Tuesday, November 28, 2017

The Body's “Holy Hole”


In The Orifice as Sacrificial Site (2002), James Aho asks, "What exactly is it about the anus that induces a feeling of unease, dis-ease?"

He readily concedes that part of the issue is the anus's association with feces and thus its long history of being declared limmode [unclean]. Yet the anus is also one of the body's most erogenous zones, a "holy place of romp and renewal," in the words of poet James Broughton.


"The anus is the transforming and recycling volcano that fertilizes new growth," declares Broughton in his contribution to the 1995 anthology Gay Spirit.

Perhaps James Aho had something similar in mind when he wrote that "the anus occupies an ambiguous, transitional status"; it is one of those "other places in the geography of the lived body, passages and districts of otherness, holy holes . . . sites of numinosity and sacredness."


See also the previous posts:
The Body: A Holy Place of Romp and Renewal
Body and Soul
Morning Light – November 26, 2016
Out on a Limb
Beauty

No comments: