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Coming, Coming, Gone: A Feminist Deconstruction of Heterosexual Orgasm

University of Canterbury, New Zealand

This article presents a feminist discursive analysis of orgasm, focusing on the transcripts from discussions with women and men in Aotearoa/New Zealand regarding the meanings that attach to (hetero) sexual health. Certain aspects of deconstructive theory lie behind the approach used to read the transcript material. In the first place, as Derrida (1981) has pointed out, ` "everyday language" is not innocent or neutral' (p. 19); rather, it is laden with assumptions and investments that may not be immediately apparent. This textual analysis is thus principally concerned with examining one of the habitual structures underlying Western thought and language - the distinction between presence and absence - and with examining how this binary pairing produces, and is produced by, the `common-sense' attitudes to sex within the `everyday language' of the participants. Examining the functioning of notions of presence and absence reveals some of the paradoxes inherent in contemporary ideas about orgasm; for example, the notion that orgasm offers a transcendental experience (a meeting with one's `true' self) at the same time as it involves a loss or absence of `self'. Finally, it is suggested that the deconstructive properties of `desire' have the potential to challenge the conventional place of orgasm as the ultimate (or only) measure of healthy heterosex.

Key Words: desire • discourse analysis • feminist deconstruction • heterosexuality • orgasm

Sexualities, Vol. 3, No. 1, 55-76 (2000)
DOI: 10.1177/136346000003001003


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