Seduction

Love was not born in the West during the twelfth century: the pre-Islamic Arabic poetry of the sixth century testifies to its existence in the ancient Arab world. These poems are well-known among Moors-the population in Mauritania who speaks an Arabic dialect called Ḥassāniyya-and inspire the local poetic forms. Unlike numerous traditions, poetic inspiration of Moorish poets is not spiritual but carnal because it takes root in the desire for a woman, who taste like Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal. Love poems in Mauritania are not the privilege of a handful, they are primaly composed with the aim of reaching the woman's heart, like bedouin pre-islamic poetry. So her first name, her body, her qualities and defects, from erotized become poetized. In the Moorish society of Mauritania, the sphere of seduction and passion, very often poetized, coexists in parallel with the marital sphere. It is thus never his wife to whom the poet addresses his poetry but another woman that he desires. The lover's figure is a feminized figure, because he can no longer control himself and is subject to a passion that is annihilating him. However, even when the man is in this state in the seduction phase, marked negatively with passivity and suffering, it is only a temporary situation that represents minor harm on the way to conquering the woman and gaining a dominant position over other men. Courtship has commonly been a male prerogative, while women are often not supposed to manifest their desires except in an indirect way. The fact that the man is considered the desiring subject and the woman the desired object is a major cross-cultural gendered element which justifies men's appropriation of women's bodies.

This article examines the work of affective labor in remediating experiences of inhibition and insecurity among heterosexual men in ‘seduction communities’: communities of men who train each other in embodying seductive masculinity to pick up women. Considering how men in seduction communities construct and enact symbolic boundaries in their performances of seduction, this paper will seek to answer the following question: what do seduction communities reveal about the vulnerabilities and frailties of masculinity in the US today? Based on original ethnographic fieldwork carried out in New York City, I examine the ways in which men experience states of cognitive absorption, affective license, and also of disability and abjection in fashioning themselves as objects of female desire through rituals of shared affective labor among men. I argue that men experience culturally based ambivalences around norms of self-help – including ideas of freedom, dependency, and addiction – in ways that complicate heteronormative masculine identities. I furthermore assert that self-fashioning through seduction training invokes ideas of work and play in order to differentiate contradictory ethics of persuasion and self-expression, and that these ideas in turn instantiate different technologies of embodiment that reproduce inequalities between men along lines of race and class.

In continuity with stereotypes that can be traced back to colonial times, present-day tourism images of Cuba tend to emphasize the sensual nature of this Caribbean destination, highlighting the cheerfulness and amiability of its inhabitants as well as their alleged “hotness” and exuberant sexuality. Based on fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Cuba between 2005 and 2016, the article discusses Cuban men’s narratives and practices of seduction of foreign tourist women. The focus is on gendered processes of self-definition that reproduce a global image of Cuba as a place charged with sensuality and eroticism while highlighting these men’s sexual, loving, and caring abilities. By moving beyond reductive readings of sex tourism and sex work, the article highlights the broader range of competences, sensitivities, and moral attunements that these intimate relationships bring into play, and the way they inform Cuban men’s subjectivities, their seduction practices, and their hopes and possibilities to establish longterm relationships with their tourist partners.

This article explores the worldview of the ''seduction community'' operating within the homosocial spaces of North-American ''Guyland.'' This community provides seduction workshops catering mainly to men stereotyped as nerds who are situated at the bottom of the social-sexual hierarchy despite their privileged position in the postindustrial workplace. Based on content analysis of the community's self-help literature, the article argues that the community offers a ''geeky'' solution to the dilemmas of young masculinity and fosters a pickup model based on gaming logic. Courtship is construed as a standardized, rule-governed social skill and is characterized by hyperconsumerism and objectification of women. As part of his self-empowerment, the pickup artist adopts an avatar persona and employs teasing and make-believe techniques. As trainees aim to accomplish control over self and others in compliance with hegemonic masculinity, the strict reliance on gaming logic culminates in the dehumanization of all parties and suspends moral considerations.

