The Greeks,Eroticism and Ourselves

Abstract

One of the principle connections between the lived experience and the representation of sexuality occurs at the level of erotic meaning. In any given culture erotic meanings found in representation may reflect or structure experience in a variety of ways. For example, many feminists have argued that pornography has helped to structure our modern experience of gender and sexuality in ways they consider oppressive. It is certainly important to consider the relation of eroticism to wider aspects of social life. Yet because of the ‘taken for grantedness’ of our erotic constructions this task is difficult to accomplish and rarely attempted. Therefore, rather than tackling modern eroticism head on, in this article I re-examine what we know (or think we know) about the relation between erotic representation and social experience in the context of ancient Greece. Moreover, we find that this point of historical comparison throws into relief aspects of our own use of eroticism, which are revealed, for instance, in our tendency to misinterpret the past in ways that are all too characteristic of ourselves.