Love and Eroticism.

Love and Eroticism. Edited by Mike Featherstone. London: 1999, 425 pages. Paper, $24.95.

Drawing on the work of sociologists and cultural theorists, Love and Eroticism is a collection of 20 essays exploring the contested nature of sex and love and eroticism. Essentially, this book examines the ways in which love, sex, and eroticism are perceived, defined, and experienced in our contemporary culture. Through the lenses of different authors, the meanings of love, sex, and eroticism; the influences that shape each; and the relationships that link or separate them are each examined.

The major themes wrap around the fundamental, unresolved, and provocative questions that underlie our need to understand our emotions and experiences, such as:

1. What is the significance of love and eroticism in contemporary social and cultural life?

2. Do the irrationalities of sexual attraction increase the potential for aggression between the sexes?

3. Can the development of romantic love be linked to feminine freedom and the rise in the status of women?

4. Has the searching for lifelong romantic love given way to the affair or has there been a resurgence of conservative ideas of love and sex in the wake of the AIDS epidemic?

Featherstone provides an excellent introduction to the book with concise but informative insights into the authors' points-of-view. He describes eroticism as "this infinite variety of forms based upon constant invention, elaboration, taming and regulation of the sexual impulse. Sexuality, then, makes eroticism possible, but eroticism transcends reproduction through its capacity to elaborate sexual experience and invent a separate realm of associated pleasures" (p. 1).

Most readers will find something of interest in this book given the variety of topics grounded in different historical eras. For example, a great contrast exists between Travers's "The Nazi Eye Code of Falling Love: Bright Eyes, Blank Heart, Crazed Gaze," Wouters's "Balancing Sex and Love Since the 1960s Sexual Revolution," and Richardson's "Seductions of the Impossible: Love, The Erotic and Sacrifice in Surrealist Discourse."

One of the most interesting contributions is Bech's "Citysex: Representing Lust in Public." Bech seeks to merge two aspects of social and cultural life which are usually held apart: sex, which is usually absent from writings about urban society, and the city itself, which is absent in studies about sexuality. He observes that the city is an important life space in modern society, and sexuality research should acknowledge that many people live or work in "an urban world of strangers." His main thesis is that the "city is fundamentally sexualized; and that modern sexuality is essentially an urban one" (p. 219). Unless a person lives in or works in a city, Bech points out that, "Quantitatively, it is not the most extensive setting of most people's lives, but it does occupy some time space, as a field for transport, for shopping for entertainment, for seeking new relations. Qualitatively, however, it is in important ways the primary life space; all forms of social life in modernity are constituted on the background and under the influence of it; the urban world of strangers is the one that can be fallen back on when couples, families and networks break--it is always there" (p. 228).

To flush out his thesis, Bech presents a description of some characteristic features of "urban sexuality," demonstrates in what way and how far there is a necessary relation between city and sexuality, and examines the nature of this alleged "sexuality" of the city. He provides examples of the existence of a common awareness of the sexualization surrounding urban life. He claims that because sexualization is at large and roaming around the city, it compels everyone to realize that he and she may become the object of somebody's sexualization, and indeed that they may themselves sexualize. Bech continues with a provocative question: How does one want to relate to sexualization? In addition to his intelligent discussion of sex in the city and the influence of the city on sex, Bech displays a rare trait in academic discourse: a sense of humor.

Another outstanding contribution is Illouz's "The Lost Innocence of Love: Romance as a Postmodern Condition." Illouz explores two basic questions: To what extent the cliche that love is a cliche is true and if true to what extent is it new? Illouz builds an impressive case for the findings of her research: "Postmodern romance has seen the collapse of overarching, lifelong romantic narrative, which it has compressed into the briefer and repeatable form of the affair" (p. 175). She adds: "... increasingly, sex becomes a key component of intimacy, hence the romantic narrative of love has lost its cultural motivation" (p. 166). Furthermore, she discuss how an "increased separation of love and sex in the late 20th century has resulted in the reality that love at first sight is no longer credible as it is seen as merely a pretense for sexual desire. Illouz observes that in popular culture the spectacle of people acting out a love for each other is based upon the images of the romantic icons of the cinema.

One of Illouz's methods of inquiry was to interview 50 men and women in three large urban areas of the East Coast of the United States. She discovered that the romantic paradigm of love is suffering from romantic love-fatigue. Illouz concludes that when you disentangle the new from the old, it seems that the postmodern romantic condition brings an ironic twist to La Rochefoucauld's observations: "Few people would fall in love had they not heard about it" (p. 183). In today's world, people doubt they are in love (true love) precisely because they have been media saturated with cultural messages about the drama of a dazzling kind of love they are not experiencing.

From a different angle, Bauman's "On the Postmodern Uses of Sex" focuses on the way in which bodily pleasures have become central to contemporary consumer culture. He observes that the aim in today's quest for sexual, delightful experiences and sensations is to maximize bodily pleasure. And he explains: "... postmodern sex is about orgasm, with the ultimate experience seen as still to come in the future, something achievable with the help of drugs, gadgets, training and counseling" (p. 7). Sex, according to Bauman, is a source of anxiety because of the possibility of failure, the creeping harsh reality--no matter how strong the denial--of the limitations of the aging body. Bauman concludes that our conflicting cultural messages about sex and sexual pleasure covertly undermine what they overtly praise and encourage. He says, "This is a situation pregnant with psychic neuroses all the more grave for the fact that it is no longer clear what the `norm' is and therefore what kind of `conformity to the norm' could heal them" (p. 32).

I highly recommend this book. It is well-balanced, even though a few of the chapters are a tedious read due to an annoying tone of academic pretentiousness and a tendency to rely on too many quotations from the usual suspects. It is to be expected that there will be unevenness in collections such as this, given the disparity in any group of writers' abilities to present ideas in ways that are readable and relevant. Most chapters, however, are well written and some are even profound. Featherstone's critique of each chapter in the introduction is well worth the price of admission.

The book is indexed and each of the chapters is referenced, some more extensively than others. Worth noting is that Love & Eroticism is simultaneously published as Volume 15, Numbers 3-4 of the journal Theory, Culture & Society.

Reviewed by Carol M. Cassell, Ph.D., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, MS K-22, 4770 Burford Highway, Atlanta, GA 30341; e-mail: [e-mail].