This is the original 2022 post that contained the first draft for my book series,
Sex Positivity versus Sex Coercion. For various reasons, the body of said post has been removed (see: below), and I've only kept the opening here for historical purposes. That being said, you can excess the final version of this entire book series on its one-page promo,
of which a SFW version exists on this blog.
[Blogger/Google censors anything with nudity but also bikini shots with gratuitous, sometimes; so I've swapped out the original cover with a slightly less risqué version. Click here the original cover version.]
Update, 6/18/2025: I received a DMCA Compliant from Google, saying this post contains copywritten material and they would: a) be unpublishing it until I removed said material, and b) would strike my Blogger account if I re-uploaded the post while it still contained any of the allegedly infringing materials, be those images or links. However, Google did not say which materials are offending and the site they provided to read the details of the complaint, Lumen, doesn't currently have the actual complaint available. Frankly I've never received a complaint of this kind before, and it doesn't even make sense in this context; i.e., because my work is non-profit and Fair Use (for purposes of satire, education, transformation and critique), and concerns images that are publicly available. Until I resolve the issue with Google and learn what the offending material is, I've redacted most of the original post; i.e., with none of the writing except the opening, and without any illustrations or images except a single example I designed and illustrated (above). If you want to access the final version—meaning what this book sample eventually turned into—read the manifesto as it appears on my website; i.e., for Volume One's book promotion, "Make It Real" (2025): the preface, manifesto, postscript, and series acknowledgements.
This book sample—apart from the abstract, disclaimer and table of contents—contains a rough-cut, much older version of the manifesto for my [now nearly-finished book series], Sex Positivity versus Sex Coercion, or Gothic Communism: Liberating Sex Work under Capitalism through Iconoclastic Art. Since writing it, I've divided the book into four volumes, of which the manifesto is only one half of Volume One (the other half being dedicated to trauma writing and artwork). The other volumes are Volume Zero (the thesis), Volume Two (the Humanities primer) and Volume Three (the praxis volume). I'm releasing the volumes in numerical order and multiple books are currently live on my website for free. The remaining manuscripts need to be updated before I release them, and all of the proofreading won't be applied here; it will happen on my main 18+ website—i.e., on my blog-style sample series promotions; e.g., "Deal with the Devil" (2024). Instead, this blogpost shall remain online to serve as a historical record; but I won't be updating it any further.
All of this means this sample is now incredibly outdated. When I originally wrote it, it was the center of my book's argumentation; I have since expanded that argumentation well beyond my manifesto—i.e., writing my thesis volume, which basically serves as my PhD in independent research form. The manifesto is still incredibly important—it's a more basic and conversational version of my thesis, being designed to simplify its arguments so they can be taught—but the fact remains that this blogpost is over a year old, and superseded by my thesis, which is much more recent and well-developed. The finished manifesto (and rest of Volume One) will need to be proofread considerably more before going live, and when it does, I will not be updating this blogpost (due to Blogger's godawful limitations). Instead, you will need to go to my website and download the complete version of Volume One when it debuts [see the update message, above].
—Persephone van der Waard, 11/4/2023
[rest of sample redacted until I figure out the DMCA takedown notice]
***
Persephone van der Waard is the author of the multi-volume, non-profit book series, Sex Positivity—its art director, sole invigilator, illustrator and primary editor (the other co-writer/co-editor being Bay Ryan). Persephone has her independent PhD in Gothic poetics and ludo-Gothic BDSM (focusing on partially on Metroidvania), and is a MtF trans woman, anti-fascist, atheist/Satanist, poly/pan kinkster, erotic artist/pornographer and anarcho-Communist with two partners. Including multiple playmates/friends and collaborators, Persephone and her many muses work/play together on Sex Positivity and on her artwork at large as a sex-positive force. That being said, she still occasionally writes reviews, Gothic analyses, and interviews for fun on her old blog (and makes YouTube videos talking about politics). To learn more about Persephone's academic/activist work and larger portfolio, go to her About the Author page. To purchase illustrated or written material from Persephone (thus support the work she does), please refer to her commissions page for more information. Any money Persephone earns through commissions goes towards helping sex workers through the Sex Positivity project; i.e., by paying costs and funding shoots, therefore raising awareness. Likewise, Persephone accepts donations for the project, which you can send directly to her PayPal, Ko-Fi, Patreon or CashApp. Every bit helps!
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteIn perusing, one thing jumped out at me. That is hauntology. It's something I've come across over the years. But I just now realized that this is an old idea. The American Anti-Federalists (Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Ethan Allen, etc) spoke of not being ruled by the dead hand of the past, not submitting to the idolization of corpses.
ReplyDeleteThey often used overt language like that. What they revered was the living generation that would make its own living constitution. They were undermining the very concept of founding fathers, as each generation would have to create its own society, again and again.
I wonder if anyone else has made that connection. In line with Mark Fischer, it brings to mind Corey Robin's take on the reactionary mind, specifically it's fantastical and revisionist relationship to the past, in terms of the obfuscations and misdirections of the Burkean moral imagination. It is part of the process of normalizing and making invisible ideological realism.
From a more artistic and mythological perspective, Lewis Hyde calls this force Hermes of the dark, what binds. As opposed to Hermes of the light, what unbinds. But Hyde has good insights about how these roles interrelate. In unbinding an old system, we will end up binding into place a new one.
Anyway, it makes me wonder where this line of thinking originated. I don't know where the Anti-Federalists got their rhetoric from. But I know they were influenced by the 17th century Country Party and Radical Whigs. The basic insight, though, obviously goes back much earlier.
One can think of the oft-persecuted mystics, in their direct experience of a living God, who challenged the theocracy and clergy who worshipped a book filled with dead words. Interestingly, research has shown that people who have supernatural / spiritual experiences afterward are less likely to attend church.
The idea of living constitutionalism, today sometimes called liberal constitutionalism, came to the American tradition by way of the Quakers. It's not surprising that Quakers look to direct experience of a living God, refusing to bow down to priests or even the physical structures of churches.
That is a major impulse of leftism, as I see it; specifically what correlates to liberal-mindedness in social science research, such as openness to experience. It's about reconnecting to one's experience, the very thing that trauma dissociates us from.
Oh, for sure! Hauntology, the uncanny, abjection, etc—these are all old concepts that are being reidentified in the modern world (existing under Capitalism in ways they wouldn't under Feudalism and older forms of existence). I didn't know that of the Founding Fathers, but I'm not really surprised; they were a bunch of genocidal old cunts, so ignoring the voices of the dead in pursuit of empire would have suited their material pursuits. But American Liberalism, as Howard Zinn points out, was tremendously useful to the American ruling elite in getting white servants to fight and die for the status quo while pitting themselves against the other marginalized groups who stood to gain nothing by the enrichment of the already stupidly wealthy American owner class. I know that Marxist's line of thinking emerged from a direct response and critique of Hegel, but who Hegel was inspired by I couldn't say.
DeleteInteresting thoughts about Hyde. I'm not familiar with them! To clarify about the Burkean moral imagination, are you referring to 18th century political thinker, Edmund Burke?