What happend to pleasure by ShivJi Panikkar

What Happened to Pleasure?” - Some Thoughts around those Missing Balls
Shivaji K Panikkar
In the circulated concept note of the colloquium the conception of
pleasure is solely related to sex, I suppose that is because the idea
of colloquium derives from, and centers on the general idea of
sexuality and art. That is to say, the suggested theme is sexual
pleasure and cultural practices. Further, there is a certain
suggestion that sex that is represented against “gender and social
oppression; or the work of art that deconstructs the heterosexual
‘norm’; it critiques the cult of ideal body types, or makes a claim
for queer rights” or say the “transgressive” or the “moral
seriousness” in art as mentioned in the concept note, is not what the
colloquium tries to address, but it is about the celebratory,
consumptive sensual/sexual pleasure in relation to cultural
production. Thus, any consideration of moral seriousness and social
and/or political purposive-ness is not the premise of the colloquium.
If so, the primary question that I would like to address is: since
there is not a single generally accepted, workable, universal category
of sexual pleasure related to art that cut across class, caste,
gender, ethnicity, religious and sexual divisions, how can we simply
discuss pleasure in art? Or, are we talking about the pleasure of the
artists, collector, gallerist, curator, writer art historian, audience
(which?); whose pleasure among these are we concerned about? Do we
concern with all of them together or each one separately? Thus sexual
pleasure as referred in the concept note is problematic; precisely
because it entails subjection of the ‘minor’ self into one major
dominant Other; elite, heterosexual/patriarchal discourse, and takes
it for granted that the available elite sphere of art as the
normal/natural/neutral given habitus of any art work – as a result one
is made to unjustifiably get sucked into someone else’s fantasy world
– or into a state of existence of uncritical state of pleasure – here,
strategically use a Sanskrit terminology; ananda or paramananda, and
there we are, we sit not far from the Right wingers. So, then I have
this question, from whose pleasure perspective are we talking from?
Shall we imagine first tatthe position of the owner of the object of
art, then the curator, writer, artists etc and in what hierarchy?
Further, I also develop another doubt; are we not trying to fetish-ize
art objects, by trivializing it by trying to make sexually motivated
pleasure as the main purpose of it, while robbing it off all
socio-political, shall I dare say revolutionary possibilities? I know,
I am inviting the risk of being called ‘morally serious’’ and not yet
ready to accept the invitation into the elite pleasure condition.
Anyways… more of such thoughts later, and in any case as Laura Mulvey
pointed out “…analyzing pleasure destroys it”,1 which seems to be very
close to my own intention of transgress-ive trills; breaking with the
proposed or the available, and trying to yearn for a new art world
that would emerge.
However, no denying of the fact that pleasure, including the pleasure
in hating thus, is surely that draws anyone to a work of art… it is
crucial for art works to look pleasurable, and in any case it should
engage primarily the rich buyer, ( I quote a friend saying’ “so that
is why the artist cover the death/bone with velvet, so that the buyer
can cry over and celebrate death”, asked the skeptic, referring to
Anita Dube’s Blood Wedding). In fact knowing the artists, she herself
may confess as to how she managed to trick the rich to buy her art.
Since I am skeptical of the proposed idea of pleasure, I can address
the issue of pleasure only obliquely and for this I try briefly draw
the attention to the varied reception registers of images of
pleasure/sexuality: Following is a very personal narrative, and the
language of my responses too is deliberately personalized - & I mean
not standardized to suit public spaces.
My Pleasure Notes: This 2006 work by Sudarshan Shetty titled Love has
intrigued me ever since I first saw it – most striking had been its
assertive obscenity – and I loved it. Its huge steel penis that moves
back and forth is mechanical and repetitive. Empty and uncontained,
its entering anything is unarticulated, - the supine penis in other
words just doesn’t enter anywhere – the forward and backward thrusts
of the stuff are waste-full and bizarre, timeless and perennial, and
wow - I discover – its meaning is in its ridiculous meaninglessness –
the pleasure of its pleasure-less-ness, and the purposive-ness of its
purposelessness. Indeed, what a gigantic, monstrous and mammoth
“fornication” or “mounting” (as described carefully and scientifically
by Kavita Singh and Diksha Nath respectively) – is performed across
the millennia – a dinosaur skeleton plainly fucking away a pale yellow
jaguar, and it is a play of death and life, past and present – so
farcical, yet so frank and uselessly profound!!! Yet, seeing the sheen
and the absolute size of the phallus that moved between the widely
parted legs - my envy and desire combines with a sense of obscene
pleasure. But alas!!!, with a sigh of relief, and hiding my pleasure
of discovery, I whispered into my gay friend … “no balls… how come?”.
