TABOO - TRANSGRESSION - TRANSCENDENCE

According to Freud, the term “taboo” encompasses two opposite meanings. It may characterise something as sacred and sanctified, while simultaneously denouncing it as unholy and forbidden. This contradiction should not surprise us, as the essence of taboo is the sanctification of an object through a process of prohibition. Within the context of modern  western civilisation, such practices of fetishism are most often sexual in nature. However, if there is one such practice that best represents capitalism’s ability to apply a spiritual (sublimated through a financial process) aura upon a sexual subject through the enforcement of a taboo, it is none other than the art of striptease. In contrast to other forms of prostitution, striptease is a process of commodifying a sexual body not by means of consummation, but prohibition. It is this process of prohibition that creates a surplus of desire that sanctifies and simultaneously over-commodifies the stripping subject.

Nevertheless, staying true to its contradictory nature, striptease does not only constitute itself as a taboo, but also as a form of transgression. Not only does it subvert the traditional mononormative attitudes of sexual expression, it also shifts the understanding of sexuality from being exclusively regarded as something reclusive, hidden and personal, to something public and spectacular. Michel Foucault defines the brothel as one of the most extreme examples of heterotopia, noting their contradictory ability of simultaneously creating an illusory space, while denoting the “real” space as even more illusory. In fact, I would like to propose the strip club as a more fitting example, as the “real illusion” that it provides does not adhere to the norms of privacy as a requirement for sexual expression, but functions as a space that publicly accommodates a prohibited natural need, revealing the illusory nature of the prohibitive norm itself.

In particular, the strip club shined as a quintessential case of heterotopia during the recent pandemic. While the media used a real crisis as the basis for the enforcement of a set of disciplinary practices that essentially denounced any unrestrained form of physical contact as a taboo, the strip club continued to illegally function as a sort of “underground” public space, in which all norms of social distancing and medical requirements for allowing contact where ignored, revealing the largely illusory character of the public biopolitical hysteria itself.

For the purposes of this paper, I will attempt to investigate the contradictory capabilities of this peculiar art form, using a selection of references on articles and books, as well as works of art, such as The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even by Marcel Duchamp and The Center of the World by Wayne Yang.