Erotic Faculties [Paperback]

Joanna Frueh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1996

The erotic and the intellectual come together to create a new kind of criticism in the lushly written work of Joanna Frueh. Addressing sexuality in ways that are usually hidden or left unsaid, Frueh--a noted performance artist and art historian--explores subjects such as aging, beauty, love, sex, pleasure, contemporary art, and the body as a site and vehicle of knowledge. Frueh's language is explicit, graphic, fragmented. She assumes multiple voices: those of lover, prophet, daughter, mythmaker, art critic, activist, and bleeding heart. What results is an utterly original narrative that frees us from the false objectivity of traditional critical discourse and affirms the erotic as a way to ease human suffering.
Through personal reflection, parody, autobiography, and poetry, Frueh shows us what it means to perform criticism, to personalize critical thinking. Rejecting postmodern, deconstructed prose, she recuperates the sentimental, proudly asserts a romantic viewpoint, and disrupts academic and feminist conventions. Erotic Faculties seeks to free the power of our unutilized erotic faculties and to expand the possibilities of criticism; it is a wild ride and a consummate pleasure.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

What starts as a well-conceived, even brave proposition-to unite academic writing and Eros-results in a collection of short essays that are of limited interest for being so problematically self-absorbed. Blending art history, autobiography, stream of consciousness, facts about female bodybuilding, poetry, drama, gender studies and other forms of postmodern discourse, this book rebels against traditional "unsloppy" scholarship, of the sort Frueh has already demonstrated in an admirable catalogue of the work of contemporary artist Hannah Wilke. Given the sensual undercurrents that always inform the art experience, and the fact that historically, this experience has frequently been conveyed through representations of women's bodies, Frueh's concept comes across as a worthy feminist project. Unfortunately the writing, passionate though it is, doesn't deliver. Essays documenting the author's lecture-performances make a point (and this quickly grows wearisome) of her "sexy" attire, makeup and buff physique. Diaristic descriptions of sexual encounters, photographs of the author in states of erotic abandon, her blunt admissions of desire and frequent lapses into a metaphorical "she" ("'I am a Wordswoman,' she said, 'Swordswoman and I use wordplay as a weapon from the head and lips'") all work hard to shock. But, as historian Frueh herself should know, the radical edge of explicit rawness has already been effectively tempered by such pioneer feminist performance artists of the 1970s as Lynda Benglis and Carolee Schneeman. Perhaps Frueh's own work is best experienced as performance. But judging from the scripts, this reader doubts it.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Frueh (art history, Univ. of Nevada, Reno) writes and performs without constraint in the guise of an erotic scholar, defying traditional academic rhetoric and scholarship. Emphasizing art, sex, and pleasure and their impact on women's lives, Frueh addresses how beauty, aging, women's bodies, and sexual practices and experiences have influenced contemporary art. Most of the ten chapters that make up this book have been presented as performances to academic or art world audiences, while some are also revisions of articles published in periodicals, such as M/E/A/N/I/N/G, Journal of Contemporary Art, and Art Journal. Frueh's performances intertwine visual art, song, poetry, fiction, art history, sexual intimacies, seductive body movements and costume, and popular culture. Provocative, risque, and powerful, the results will stimulate interesting dialog among academics particularly. Recommended for collections of art criticism, gender studies, and cultural studies.?Jeris Cassel, Rutgers Univ. Libs., New Brunswick, N.J.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 215 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (June 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520200829
• ISBN-13: 978-0520200821
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,558,067 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Oops, August 26, 2002

By 

Marcy L. Thompson (Sammamish, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Erotic Faculties (Paperback)

I did not like this book as much as I expected to. I admit to having been *really* looking forward to reading it. But I ended up not caring much for what I read.

It's hard to say specifically why I disliked it. It may be that (like "The Vagina Monologues"), this material works much better in performance. But I think it alse had to do with the odd confluence of academic writing with prose that was clearly intended to be something else entirely. I kept wanting to think that these dissonances I was experiencing were intentional and that they had some kind of meaning. But in the end, I couldn't find one.

Another issue I had was that the book seemed really deeply rooted in heterosexuality. Which is fine, except that it seemed like the author was trying to be more universal.

Finally, I lost interest. This is one of the few books I have failed to finish reading. And I don't expect to return to it later. In fact, I have already given it away to someone else who said she wanted it.