module specification

This module looks at the historical and social contexts for the regulation of pleasurable activities which have been perceived as subversive or deviant.

This module aims to:
1. Develop a reflexive awareness of the basis of the construction of many familiar pleasurable activities as ‘deviant’
2. Consider the variety of regulative mechanisms societies have developed to police pleasure
3. Creatively develop appropriate methodologies for distinguishing between normatively acceptable and non-acceptable forms of enjoyment
4. Develop and encourage confidence in the use of appropriate learning, analytical and discursive skills
5. Provide a supportive environment for the development of competence and creativity in discussion and writing in considering the ethical dimensions of our conceptions of pleasure.
 

Ideas of deviance and the impulse to regulate human behaviour accordingly have not always focused exclusively on more obvious and familiar ‘crimes’. A striking feature in the development of all societies has been the apparent need to police and control the bodies and associated pleasures of their members. While this has always centred around predictably ‘deviant’ activities like sexual behaviour, dance, carnival and so on, it is arguable that the will to proscribe ranges of ostensibly harmless enjoyments as deviant has expanded significantly in the aftermath of the ‘permissive’ revolutions of the 1960s and the development of 1990s managerialist ideologies. Contemporary drug-culture, the multi-faceted sexual behaviours of the modern world, the explosion of pornography facilitated by the internet, the dance and club scene, extreme sports and bloodsports, ‘cruelty’ TV and so on all represent arenas where societal tensions between the experience of pleasure and the urge to criminalise it continue to develop.

However, given that the majority of pleasure seeking behaviours are personal and non-harmful, and given further that (as Schlosser (2003) has recently argued) the drugs and sex industries now constitute bigger industries than traditional ones in advanced economies like the US, it is an obvious question to ask why the regulation of pleasure is still an issue at all.

This module seeks critically to examine why the impulse to regulate bodies and their behaviour has developed in the way that it has and how this has manifested itself within modernity.

A three-hour section each week is comprised of a mix of lectures, consideration of video material, guided exercises and seminars.  Assessment and feedback will take place in seminars and in individual meetings with students where they will be expected to demonstrate awareness of the process of their own learning and their strengths and weaknesses.  This leaves approximately 7 hours per week which students will be expected to spend in self-directed research and writing.  Students are expected to engage in blended learning by utilising material and reading made available on Blackboard.  They will also be expected to prepare and read material in advance of seminars and to engage in reflection upon their work during module formative feedback sessions.

On successful completion of this module students will be able to:
1. Identify the scope of pleasures which societies have historically sought to regulate
2. Outline some of the strategies and moralities behind the policing and control of pleasure
3. Show in writing that they are able critically to evaluate key arguments and assumptions around pleasure and its regulation
4. Engage with abstract concepts and data relating to the regulation of pleasure
5. Frame appropriate questions to achieve solution(s) to criminological or other problems relating to pleasure.
 

The module is assessed by two essays of 2,000 words.

Essay 1 will require students to Identify the scope of pleasures which societies have historically sought to regulate and to outline some of the strategies and moralities behind the policing and control of pleasure (learning outcomes 1,2).

Essay 2 will require students to demonstrate that they are able critically to evaluate key arguments and assumptions around pleasure and its regulation, to engage with abstract concepts and data relating to the regulation of pleasure and to frame appropriate questions to achieve solution(s) to criminological or other problems relating to pleasure( learning outcomes 3,4,5).
 

Bataille, G.(1985)Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939, ed, trans and intro Allan Stoekl, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
Chancer, L. (1992)Sadomasochism in Everyday Life, Rutgers
Cornell, D. (ed) Feminism & Pornography, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Ferrell J (et al) (2004)Cultural Criminology Unleashed, London: GlassHouse Press
Foucault, M. (1990) History of Sexuality, New York: Vintage Books
Freud, S. (1989) Civilisation and its Discontents, New York: W.W. Norton & Company
Girard, R.(2005)Violence and the Sacred, London/New York: Continuum
Jenks, C. Transgression, London: Routledge
Laqueur, T. (2003)A Cultural History of Masturbation, New York Zone Books
Muchembled, R. (2008) Orgasm & the West: a history of pleasure from the sixteenth century to the present, Cambridge: Polity
Schlosser, E. (2003) Reefer Madness: sex, drugs and cheap labour in the American market,
Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin.
Tomlinson, A., (ed.) (1990)Consumption, Identity and Style: marketing, meanings, and
the packaging of pleasure, London: Routledge.