The butthole of Eros. An archeology of anal countersexualities and queer micropolitics

Abstract

Returning to the Foucauldian methodology of the archeology of ideas and the concept of “contrasexuality” by Paul B. Preciado, this article performs a reflective analysis on some historical nominations for the erotic practice of anal penetration between men, first among the Greeks, and then in the eighties during the AIDS crisis, to contrast in the most radical way possible the social appreciations that derive from such a practice. Although this analytical framework is experimental and partial, since we will not deal strictly with the history of sexual knowledge but rather with the rules, effects of meaning and codes about giving and receiving up the ass, we will rehearse its construction as if reverse engineering the forms of singular experiences of Eros in the very flesh of the body of the subject of desire, through the recovery of probable pasts, to imagine the queer becoming of possible futures. We conclude with a reflection on the need to critically theorize contrasexual archaeologies and genealogies of the pleasure of giving and receiving up the ass, as well as its recent antecedents with fistfucking and the re-actualization of bareback practices.