And, we giggled our way through the rest of the exhibits. Later on too
at many occasions I did try to formulate my discomfort, but also my
exciting with the large size sculpture of Shetty to friends and
students.
It is necessary to make it obvious here that the metaphor “Missing
Balls” in the title derives from this sculpture and refers to the
inbreeding, hypocritical, socio-politically ineffective contemporary
visual art world – its institutions, its artists, collectors, writers,
galleries etc. More of it later, perhaps.
Actually, the lack of balls in the sculpture troubles me I realize, so
also the elite-ness of the pale yellow jaguar car, probably also the
impersonal sheen of steel. The car looked feminine, but above all, it
is such a relief that the fuck looked “unnatural” more than unreal or
surreal – the word that I use “unnatural” refers to the IPC 377 - that
trouble of all the publicly gay population in the country, including
myself. However, the excess of the sculpture indeed is remarkable, and
came very close to homosexual pleasures as such – since both do not
serve any social or political purpose, they are private so to say.
I remain surely impressed as the art world, and I got it confirmed
when I saw it printed on the double page spread right at the opening
of the recent Marg publication edited by Gayatri Sinha.
Another Note: the verbal poster by Ramesh Pithiya is fairly simple and
stark, as it reads thus “Question - 1: Is Anal Sex Legal?” The florid
twists and turns as it imitates and mocks at sacred scriptural forms.
Another work with the same title is an illustration of the celebration
of the very act, which he ironically and irreverently verbalizes in
the poster. Is there is a childlike innocence as Ramesh imitates the
title, “is anal sex legal? It surely is playful and blasphemous
simultaneously, but is it a self questioning in the process of
ingrained experience of guilt?
What intrigues and delights or pleasures me, while its theme is
carnal, it is also the austerity, if not the near spiritual experience
that Ramesh’s works try to invoke… its images of loving care while
making love, like those seen in the medieval miniature illustrations
mixed with contemporary pornographic images – is filled with a
religiosity that the love making theme suggests… that it resonates
with belief and resounds love.
A foot note: To make my presentation further personalized, I need to
mention that Ramesh is my lover, and it is important for me to state
this here as a matter of fact. While talking about pleasure and the
political purpose what Michel Foucault has said becomes handy in this
context “One of the concessions one makes to others is not to present
homosexuality as anything but a kind of immediate pleasure, of two
young men meeting in the street, seducing each other with a look,
grabbing each other with a look, grabbing each others’ asses and
getting each other off in a quarter of an hour. There you have a kind
of neat image of homosexuality without any possibility of generating
unease, and for two reasons: it responds to a reassuring canon of
beauty, and it cancels everything that can be troubling in affection,
tenderness, friendship, fidelity, camaraderie, and companionship,
things that our rather sanitized society can’t allow a place for
without fearing the formation of new alliances and tying together of
unforeseen lines of force”2
Thus, in an innocuous manner, and with all its mock seriousness Ramesh
celebrates the forbidden pleasure, while poking playfully at the IPC
377. I also would like to suggest that there is a subtle twist in the
way the category of religion and spiritual is used in these works, and
when put across in public public space becomes a political statement.
A differ note: the issue of obscenity and religion was deliberately
sidetracked in the case of Chandramohan’s arrest and detention in
police custody at Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU in May ‘07. Instead, we
were careful to pitch the matter at the level of protecting the
academic autonomy and unwarranted public interference and breach of
rule by police while barging into examination evaluation procedure.
Protection from such impending threats is something which every
student of any educational institution rightfully deserves. But, I
had been interested in resurrecting the sidelined question of
obscenity and religion.
