Mario Perniola: Professor of Aesthetics,
University of Rome
It soon becomes obvious when reading Mario Perniola's Sex Appeal of the Inorganic that what he most wants is to have his cock sucked for all eternity; that is to say, in a perpetual manner in which all feeling is suspended and orgasm forever deferred.
For where other men would simply find frustration, Perniola hopes to locate the beginning of a new and neutered sexuality that is entirely divorced from nature and freed from all metaphysical notions of telos, or vital fantasies of carnal fulfilment. He neither wants to love like an angel, nor fuck like a beast. But most of all he doesn't want to come: "To free oneself of orgasmomania," he writes, "is the first step towards the neuter, suspended and artificial sexuality of the thing" which promises to open up a world "where the difference between the sexes, form, appearance, beauty, age and race no longer matter" [3].
Other steps towards this pornotopia without a happy-ending include:
(1) Reading philosophy, which Perniola interestingly characterizes as a form of speculative extremism (even if it still tediously refers back to Kant and Hegel). Above all, read Heidegger; Heidegger looks for Being not in Geist (like Hegel) or in Life (like Nietzsche), but in the thing (and the thingliness of the thing) and although he never directly speaks of sexuality in his work, it is only with Heidegger "that the path of thinking and the sex appeal of the inorganic ... reveal their essential belonging together" [108].
(2) Understanding the body in terms not of flesh, but of clothing, furniture and upholstery; "the folds of the female sex are no different from the depressions of a seat cover, the skin that runs along the rod of the male sex is similar to the covering of an arm rest" [11]. I'm not sure that's the case, but Perniola insists: "As long as we remain prisoners of the idea that living bodies excite us more than clothes, we will never escape the organicistic aestheticism that considers sexuality in terms of life" [45].
This sounds like fetishism, but Perniola is ambiguous on the subject of fetishism; if, on the one hand, it is the category via which modernity has traditionally thought the erotics of the object, on the other hand it constitutes a grotesque and extravagant "caricature of the sex appeal of the inorganic" [53].
This sounds like fetishism, but Perniola is ambiguous on the subject of fetishism; if, on the one hand, it is the category via which modernity has traditionally thought the erotics of the object, on the other hand it constitutes a grotesque and extravagant "caricature of the sex appeal of the inorganic" [53].
(3) Recognizing that addiction to opium-based drugs, such as heroin, provides an exemplary experience in dependency "analogous to the neutral feeling of becoming thing" crucial to the development of an inorganic sexuality [14].
(4) Moving beyond the BDSM crowd; it would be very much mistaken to consider Perniola's model of impersonal sexuality in terms of a master and slave relationship and even the apathy of the Sadean libertine or the peculiar mixture of coldness and cruelty so loved by the masochist, belong to an entirely different universe.
(5) Developing a taste for cybersex and science fiction, a genre that understands more than most "how the organic and inorganic, the anthropological and technological, the natural and the artificial overlap and blend in one another" [28]. Neutral sexuality can be considered both posthuman and virtual - not in the sense of simulated reality, but, more radically, a real simulation that offers access to an ontologically different order. Perniola further advises we study vampires as well as philosophical-cyborgs; for the undead also embody the sex appeal of the inorganic and provide access to another world which is "radically different from everyday life" [77].
(6) Listening to rock music; a sexually inorganic form of sound that has nothing to do with "the sentimental conception of music, which considers it as the expression of an emotional interiority, and from the vitalistic one which sees in it the animal cry" [65]. Schelling would understand perfectly why it is that prog rock in particular "constitutes a paradigm for the cultural operations to come" [66]. He means it man! Frank Zappa rules!
(7) Exploring plastic landscapes and appreciating architecture as an inorganic art divorced from construction that brings into question all attempts to harmonize "form and function, nature and culture, country and city" [83]. Not only can architecture be compared to tailoring, but it can be understood as an erotics; as if drifting in and out of buildings or through the city streets was a sexual act not dissimilar to strapping a tiny camera to your penis and penetrating the interior landscape of the vagina, generating "a quite different excitement to the natural one" [90].
As well as the internal spaces of the body, Perniola also gets excited by the possibility of entering cyberspace; a new dimension opened up by computer technology that "radicalizes contemporary architectural experience". But cyberspace, albeit a "spatialized visualization of information", must not be understood as "a dematerialization or, worse, a spiritualization of reality". Rather, it's the creation of a liquid environment that allows the cybernaut who navigates it to "perceive his own real body as a sentient thing not essentially different from the sentient landscapes of electronic architectures" [91].
(8) Rejecting all notions of desire. But - and this is important to note - neutral sexuality is not simply a form of erotic mysticism or a tantric practice to delay orgasm in order to thereby intensify the moment of climax. And unlike Zen Buddhism which aims at a state of spiritual elevation and detachment from the world, the sex appeal of the inorganic wants to abolish the distance between man and world; to absorb the human into the realm of things. Perniola writes:
"Neutral sexuality is not a state of inertia, of reducing excitement to zero, eliminating all tensions, is not Nirvana, or Freud's death drive, and not even lethargy ... Quietism, fatalistic and defeatist renunciation, paralysis, are more indirect affirmations of desire than actual suspensions of it. The sex appeal of the inorganic is more an after-desire than a without-desire." [98-9]
(5) Developing a taste for cybersex and science fiction, a genre that understands more than most "how the organic and inorganic, the anthropological and technological, the natural and the artificial overlap and blend in one another" [28]. Neutral sexuality can be considered both posthuman and virtual - not in the sense of simulated reality, but, more radically, a real simulation that offers access to an ontologically different order. Perniola further advises we study vampires as well as philosophical-cyborgs; for the undead also embody the sex appeal of the inorganic and provide access to another world which is "radically different from everyday life" [77].
