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A review by suddenflamingword
Asexual Erotics: Intimate Readings of Compulsory Sexuality by Ela Przybylo
3.0
I more or less agree with Aaron Thomas' uncertainty about how Asexual Erotics makes use of its core conceit. The idea of decoupling the erotic from the sexual a la Lorde is savvy, but without a clear historical-material subject being critiqued it becomes bogged down in a semi-vague mush of cultural criticism. Which, to be clear, is valuable in itself for laying a groundwork for the idea.
Which is where I see Przybylo's book settling in as. It formulates a language for seeing certain phenomenon through - given the last chapter's focus on the "desexualization" of aged bodies, one could examine how New York recently facilitated the deaths of thousands of elderly people by hiding the mortality rate of nursing homes - but it doesn't take the extra step to get there. The epilogue's attempt to apply it to incels is like an appetizer that comes just after a dense carby dinner. And it's there that I think Aaron is rightly unsure about how to appraise its value.
I actually think it might be better to engage with the secondary literature as you go through the book, because I found reading Ianna Hawkins' Owens writing, Benjamin Kahan's "The Other Harlem Renaissance," and Beryl Satter's "Marcus Garvey, Father Divine and the Gender Politics of Race Difference and Race Neutrality" gave concrete and fascinating applications of an Asexual Erotics (or "celibate economics" as Satter and Kahan dub Father Divine's program).
Which is where I see Przybylo's book settling in as. It formulates a language for seeing certain phenomenon through - given the last chapter's focus on the "desexualization" of aged bodies, one could examine how New York recently facilitated the deaths of thousands of elderly people by hiding the mortality rate of nursing homes - but it doesn't take the extra step to get there. The epilogue's attempt to apply it to incels is like an appetizer that comes just after a dense carby dinner. And it's there that I think Aaron is rightly unsure about how to appraise its value.
I actually think it might be better to engage with the secondary literature as you go through the book, because I found reading Ianna Hawkins' Owens writing, Benjamin Kahan's "The Other Harlem Renaissance," and Beryl Satter's "Marcus Garvey, Father Divine and the Gender Politics of Race Difference and Race Neutrality" gave concrete and fascinating applications of an Asexual Erotics (or "celibate economics" as Satter and Kahan dub Father Divine's program).