Reading "Sacred Eroticism. Tantra and Eros in MISA" (Part 2)
In the second part of the introduction to his book, Sacred Eroticism. Tantra and Eros in the Movement for Spiritual Integration into the Absolute (MISA), Introvigne says he’ll discuss MISA in terms of “radical aesthetics”, rather than “deviance”. That sounds interesting and I want to find out more.
Unfortunately, the section is hard to read, so let’s take it slowly.
Introduction: MISA’s Radical Aesthetics. 1 - Aesthetics
When you write theory in the humanities, you might encounter a problem. You want to discuss the sutble nuance of an abstract concept, and you just don’t know what to call it, because it doesn’t have a name yet. Maybe you should coin a new term to designate the exact thing you’re talking about? Or perhaps you can use an old word with a new spin? Or you can be very tongue-in-cheek and do a bit of both, but in the end, what’s the différance? You need a word to mean a thing, so you’ll use a word to do just that.
In day to day life, we all know the word “aesthetics” refers to concepts regarding beauty in the arts. But what if we look beyond the arts and notice that there’s something very much like aesthetics in other parts of our life? And maybe it’s not entirely about beauty as such, either.
For example, we might say there’s an aesthetics of saving the environment, which is a series of images and gestures we associate with the environment-savvy. Windmills, wooden combs, being vegetarian, minimalism. You can live a life that feels very much like saving the environment if you surround yourself with certain things and act in certain ways. However, you might end up with a performance of environmentalism, rather than the substance of it. Sometimes, the correction action isn’t to buy a wooden comb, it’s to not throw out your plastic comb instead. And that creates a conflict between the aesthetic of environmentalism and its substance.
So there we go. We’ve widened the meaning of “aesthetics” and it no longer applies strictly to art. However, different authors might use the word “aesthetics” differently, so let’s see what Introvigne says:
Social scientists define as “aestheticization” the process where reality in all fields is socially constructed based (inter alia) on aesthetic taste, and aesthetics is redefined in ways that go well beyond the mere field of the arts (de la Fuente 2000, 235).
Alright. So. “Constructing reality” doesn’t refer to building things in the real world - it refers to creating one’s personal understanding of the world. So, to translate, the definition means something like:
Aestheticization is the process in which we create our understanding of the world based on what we and those around us think is beautiful or meaningful in a way that feels artistic. This goes beyond the arts.
At least, that’s how I’m interpreting it. Then, Introvigne says:
Influential American sociologist Randall Collins connected aestheticization with the theory of ritual interaction first proposed by Émile Durkheim (1858–1917). He argued that our aesthetics is largely driven by the experience of emotional energy we derive from successful rituals, a notion that Durkheim and Collins did not restrict to religion but extended to everyday life.
Ok. I’d be happier if he went into a bit more detail about what Collins says, because this is very brief, and I feel like I need more information.
However, I’m imagining something along the lines of - I enjoy reading books in cafes. This makes me feel good, so I pursue things that are related to reading books in cafes; perhaps a bag saying I read in cafes, or wearing clothes I associate with reading in cafes. It’s a simplistic interpretation, but I wonder if I got the gist.
Collins (and others) noticed that in the 1960s, daily rituals connected with politeness, class relations, gender relations, and everyday religion changed quite dramatically, determining a change of the aesthetic paradigm. Collins called this the “Goffmanian revolution,”
I was thinking along different lines than Collins, but I’m not sure I misinterpreted him. Unfortunately, Introvigne doesn’t go into further detail, and I don’t have access to the book he picked this up from (“Interaction Ritual Chains” by Randall Collins). If it’s mentioned again, I might be able to understand it better.
I remember Kindle has a search function and look up “Collins”, but this is the last time he’s mentioned in the book. I look up “radical” in the hope of finding out more about “radical aesthetics”, but aside from the introduction, it only shows up at the very end of the volume, where Introvigne wraps things up and says “Ultimately, it is what I have called MISA’s radical aesthetics that outraged in different ways”. That’s odd - if his theoretical approach in the volume is based on “radical aesthetics”, why is it missing from the book proper?
I look up “aesthetics”. It shows up in the introduction, in a couple of instances where it seems to be related to art, and at the very end of the book, in the quote above.
Huh.
…Where’s the radical aesthetics? This section of the intro is 3 pages long according to Kindle’s page count, and I’m nearly done with it. How’s Introvigne looking at MISA’s radical aesthetics, if he never explains what he means by “radical aesthetics”, and never talks about MISA’s aesthetics at all?
I don’t know how to explain my bafflement. Why mention aesthetics at all, if it’s never used again? Why insert definitions of aesthetics and talking about aestheticization, and successful daily rituals that shift the aesthetic paradigm? Is this idea of “radical aesthetics” only here for the aesthetics of having a framework? Have I really spent a couple of hours looking up definitions of aesthetics online and searching for authors so I can better understand Introvigne - only for Introvigne to drop the theoretical framework as soon as he mentioned it?
I’m not even taking the piss here. I can’t tell if I misunderstood the notion of aesthetics he’s trying to use, or if this is some undergrad-level “Start an essay with definitions” bullshit.
Introduction: MISA’s Radical Aesthetics. 2 - Sexual countercultures
I skimmed through the book. It seems like Introvigne will eventually try to summarize some of MISA’s beliefs, before concluding that MISA has opponents because its adepts look and act weird.
