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- Title
EROS AS INITIATION: RUSSON ON DESIRE, CULTURE, AND RESPONSIBILITY.
- Authors
Howell, Whitney
- Abstract
This article considers how John Russon’s original analyses of sexuality in Bearing Witness to Epiphany: Persons, Things, and the Nature of Erotic Life and in relevant articles address the relation between erotic desire and the familiar cultural narratives that describe and set the terms for engaging in erotic experience. I show how, according to Russon, erotic experience is an initiation into our responsibilities within and for an interpersonal reality that challenges specific cultural narratives about sexuality and the presumption that any cultural narrative could adequately prepare us to fulfill those responsibilities. I situate his work in relation to the classic account of the relation between erotic desire and culture in Socrates’s speech about eros in Plato’s Symposium. I also consider how it addresses concerns in contemporary feminist analyses about how intimate relationships may reproduce broader cultural patterns of oppression.
- Subjects
SOCRATES, ca. 469-399 B.C.; PLATO, 428-347 B.C.; FEMINIST criticism; RESPONSIBILITY; LUST; DESIRE; CULTURE; EPIPHANY
- Publication
Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy / Revue Canadienne de Philosophie Continentale, 2023, Vol 27, Issue 2, p46
- ISSN
1917-9685
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.5840/symposium202327214