phil shining
chapters
Sex Life Cultivation: Ars Erotica as an Alternative to Sex Education and Sex Therapy
In Sexuality and Eroticism in a Post-pandemic World: Beyond the Biopolitics of the New Normal (Brill, 2023)
Pages: 393–452
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004549388_014
Introduction to the “New Normal:” Biopolitics, Sexuality, and Eroticism in a Post-pandemic World
In Sexuality and Eroticism in a Post-pandemic World: Beyond the Biopolitics of the New Normal (Brill, 2023)
Pages: 1–80
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004549388_002
The biopolitics of the new normal is the renovation of the processes of social normalization in neoliberal democracies developed during the 2020s. It is initially introduced as a new set of habits established by governments according to the urgent challenges faced in the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic but, in reality, it constitutes the complete remodeling of the governmentality processes implemented by late capitalism’s global system. Furthermore, it is a cultural change facilitating the transition from postindustrial societies to virtual societies, introducing the foundations of the upcoming governmentality regime, an automation regime centered on virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Present-day digital societies are the final stage of late capitalism, yet the time we are living in is just the historical intermezzo preparing the way for ultimate capitalism, a post-climate change form of capitalism organized through virtual societies and a governmentality regime of automation. Normalization induces people to conform to normative models, and the post-pandemic new normality is not the exception.
The new normal is the new code of values programming the global system and determining the globalized mainstream way of life integrating all the vast diversity of lifestyles, unifying all differences, and homogenizing all singularities. New normative values like inclusiveness, self-care, self-expression, and personal sovereignty reinforce identity, individual freedom, private property, human rights, self-realization, self-esteem, freedom of choice, competition, and free market—the institutional values of the individualistic model of society and the self-centered culture of globalized capitalism. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerates an ongoing historical process, the acceleration of the establishment of a global empire, and facilitates the renovation of its systemic normalization processes. Capitalism is a mode of production and a social system but, ultimately, it is an ethics: it is the ethics of individual well-being, private profit, and personal importance, the axiomatic through which the business and competition life game is played. Humanity is the simulacrum of capitalism. Human Rights are the law of the Global Empire: the fundamental rule of Law required to play The Game.
While biopolitics has always been centered in sexuality, 21st century societies live an unprecedented globalized social process of generalized sexualization, consisting in revealing intimacy in every social sphere—like a normalized obscenity of self-revelation. A neoliberal system incorporates all differences into the mainstream through the visibility of difference, the inclusion of sexual minorities, and the integration of non-binary sexualities. A new global sexual norm declares all genders equal and pursuits the inclusion of all sexualities, instituting a status quo of sexual-political correctness centered on individual expression and personal sovereignty. Through the biopolitics of the new normal self-regulation becomes the new habit of majorities focused on their self-care, consolidating the development of egocentric cultures and individualistic ethics on all regions of the world and societies all across the globe.
Even when neoliberal democracies incite diversity and the proliferation of multiple lifestyles, all the differences become integrated into the same system of living: the global system of capitalism and its ethics focused on the pursuit of personal happiness instead of the prosperity of communities. Systematically promoted and protected freedom seems always concentrated on the liberation of the individual, not in the liberation of the communities or the societies. In this way, capitalist freedom is always self-centered, and self-centeredness is fueled now by the centrality of social media and virtual forms of communication and socialization. This is how generalized sexualization sustains the hegemony of self-centered societies: integrating into the global market all the marginalized minorities, allowing them to freely express their gender identity and personality; after all, capitalism is pansexual. Paradoxically, the more gendered and sexualized everyday life gets today, the less erotic it becomes.