If Introvigne were serious about discussing MISA’s counter-cultural aspects in terms of aesthetics, that would honestly be pretty cool. While I haven’t gotten the chance to go deeper into the topic of aesthetics and cultural movements myself, simply doing a bit of research for the introduction led me to come across notions like “the aesthetization of politics”, and a mid 20th century thinker saying that fascism gives people not what they need, but the chance to express themselves. A politics of style over substance.
Seen from the perspective of style over substance, of spectacle over reality, MISA becomes a stage where the performance of sexually liberated spirituality becomes more important than the reality of the partners involved. One must appear to be and feel as if they are a tantric lover, spiritual and detached, regardless of the effects this has on the participants. Tantric rituals play-act love and closeness, but never too personally - the appreciation of the other as a person is replaced with “transfiguration”, a practice through which one’s lover is imagined as a facet of God rather than perceived as a living, breathing person. This play-acting becomes real acting when MISA produces sexually explicit films as propaganda for their brand of Tantric sex, in order to sell the vision of bliss and divine happiness through elevated, God-oriented sex.
But these are just my tentative thoughts on the matter.
If I were to go down the “discrimination” route, however, I think I’d choose another theoretical framework. Stigma, perhaps. If you’re going to talk about society rejecting people it disapproves of, why not stigma? Introvigne already mentions Durkheim and Goffman, who both talk about stigma - Goffman has a whole book on it, while Durkheim claims even a society of saints will need someone to judge and punish (The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), but I heard of him through a friend sharing his own research on stigma).
…Well, never mind. This isn’t my book. It’s Introvigne’s book. And I can’t analyze what he hasn’t written, on the basis of what I would write.
Introvigne, as we’ve seen, doesn’t expand on the topic of aesthetics. Even the rest of this “radical aesthetics” section is less about aesthetics and more about the sexual counter-culture of the 1960s.
He says about sex:
For sociologists in the Goffman tradition, sexuality and eroticism are not defined by evolutionary biology only.
Studying sexuality socially as opposed to biologically seems to be sociology’s approach in general. Introvigne makes it sound like mainstream academia is mostly anti-sex, which it isn’t. I’ve had the pleasure (heh) of coming across many discussions on sexuality from multiple disciplines, going from psychological perspectives regarding the treatment of orgasmic disorders to reenvisioning social and sexual power dynamics in fannish literature. The 20th century saw a real boom in sexual research in all relevant fields, whether they leaned more towards hard science or humanities, and the 21st century has been reaping the rewards of that while continuing its own research.
(It’s honestly a great time for studies of all sorts. I fully recommend picking up random books from academic publishers and giving them a go. Some aren’t great. Some are weird. But some will be among the most insightful things you’ll ever read.)
MISA has a tendency to think it’s a pioneer of sexual liberation facing a prudish mainstream majority. This might have been the case in 1990s Romania, but it’s hardly so in 2020s Europe. Conservative attitudes towards sex still exist, but tantric sex has also made its way into the mainstream, appearing in issues of Cosmopolitan magazine and being mentioned in interviews with celebrities. Is that tantric sex as spiritually charged as MISA’s? Admittedly, no. But spiritual sex is merely a stone’s throw away. Wade through endless improperly targeted ads, and you can find yourself staring at American advertisments promising to bring bliss (and God!) into the bed of properly married Christians. Move a bit further away and some people are doing sex rituals in a magic sense. From BDSM dungeons to neopagan rituals, sex is experienced and discussed more freely than ever before. Some of it might not be in the mainstream proper, but it’s getting nearer all the time.
But returning to the book at hand, and going back in time 60 years, Introvigne identifies three components of counter-cultural shift in viewing sex in the 1960s (“counter-cultural” = opposing the mainstream):
The first was Eastern spirituality, particularly from India. The second was modern Western Esotericism, with its rich traditions of sacred eroticism (see Hanegraaff and Kripal 2008), which I will further explore in the second chapter of this book.
This sounds like the hippy movement, even if he’s not naming it outright. I remember it having oriental influences. I’d like some info about the Western Esotericism part, but I’m too lazy to look it up. Moving on to the third component:
Modernist art as a third source should not be overlooked. It includes a reservoir of subversive erotic images. It is quite significant that psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901–1981), who was instrumental in defining the new aesthetics, became the owner of L’origine du monde
Lacan is one of the authors I encountered during my formal studies, but I don’t recall him as being instrumental in defining “the new aesthetics”, whether that’s modernist aesthetics in general, or modernist erotic aesthetics in particular. I might be missing info, but Google isn’t helping, either. (Admittedly, these days Google is busier building bad AI than maintaining a search engine, so I have no idea. Lacan might be involved in defining aesthetics.)
Introvigne also claims MISA’s “aesthetics” are based on the same three elements: “Eastern spiritualities (particularly Tantrism), Western esotericism, and a certain tradition in modernist art (interpreted selectively)”. This is not expanded upon.
He ends the introduction:
We can look at certain images on MISA’s Web sites and ask whether they are artistic performances, spiritual rituals, or celebrations of the human body. From MISA’s point of view, they are all these things together, as there is no separation between daily life, art, and spirituality.
Well. That, at least, is something I can confirm.