Scopophilia

Scopophilia or scoptophilia, from Greek "love of looking", is deriving pleasure from looking. As an expression of sexuality, it refers to sexual pleasure derived from looking at erotic objects: erotic photographs, pornography, naked bodies, etc.

Alternatively, this term was used by cinema psychoanalysts of the 1970s to describe pleasures (often considered pathological[1]) and other unconscious processes occurring in spectators when they watch films. The term was borrowed from psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan[2] and Otto Fenichel.[3]

Critical race theorists, such as bell hooks,[4] David Marriott,[5] and Shannon Winnubst,[6] have also taken up scoptophilia and the scopic drive as a mechanism to describe racial othering.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Televisuality: Style, Crisis, and Authority in American Television", by John Thornton Caldwell (1995) ISBN 0813521645, p. 343
  2. ^ "The Money Shot", by Jane Mills (2001) ISBN 1864031425, p. 223
  3. ^ " The Scoptophilic Instinct and Identification," by Otto Fenichel (1953) ISBN 0393337413, [1]
  4. ^ "Eating the Other", bell hooks (2006) ISBN 1428816291, [2]
  5. ^ "Bordering On: The Black Penis," by David Marriott (1996), Textual Practice 10(1), pp. 9-28.
  6. ^ "Is the Mirror Racist?: Interrogating the Space of Whiteness", by Shannon Winnubst (2006) ISBN 0253218306, [3]