Encyclopedia of Pleasure
| Part of a series on |
| Arabic culture |
|---|
 |
The Encyclopedia of Pleasure or Jawāmiʿ al-Ladhdhah (
The work served as the inspiration for the sculpture made by Ghada Amer in 2001.
Contents
The Encyclopedia of Pleasure quotes and refers to several named and unnamed poets, writers, philosophers and physicians. One of the most famous and more frequently cited writers was
The book contains an account of a 2nd-century
The author then attempts to find a scientific explanation for
One of the stories told in the book is a story about the first Arab lesbian
The Arabic version of the medieval text was originally published in Damascus as a part of Adab al-Jins 'Inda al-'Arab ("The Erotic Writings of the Arabs"). It is now difficult to find, and most extant copies are missing the chapters that deal with homosexuality. The omissions make the book difficult for many readers to understand.[2] The English translation of the original Arabic version is much easier to find in Europe than in the Arab world.[1][relevant?]
Sculpture
Ghada Amer was fascinated with the fact that the Encyclopedia of Pleasure was widely accepted at the time it was written but was later forbidden in the Arab world. She has noted that although the book was written as a moral guide and combined the "literary, philosophical and medical knowledge" of the Islamic Golden Age was later "suppressed by conservative society".[3] As Amer puts it:
I was interested in this book because it was written by a Muslim centuries ago, and is forbidden today, according to Muslim law. This shows how open-minded literature was at that time and how centuries later, we are living in a much more conservative time. It is very sad to see that this voice has now been silenced. Why has speaking and reading about sexuality become so taboo in today's Muslim society? I have chosen to trace and then embroider parts of the Encyclopedia on a grid of fifty-seven boxes… Specifically, I am choosing to illustrate parts of the Encyclopedia that speak of women's pleasure…'[4]
In 2001 Amer produced a large sculptural installation inspired by the Encyclopedia. She used an English translation of the book to place the text from the chapters that deal with female pleasure and beauty "On praiseworthy aesthetic qualities of women" and "On the advantages of a non-virgin over a virgin" on "57 canvas boxes, covered with Roman script embroidered in gold thread and stacked in various arrangements."[5] The artist chose to blur some words and even some entire passages. She intentionally did this because she believes that "the text of these passages is not important per se but acts merely as the visual framework for larger investigations of sexuality and spirituality and the role of the word within them."[5]
In her work Amer quoted several sexually explicit texts:
A woman's orgasm comes down from her head whereas a man's comes down from his back. Consequently, the fact that she has less liquid and is slower in ejaculation can be attributed to the fact that the distance between the head and the vulva is longer than that between the back and the penis. Bunyan Dakht was asked which finds greater pleasure in sexual union: a man or woman? And she answered: We, women, find such pleasure in sexual union that when God created…[3]
By using such quotes, Amer demonstrated that in medieval Muslim society the women were not as "sexually repressed" as in the present time, and that their opinions on sexuality mattered.[3]
A team of men and women constructed the sculpture in Egypt.[3]
On 23 March 2007, it was used as a part of
See also
References
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8122-4087-0. Retrieved 4 April 2011.
- ^ S2CID 26652886. Retrieved 4 April 2011.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-9800242-0-3. Retrieved 4 April 2011.
- Deitch Projects. Archived from the originalon 22 June 2011. Retrieved 4 April 2011.
- ^ a b "Ghada Amer". Retrieved 4 April 2011.
- ^ Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop (12 March 2007). "Ghada Amer: Defusing the power of erotic images". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 April 2011.