guide their bodies into a less rationalized form of communication of felt sense. Similar rules and norms can be found among other MSM sexual environments and practices, such as gay bathhouses, glory holes, sexualized drug use and barebacking (Gastaldo et al, 2009;Holmes et al, 2018aHolmes et al, , 2018bHolmes et al, , 2021O'Byrne, 2012;O'Byrne & Holmes, 2011).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 70%

“…Public health practitioners have worked to advance a multitude of agendas revolving around safe sex practices and harm reduction strategies including the advancement of pre‐exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), the use of protective devices such as condoms and public campaigns targeted at addressing ‘concerns’ regarding group sex. There is very little understanding of the importance of group sex and other sexual practices perceived as risky or ‘radical’ within the MSM community and the historical culture they stem from (Holmes et al, 2018b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the present day, the loss of public and private spaces within which to engage in group sex has not exterminated the practice; group sex practices continue, despite its ‘taboo’ nature in Western culture (Califia, 2000). By definition, group sex involves three or more MSM and can take place nearly anywhere; for instance, residential locations, warehouses converted to event spaces, hotels, resorts and beyond (Holmes et al, 2018b). These events provide a space to pursue an excess of erotic pleasure which offers a departure from certain social boundaries that govern MSM, and allow the possibility for configuring bodies in novel ways (Frank, 2013; Harviainen & Frank, 2018; Holmes et al, 2018b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Gay group sex may be understood currently as a radical sex practice insofar as it transgresses dominant social discourses around appropriate sexual relations—prioritising heteronormative, monogamous and risk‐averse sex (Holmes et al, 2018a, 2018b). Within the context of a ‘risk society’ where many aspects of gay men's lives are rationalized, policed and governed, radical sex may constitute a form of ‘edgework’ in which MSM pursue ‘a risk‐taking experience of personal determination and transcendence in an environment of social overregulation’ (Lyng, 2005, p. 10).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Employing the concept of BwO may help to better understand the dynamics, desires and assemblages of group sex. Against dominant constructions of sexual behaviour and health that favour monogamous, private, informed and 'protected' sexual relations, group sex contravenes these organising principles to produce a vast array of new, transgressive relations (Holmes et al, 2018b).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Assembling bodies‐without‐organs: A poststructuralist analysis of group sex between men

et al. 2021

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Group sex among men who have sex with men may be understood as a ‘radical’ practice insofar as it transgresses dominant social discourses around appropriate sexual relations—prioritizing heteronormative, monogamous and risk‐averse sex. These practices are generally defined as steeped in risk, most commonly due to the potential for transmitting human immunodeficiency virus and sexually transmitted infections and accompanied by the possibility of legal and social repercussions. Our ethnographic research study explored the desires, practices and contexts of group sex participants (n = 10) within a popular group sex party destination located in the United States. We employ a poststructuralist perspective (utilizing the work of Deleuze and Guattari) to understand group sex events with the pretext that bodies have no inherent ethics, meaning or essence: they are ‘bodies without organs’. We identify group sex as a form of boundary play, in which participants pursue new limits to what their bodies can do but within a carefully constructed environment that establishes norms of interaction meant to secure trust and safety between participants. A variety of risk reduction practices are shown to be promoted and honoured within these eventful sexual(ized) spaces. The application of poststructuralist concepts of ‘boundary play’ and ‘bodies without organs’ helped to depict the construction and navigation of pleasure, safety and risk among group sex participants.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 70%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Assembling bodies‐without‐organs: A poststructuralist analysis of group sex between men

et al. 2021

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Toward an ontology of the mutant in the health sciences: Re/defining the person from Cronenberg's perspective

Holmes,

Turcotte,

Adam

et al. 2023

Nursing Inquiry

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Traditional health sciences (including nursing) paradigms, conceptual models, and theories have relied heavily upon notions of the ‘person’ or ‘patient’ that are deeply rooted in humanistic principles. Our intention here, as a collective academic assemblage, is to question taken‐for‐granted definitions and assumptions of the ‘person’ from a critical posthumanist perspective. To do so, the cinematic works of filmmaker David Cronenberg offer a radical perspective to revisit our understanding of the ‘person’ in nursing and beyond. Cronenberg's work explores bodily transformation and mutation, with the body as a fragile and malleable vessel. Cronenberg's work allows us to interrogate the body in all its complexity, contingency, and hybridity and provides avenues of rupture within current understandings of ‘the person’. Reinventing the definition of what it means to be human, critical posthumanism offers opportunities to both critique humanist theories and build affirmative futurities. Also drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, specifically, their concept of becoming, we propose a critical posthumanist alternative to the conceptualization of the person in the health sciences, that of the becoming‐mutant, so frequently explored in Cronenberg's films. Such a conceptualization permits the inclusion of various technological interventions of the contemporary subject: The postperson. This position offers the health science disciplines a radical reconceptualization of the conceptual and theoretical approaches, extending beyond those trapped within the quagmire of humanistic principles.

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Transgressive assemblages

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Assembling bodies‐without‐organs: A poststructuralist analysis of group sex between men

Assembling bodies‐without‐organs: A poststructuralist analysis of group sex between men

Toward an ontology of the mutant in the health sciences: Re/defining the person from Cronenberg's perspective

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