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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/14/strange-antics-a-history-of-seduction-clement-knox-review Is seduction about deceit and power or a free pursuit of sexual pleasure? An imperfect account from Casanova to #MeToo ... Are we living in an age of sexual liberation or sexual crisis? In contemporary western societies, it is often hard to tell. Sex, seemingly, is everywhere: big screens and small screens, newspapers and novels, T-shirts and tea-cups. Sex before marriage, sex outside marriage, sex with multiple partners, homo-sex, hetero-sex, whatever turns you on. Yet some commentators believe our sexual lives and language have rarely been as dysfunctional or dangerous as they are today. Internet trolls threaten female politicians with gang rape. Employers ban co-workers from dating, or from hugging or even touching in the office. On campus, undergraduates attend workshops on sexual harassment at a time when a male “incel” can target and kill students, armed with guns and knives. For Clement Knox, author of a dense and capacious new history of seduction, the origins of our current sexual discontents can be located some 300 years ago in Enlightenment-era debates over human nature. “Whether we are moved more by reason or by the passions, whether we are rational agents or creatures vulnerable to error, deceit and suasion” is the question he sees as foundational to any understanding of sexuality now. There are, he contends, two “seduction narratives” whose presence within western thought has proved consequential and enduring. The first frames sexual relations as a game of enticement and exploitation. The seducer, usually male, deceives and prevails, while his victim, invariably female, succumbs and regrets. The second, more optimistic, narrative celebrates seduction as the emancipated pursuit of sexual pleasure. The seducer, male or female, is no villain but a free agent shaking off “the irrational prejudices of custom, religion, and taboo”. What follows is a cultural history that tracks these competing views of human sexuality through the works of writers from Samuel Richardson and Giacomo Casanova to Bram Stoker and Herbert Marcuse. Continue reading...
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