Sunday, October 23, 2011

The Story of O

"Such is the understanding of sexuality - as something beyond good and evil, beyond love, beyond sanity, as a resource for ordeal and for breaking through the limits of consciousness- that informs the French literary canon that I have been discussing.
Story of O, with its project for completely transcending personality, entirely presumes this dark and complex vision of sexuality so far removed from the hopeful view sponsored by American Freudianism and liberal culture. The woman who is given no other name than O progresses simultaneously toward her own extinction as a human being and her fulfillment as a sexual being."

- Susan Sontag, 1967

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