(6) Listening to rock music; a sexually inorganic form of sound that has nothing to do with "the sentimental conception of music, which considers it as the expression of an emotional interiority, and from the vitalistic one which sees in it the animal cry" [65]. Schelling would understand perfectly why it is that prog rock in particular "constitutes a paradigm for the cultural operations to come" [66]. He means it man! Frank Zappa rules!
(7) Exploring plastic landscapes and appreciating architecture as an inorganic art divorced from construction that brings into question all attempts to harmonize "form and function, nature and culture, country and city" [83]. Not only can architecture be compared to tailoring, but it can be understood as an erotics; as if drifting in and out of buildings or through the city streets was a sexual act not dissimilar to strapping a tiny camera to your penis and penetrating the interior landscape of the vagina, generating "a quite different excitement to the natural one" [90].
As well as the internal spaces of the body, Perniola also gets excited by the possibility of entering cyberspace; a new dimension opened up by computer technology that "radicalizes contemporary architectural experience". But cyberspace, albeit a "spatialized visualization of information", must not be understood as "a dematerialization or, worse, a spiritualization of reality". Rather, it's the creation of a liquid environment that allows the cybernaut who navigates it to "perceive his own real body as a sentient thing not essentially different from the sentient landscapes of electronic architectures" [91].
(8) Rejecting all notions of desire. But - and this is important to note - neutral sexuality is not simply a form of erotic mysticism or a tantric practice to delay orgasm in order to thereby intensify the moment of climax. And unlike Zen Buddhism which aims at a state of spiritual elevation and detachment from the world, the sex appeal of the inorganic wants to abolish the distance between man and world; to absorb the human into the realm of things. Perniola writes:
"Neutral sexuality is not a state of inertia, of reducing excitement to zero, eliminating all tensions, is not Nirvana, or Freud's death drive, and not even lethargy ... Quietism, fatalistic and defeatist renunciation, paralysis, are more indirect affirmations of desire than actual suspensions of it. The sex appeal of the inorganic is more an after-desire than a without-desire." [98-9]
(9) Privileging hermaphroditism over androgyny; the latter, says Perniola, is "as remote as one can imagine it to be from the sex appeal of the inorganic"; a victory for the metaphysical dream of organic unity. But hermaphroditism, on the other hand, "implies the best possible way in which the characteristic of both sexes are contained in a figure, namely a man with breasts or a woman with a penis" [115]. Rather than place emphasis on unification and the harmonious co-presence of masculine and feminine elements, hermaphroditism promotes indetermination and neutralization.
However, even hermaphroditism fails to reach the sex appeal of the inorganic. For that you need to push on far beyond the sexual dichotomy of male and female - to sexual infinity in which there are an innumerable number of sexes. The inorganic lover loves the thought of endless division and of tearing into ever smaller pieces the dress worn by his bride on their wedding night and then carefully putting together one by one the tiny shreds on her naked body:
"In the transit that goes from the cloth to the skin, and from the skin to the cloth, one can re-establish the experience of a neutral and inorganic sexuality. It is sympathetic ... with an abstract excitement that never tires of operating infinite divisions on one's own body and that of one's partner." [120]
However, even hermaphroditism fails to reach the sex appeal of the inorganic. For that you need to push on far beyond the sexual dichotomy of male and female - to sexual infinity in which there are an innumerable number of sexes. The inorganic lover loves the thought of endless division and of tearing into ever smaller pieces the dress worn by his bride on their wedding night and then carefully putting together one by one the tiny shreds on her naked body:
"In the transit that goes from the cloth to the skin, and from the skin to the cloth, one can re-establish the experience of a neutral and inorganic sexuality. It is sympathetic ... with an abstract excitement that never tires of operating infinite divisions on one's own body and that of one's partner." [120]
(10) Learning to hear the expression inclusive metawriting as "more loaded with sexual intensity than most obscene words" [126]. Because - wouldn't you know it - it's philosophically-informed literature that is the crucial "accomplice of neutral and impersonal experience" [121]. Perniola is then, like Barthes, a homotextual. But whereas the latter affirms and delights in the pleasure of the text, Perniola hates pleasure and wants to free sexuality from such vulgarity. There is nothing in pleasure, he insists, that inevitably binds it to sexuality - and particularly not to a model of sexuality that is "not content with staying natural and organic" [132].
Follow these ten steps and you too can enter the inorganic realm. But don't think that this makes you in anyway superhuman; on the contrary, it might just betray the fact you are spiritually sick or physically disabled in some manner - perhaps thanks to the fact that you've read too much philosophy or written too much poetry!
It certainly signifies you're abnormal and perverse; someone who "derives excitement from inadequate stimulation ... such as concepts, numbers, sounds, spaces, objects, writings, all things that normal people keep immersed in a functional-utilitarian boredom, or in an aesthetic-formal tedium" [144].
Mario Perniola; The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic, trans. Massimo Verdicchio, (Continuum, 2004). All page numbers supplied refer to this edition.
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