The ethical-esthetic possibilities of perversion: a polymorphous-perverse sexuality as a practice of freedom in Marcuse

Abstract

This article aims to explore the ethical-esthetic understanding of the perverse phenomenon in the Herbert Marcuses work, Eros and Civilization. In the ethical register, we tried to emphasized the moral character of the category of perversion and demonstrate its connection with the normalization of sexual experience and with the disciplinary and control bodies within the biopolitical reading of Foucault. In the register of the esthetics, we pretend to show how Marcuse, throught the reconfiguration of the connection between Eros and Logos, propose that sexual perversion involves the challenging of the established order and the production of a new kind of relation between oneself and with the others individuals, in contrast with the instrumental control of eroticism. Finally, we indicate the field of possibilities theoretical-political that was opened up by Marcuse in the master of transgression points the necessity of one critical resumption of the category of perversion.