Arousal: Bodies and Pleasures [Hardcover]

Roth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 17, 1998

A wide-ranging yet intimate look at the contradictions of sexual desire, this book blends personal history with thoughtful reflection about the mysterious nature of sexual arousal and its personal and social implications.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In broaching a taboo subject, Martha Roth explores the question "Why does sexual arousal carry both excitement and guilt?" She examines the mental and physical effects of arousal as forbidden fruit, and considers how these effects direct our behavior by inhibiting or enhancing it. Roth's approach is unique in that she concentrates on the causes and connections of arousal, which lead into insights on how American society defines sexuality. From an early age, for example, images of sex are entwined with images of violence and punishment. She discusses how attitudes toward sexuality are illustrated in cultural icons such as vampires and vamps, films and novels.

Roth's purpose is to challenge readers to look at both the whys and the why nots of their own patterns of arousal, to be aware of the relationship between sex and violence with which we are all enculturated, and to move beyond guilt to enjoyment of all the varied pleasures of arousal. --Susan Swartwout

From Publishers Weekly

In this muddled academic feminist discourse, Roth, co-editor of Transforming a Rape Culture, on the one hand deplores the countless images linking sex and violence in movies, TV, novels, ads?images which turn women into objects. On the other hand, her graphic autobiographical account of her own sexual coming-of-age dwells on her ambivalent pleasure in violent sexual fantasies?a predilection she traces to growing up Jewish in Chicago during WWII, when her fear of becoming a victim of violence, fusing with parental strictures to keep erotic pleasure secret, led to fantasies of being a beautiful captured spy or Jewish prisoner. Writing in the tradition of Julia Kristeva and Helene Cixous, Roth meshes a sophisticated feminist critique of Freudian phallocentric society with psychoanalytic insights a la Jacques Lacan and Eastern wisdom. Her wide-ranging meditation on women's suppression of their sexuality touches too sketchily on diverse topics (from androgyny to the gynecological profession), using an array of illustrative examples ranging from Plato to Masters and Johnson, and from Colurbet's female nudes to Robert Crumb's comics. Her prescription that releasing the Kundalini energies linked in yoga to creativity and arousal will trigger both a transformation of our sexual selves and a social revolution seems as vague and pointless as Madonna's exhortations that sex is a good thing. Author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: Milkweed Editions; 1st edition (April 17, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 157131220X
• ISBN-13: 978-1571312204
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,444,660 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Provocative, playful, ambitious, courageous, November 16, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Arousal: Bodies and Pleasures (Hardcover)

I first encountered Martha Roth as the author of the very moving novel, Goodness (Spinster's Ink, 1996). Reading Goodness hardly prepared me for Arousal. Goodness made me feel good; it is a novel about good people, good love, good sex. Arousal is not a novel. Arousal aroused me. Stimulated me. Asked difficult questions for which I had no easy answers. At the same time I had a sense of playfulness, of fun, a sense that the author enjoyed writing this book. And there was courage too. To display erotic images in words, that takes courage. And to not be prurient, that takes art. And to wrap it up in a grand theory linking reading (symbolization) to erotic pleasure, now that takes a kind of courage cum ambition that takes my breath away. To sum up: I am glad I read Arousal. It provided the stimulus for some rousing good conversations with the man in my life. Britomar Lathrop, PhD Psychologist Rockford, Illinois

3.0 out of 5 stars A PERSONAL MEMOIR OF SEXUAL AROUSAL, October 7, 2010

By 

James L. Park "James Leonard Park" (Minneapolis, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Arousal: Bodies and Pleasures (Hardcover)

Martha Roth
Arousal: Bodies and Pleasures

(Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 1998) 161 pages
(ISBN: 1-57131-220-X; hardcover)
(Library of Congress call number: BF692.R66 1998)

A work of literature rather than sexology,
the author discloses glimpses of her own sexual imprinting,
altho she implicitly believes
that sexual arousal is learned from life-experiences.

Martha Roth is a feminist writer.
And many of her sources are other feminists.
She seeks to express female sexuality
without the male bias it usually gets
(as responding to male sexuality).

For sexology, this is more a personal memoir
than a scientific study.
But it provides more raw data for future analysis.

If you are interested in the science of sexual arousal,
search the Internet for the following bibliography:
"SEXOLOGY---SEX-SCRIPTS---BEST BOOKS".

James Leonard Park, author of
Imprinted Sexual Fantasies:
A New Key for Sexology.