Sexuality and Eroticism in a Post-pandemic World

Book excerpt: The cultural change denominated as “the new normal” goes far beyond the adaptation to habits like physical distancing, limited person-to-person contact, teleworking, and self-isolation established with the COVID-19 pandemic. A series of significant transformations in human behavior spreads today in societies all around the world: physical intimacy decreases while virtual reality expands and alterity declines while artificial intelligence emerges, leading to structural reconfigurations of sex, relationships, gender awareness, and subjectivity. Sexuality and Eroticism in a Post-pandemic World explores this new cultural atmosphere through twelve interdisciplinary essays questioning global governmentality and challenging the biopolitics of the new normal—the administration of self-control societies so politically correct that repressed desire for otherness only finds a simulation of its satisfaction with the forced abnormality, outrageousness, and violence of mainstream porn—, going from ars erotica to alternative pornography, from online dating to gender fluidity, from LGBTQI+ artivism to sex life cultivation, and more.