Erotic desire is constituted by signs and technology, not natural sex

Evidence

Ballard recognised that there is no “biological” sexuality waiting beneath the “alienated layers” of civilisation. Ballard’s compulsively repeated theme of reversion to savagery does not present a return to a non-symbolised bucolic Nature, but a fall back into an intensely semioticised and ritualised symbolic space. (It is only the postmoderns who believe in a pre-symbolic Nature.) Eroticism is made possible — not merely mediated — by signs and technical apparatus, such that the body, signs and machines become interchangeable. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1045

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that eroticism is made possible rather than merely mediated by technical apparatus — that ‘savagery’ is itself hyper-semiotic — resists one-sentence capture and reframes how one reads desire and the body.
• XREF: connects to: Eroticism is constituted by signs and machines, not just mediated by them — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1045; Sexual desire is only one metaphor for bodies’ symbolic exchange of signs — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1047; Desire results from libidinal engineering, not spontaneous vitalist release — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1911 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Eroticism is constituted by signs and machines, not just mediated by them #corroborates (1.00) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1045
• Sexual attraction arises from socially conditioned images, not raw nature #corroborates (0.85)
• Sexual desire is only one metaphor for bodies’ symbolic exchange of signs #expands (0.80) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1047
• Desire results from libidinal engineering, not spontaneous vitalist release #expands (0.80) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1911
• Sexuality is produced by biopower’s discourses, not a repressed secret to decode #expands (0.80) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 293
• Intimacy became a temporary experience molded by speculative technologies #exemplifies (0.75)