It is a fact that Chandramohan and all of us in the campus was totally
in bliss until this was happening – in fact for three long days before
the trouble happened, these huge computer prints on flex/plastic were
brightly and delightfully sitting publicly on the outside walls of the
Graphic Department …. One simply could not avoid their presence, but
no one thought or even warned about any impending danger. I saw all of
them (except the cross which was kept inside a room) at least five to
eight times in all those three days – and I didn’t see any possible
trouble, on the contrary I accepted that those works which indeed made
me delighted, pleasured – being a gay man I am still impressed by the
catchy masculine-ist show-offs by many of the male art students who
unlike Chandramohan got spared for whatever reasons.
In the context of the so called Baroda controversy the argument raised
that is most noteworthy (from none other than the then VC of the MSU)
is the opinion that pre-modern art that depicts nudity or sexuality in
relation to religion belongs to other bygone times, and are totally
irrelevant to present day art or religion, and so that can’t be
exemplary for today’s’ culture or religion. If so, then even our
simple pleasure of looking at anything of that kind is in jeopardy.
Well, what had been truly troubling to think is also what would be the
public reaction to say a Robert Mapplethorpe or even say Bhupen
Khakhar within the changed scenario and argument such as above? Or,
say a work of art like Ganesha by Jogen Choudhury.
However, in this context what is ironical is the politics of
pleasurable consumption of an artist like Bhupen Khakhar by the
mainstream possibly on a purely formal/aesthetic ground, within the
category of “popular”, where his sexual identity and subjectivity is
reduced to a rather inconsequential matter. I would argue against this
and argue that his sexual difference is the central aspect of his art
and life that drastically and radically underpins the very condition
of the making of his art, and so needs to be put in use for liberation
and activism, and not merely as a matter of pleasure.
On the other end, take the instance of the professional negotiations
that a “gay” sculptor, painter and an installation artist such as
Jehangir Jani makes to make a space for himself in the mainstream. His
art is deliberately and ironically ‘beautiful’, in its ‘camp’ or
affectedness. These bearing are subtle and unsettling as they also cut
across expressions of the tragic and the angry: But do we dare ask::
does the subject has its own right to self-represent in such myriad
nuances, including the celebration of its pleasures? It is significant
that on the one hand Jani stands comfortably within the layered
discourses around the phenomenology of gay experiences, but on the
other he crucially and critically engages with the socio-political
structure(s) that under grid and discriminate the lives of the sexual
minority. Thus Jani’s art is double-edged; while uninhibitedly
representing the experiential realms of the sexual subculture as he
asserts his political resistance. These are particularly significant
since minority sexual identities and the protest of the subterranean
culture have yet to be seriously registered in popular and public view
as significant positions of difference and make valid claims for
equality and dignity.
Or, let me refer to my analogical experience with the voices of gay
liberation and various classes or the social strata. Invariably, the
activists would be seen drawn from the middle or lower middleclass
sections of the society, whereas the rich and influential class
largely would consider their sexual preference as a private matter,
and so wouldn’t want to stick their neck out, or as they say “shout
from the rooftop” about a possible change in public opinion. I
apologize to the organizers for again assuming “moral seriousness”.
Yet another example: say while seeing at the Tejal Shah’s Video titled
Chingari Chumma / Stinging Kiss (single channel video, 2000, in
collaboration with Anuj Vaidya) in the national Conference Cultural
Practice and Discourses of the ‘Minor’ during February 2007 at the
Department of Art History and Aesthetics, Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU,
it was the creepy discomfort and tension that marked the reception of
the work generated in general. It was incredible to watch the audience
sense of disbelief and shock. In artist’s words “it is a fantasy
experimental narrative which sets out to question the Andrea Dworkin
feminist position on pornography, bringing the discourse of sexuality
back to desire as opposed to violence, problematizing and performing
as queer subjects, while poking humorously and laughing loudly at the
mass producing cultures of Bollywood and pornography. Simultaneously,
we create a bisexual, under-represented narrative within the discourse
of queer art history.” For for the general academic audience the work
was no simple pleasure, but a rude shock. Here, in this example it
would be interesting to see the relation between transgression,
pleasure and knowledge.
I feel a lot of such works like some of the above examples resists
being drawn to the simple category of pleasure. Hey are problematic
cases, where the simple category of pleasure becomes complicated.
Further in such direction are the works such as Subodh Gupta’s Vilas
or Sonia Khuran’s Bird. It is interesting to note that the nudity in
Vilas, Vaseline had to be smeared on the crotch of the digital print
while showing the work in Mumbai…. Similar experiences are shared by
artists such as Jahangir Jani who had to either remove a sculture or
had to cover the nudity of some others in certain Mubai shows. These
are cases in public spaces such as Jahangir Art Gallery or the Museum
Gallery, but, with in the strictly private gallery, as in an
educational institution, any “controversial” works could be
exhibited without any trouble, at least until the so called “Baroda
controversy”.

For further discussions I would like to again refer to the concept
note of the colloquium: after pointing out that reference to sex in
contemporary art is deeply vexed because sexual relation are either
only metaphors for gender and social oppression; or the work of art
deconstructs the heterosexual ‘norm;’ as it critiques the cult of
ideal body types, or makes a claim for queer rights, poses the central
question as to what happened to pleasure. Late at the day, with a
certain discomfort we perhaps begin to realize that the days are past
when art could be simply celebratory, whereas popular art -
advertising, music videos, popular films, literature – could easily be
otherwise. In these actually we don’t see such conceptual complexity
as we are able in some of the above works. To further quote from the
colloquium notes: “We know that contemporary art can be bold, and even
audacious. We know that being transgressive is one of the roles it
plays within society. By being unrelentingly critical, perhaps art is
holding on to a moral seriousness. Ironically, it is this art, that
refuses to yield to pleasure, that is accused of obscenity by the
moral brigade.”
Let us change our address point a bit here, and I quote Foucault again:
“Sex is not a fatality: it is a possibility for creative life. … I
think when you look at the different ways people have experienced
their sexual freedoms – the way they have created their works of art –
you would have to say that sexuality, as we now know it, has become
one of the most creative sources of our society and our being. My
view is that we should understand it in the reverse way: the world
regards sexuality as the secret of the creative cultural life; it is,
rather, a process of our having to create a new cultural life
underneath the ground of our sexual choices.”3 Possibly this
indicates that as presumed pleasure and moral values does not exclude
one another.
Why should we ask ask as to how and why shouldn’t we not go ahead and
get more of pleasure from high art leaving behind moral values? A
little bluntly I would like to refer to the sculpture with missing
balls - we seemed to have squashed off our balls, it is the loss our
ability or our facilities; our moral credibility - we seem to have
lost our spaces – particularly the public spaces. Here, I would like
to draw attention to the catalogue essay by Kavita Singh in the
exhibition catalogue, Where in the World. After talking a bit about
Shetty’s sculpture Love, and after pointing out the ingeniousness of
the mechanized dinosaur “fornicating” with a Jaguar car, where the
punning references to animal desire and to the relationship of love
and lust make this an eminently likable work of art, the author notes
that “But it is not an easily collectable one. Its unwieldy size makes
it unfit for a private place” but what shatters us is that “its
plainly visible sexual action debars it from public space.” I agree,
and add Tejal shah’s Chingari Chumma and many other works have to be
definitely has to be relegated to protected private spaces. In fact
our pleasure should be heightened due to this because we are the
selected few who are privileged to see them.
Here, I would like further argue that the production-circulation and
visibility circuit of the contemporary elite art in India
strategically seals of the images of pleasure/sexuality from the
public sphere, which thus greatly limits and stultifies its
socio-political (revolutionary) moral purposes and values they carry,
and thus enable only limited function, such as say purely academic
ones, or say private purposes of titillation. I would like to further
argue that the historical role of the Right wing is in pushing the
aspects of the ‘private’ pleasure in non-political terms, rendering
revolution through art impossible, which leave the contemporary art
into the realm of mere public secrets.
Thus, one of the contemporary terminologies that are commonly used by
artists since some time now is “strategy” – which to me almost amount
to compromise. I would like to refer to the attitude of the art
conscious elites here. It is the attitude of protectionism – that
lent a belief in the artists that they can do away with the public
gaze or participation – or they are too scared of the public opinion,
or that they are not concerned about the larger social space for their
art that feeds into the inbreeding and hypocrisy.
There should be new art movements that dare (with balls) to derive
legitimate pleasure at the same time exist in social space with
political edge.