title: The Erotic Imagination: French Histories of Perversity (Ideologies of Desire)
author:  Vernon A. Rosario 
description: <br />"Rosario's historical study of the erotic imagination in France illuminates brilliantly the crucial role that sexual confessions have played in first identifying eroticism and then linking it decisively to perverse sexuality. In their respective ways, as he wittily demonstrates, both medical experts and their patients have channeled into eroticism the anxieties and obsessions of modern society."--Robert A. Nye
zlib_text: Studies in Arts and Humanities 
  VOL05/ISSUE02/2019 
  ARTICLE | sahjournal.com 
   
    
   
   
   
   
  Eroticism, Pornography, Love: The Discursive 
  Politics of Reactionary French Scholarship on 
  Sexual Imagery 
   
  Oliver Kenny 
  Post-doctoral Teaching and Research Fellow 
  Department of Applied Foreign Languages, University of Lille 
  Lille, France 
   
  © Oliver Kenny. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-
  NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit 
  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. 
   
   
  Abstract 
  In this article, I focus on a selection of recent French scholars who insist on a fundamental distinction 
  between pornography (pornographie) and eroticism (érotisme). I delve into these scholars’ descriptions 
  of and justifications for the pornography-eroticism distinction, and explore what is at stake in affirming 
  such a difference. I contend that, far from being a question of genre—or even quality—this is a politica