The cultural change generated through the remodeled governmentality implemented with the COVID-19 pandemic is focused on a behavioral change of the individuals. This is exactly what biopolitics do: it modulates behaviors and shapes subjectivities. In present-day societies there is an unprecedented freedom of choice and there is more agency exerted by individuals than in any other era. Notably, the increasement of individual freedom and self-centeredness does not lead to massive disobedience or generalized uncontrolled rebellion; that’s because today’s people are more self-regulated than ever before in humankind history. The behavioral change massively induced with the pandemic is the voluntary development of self-control by free individuals. The new normality is characterized by the auto-isolation and the voluntary self-regulation of people immersed in the internet or the metaverse. Normal life concentrates on personal profit, social media success, individual well-being, and instant gratification, but will to power gets tamed and politically correct with post-Millennials’ “crystal” generations, producing anxious and vulnerable subjectivities.
We enter into the last phase of late capitalism: in the 2020s we witness the transition of the societies of control to the societies of self-control; the majoritarian conformity to the standard models of living is now less coercive, more willed, and more self-directed by free individuals themselves than ever before. That’s how the global pandemic propels humankind into a new era: the era of post-hedonistic societies and post-hedonistic subjectivities. Physical life gets excessively safe, so virtual platforms become the only territory for fulfilling people’s desires. Today, when physical contact between bodies is reduced, the new normal consists in isolated bodies living their social lives through virtual interactions: people trying to live in the virtual universe the craved or dreamed experiences they are not able to live in the physical world.
In this way, the behavioral change generated with the new normal can be synthetized in between the intersections of two axioms: less physical contact results in more virtual reality, while more communication implies less alterity. The emergence of artificial intelligence and the hegemony of social media coincide with a generalized demand of self-realization and the hyper-visibility of self-expression—in which gender issues play a central role—, weakening close contact proximity and skin-to-skin physicality but also intensifying communication and virtualization. The supremacy of sexuality over sex in function of identity and gender issues expands a morality of inclusive sexual-political correctness that inhibits desire and restrains pleasure, incubating new patrons of sexual violence and sexual abuse now coming from the youngsters themselves. Moreover, the erosion of eroticism and the des-intensification of love in contemporary societies is directly related with the erosion of radical alterity in times of incessant self-reaffirmation; disinterest in love and sexual activity is justified by the necessity of emotional stability and the Millennials’ habit of avoiding hurt and discomfort.
Self-centeredness displaces collective and social emancipation initiatives just for the pursuit of personal happiness and individual comfort; the priority of the post-pandemic citizen is not the transformation of its community, but the virtual communities’ approval of their personal lives in the virtual platforms. This uncritical approach to mainstream normality by majorities around the world accelerates the expansion of the new biopolitics of self-control and a post-pandemic governmentality focused on the administration of self-regulations; additionally, it contributes to laying the foundations of ultimate capitalism and the emerging post-humanist automation regime. 21st century capitalism constitutes a global empire, indeed, but the core of the system is the self—the most concentrated form of capital. The emperor in every single culture of the world in times of globalization is the self, and the ego is the ruling power behind the shadows: every one of us sustains this empire through each individual self-centeredness. Notwithstanding, alternative ways of life and new worldviews start to emerge today, created by communities that openly don’t conform to live in the little comfort zone of auto-isolation and virtual self-expression that corporations and mainstream post-pandemic normality offer. This indicates that new possibilities of life sprout beyond the biopolitics of the new normal.
Keywords:
AI – alterity – automation – biopolitics – capitalism – democracy – egocentrism – ethics – globalization – inclusiveness – individualism – neoliberalism – normalization – normativity – political correctness – self-regulation – sexualization – societies of control – virtual reality.
Embodying “The Little Death” of Orgasm: An Interdisciplinary Research on Sexual Trance
In Exploring Sexuality and Spirituality: An Introduction to an Interdisciplinary Field (Brill, 2021)
Pages: 318–386
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004437869_012
Introduction to the Sexuality and Spirituality Field of Research: A History of the Intersections Between Sexuality and Spirituality
In Exploring Sexuality and Spirituality: An Introduction to an Interdisciplinary Field (Brill, 2021)
Pages: 1–54
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004437869_002