Thursday, February 26, 2009

a daring hypothesis


Bibi Anderson and Liv Ullman in Bergman's Persona (1966)


Even though I'm not always a great Zizek fan, I can't resist stealing the link from a sharp-eyed friend, with thanks. It's a comment by Zizek on feminine sexuality as enacted in Ingmar Bergman's Persona, and goes like this:

"Women's true [sexual] enjoyment is not in doing it, but in telling about it afterwards [and before it, in anticipation, I'd dare add...]. Of course, women do enjoy sex immediately, but [...] maybe while they are doing it they already enact or incorporate this minimal narrative distance, so they are already observing themselves and narrativizing it."

The conclusion is pretty didactic and self-evident, but, well, worth registering anyway:

"Although sexuality seems to be about bodies, it's not really about bodies. It's about how bodily activity is reported in words."


from Zizek on feminine sexuality in Bergman's Persona.


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