This article is about the cultural heritage of a men’s movement,
called PickUp, which gained momentum in the United States
during the 1990s. It finds that the seduction techniques they use
can be traced back to historical seducers. The discourse of
seduction is reconstructed by identifying four stages in seduction
culture from early modernity to the present. Thus contextualized,
the article interpretatively examines three cases of three famous
seducers: Don Juan, Giacomo Casanova, and Søren Kierkegaard,
while highlighting their changing masculinities as connected to
class position and affectual control. Providing insights into
particular social constellations and emotional dynamics of
seduction, the study finds a number of ‘social tropes’ that play a
pivotal role in all the scenes portrayed. Moreover, they have
strong structural equivalencies within the actively applied means
of seduction that the PickUp-Artist’s methodology prescribes,
which is outlined in several advice books that are part of the
contemporary self-help discourse. The conclusion comes back to
seduction’s complicated history, the theory of social tropes, and
problematizes the changing faces of masculinity within them.

This article examines the crisis of capitalist seduction through the lens of online shopping platforms that raise funds for international assistance organizations and development celebrity advertising. Consumer-based giving has altered the commodity fetish into cliché, subsequently masking the capitalist produced crisis of endemic poverty and global inequality. Celebrity supported consumer-based giving and product advertising are used to illustrate the seductions of capitalism. This article argues that international assistance organizations are embedded in the substance and lifeblood of capitalisms' dependence on inequality and poverty to generate profits/wealth. Consumer driven assistance remains a pervasive crisis hidden by seductive shopping platforms camouflaged as compassion.

Change has traditionally been perceived as something to be avoided in favor of stability. This can be witnessed in both individual and organizational approaches to change. In this paper, change as a process of becoming is analyzed. The author relates change to seduction to introduce new perspectives to the concept. The principal idea is that the process of change is a seductive experience. This assumption highlights the positive aspects of becoming, growing, and changing. In doing so, reference is made to the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, as well as the humanistic psychology of Carl Rogers, to analyze seduction, as presented in The Seducer’s Diary by the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. The qualification of this claim is based on this reading. Finally, a conclusion is offered through brief comments on the relationship between seduction, personal growth, and self-actualization.

Abstract
This article examines gender and cultural sense-making in relation to perfumes
and their packaging. Gendered meanings of seduction, choice, consumption and
taste are brought to the fore with the use of go-along interviews with consumers in
perfume stores. Meeting luxury packages in this feminized environment made the
interviewed women speak of bottles as objects to fall in love with and they described
packages as the active part in an act of seduction where they were expecting
packages to persuade them into consumption. The interviewed men on the
other hand portrayed themselves as active choice-makers and stressed that they
were always in control and not seduced by packaging. However, while their ways
of explaining their relationship with packaging on the surface seems to confirm
cultural generalizations in relation to gender and seduction, the article argues that
letting oneself be seduced is no less active than seducing. Based on a combination
of actor network theories and theories of gender performativity the article points
to the agency of packaging for constructions of gender and understands the interviewees
as equally animated by the flows of passion which guide their actions.
Keywords: Consumption, perfume, seduction, packaging, gender, shop-along,
agency.

Literator 36(2), 2015, Art. #1193

Henri Pierre Roché (1879–1959), the author of Jules et Jim, has been called a general introducer, an exemplary amateur, a collector of women and art and one of the most prolific diarists and active lovers in recorded history. Author of a collection of vignettes about Don Juan, Roché was fascinated with the figure of the seducer and in his twenties planned to devote his life
to the creation of a body of work which would examine moral, intellectual, social and sexual relations between women and men. To this end, he would transform his life into a laboratory
where real-life experiences would become the main source of reference. Roché’s diary spans sixty years and abounds in tales of seduction. However, the most intense and captivating
intrigue of seduction and betrayal in his diary, is his relationship with Helen Hessel. At the start of their affair, Roché suggested that she too should keep a diary of the maelstrom of passion into which they were plunged. Written in French, German and English, Helen Hessel’s diary captures the drama of seduction and functions on several levels: realistic, visionary, absorbed in her thoughts and emotions and yet critical of herself and others. A juxtaposed reading of the two diaries generates a fascinatingly dense texture, revealing the mechanisms
of seduction at play. The counterpoint created by these two interdependent voices becomes ever more complex as one becomes aware of the intertextual references that contribute to the emerging polyphony of recorded life and love.

À travers l'ethnographie des concours de beauté organisés dans une communauté native kakataibo (Amazonie péruvienne), cet article interroge d'un côté l'expérience du féminin que font aujourd'hui les jeunes filles kakataibo et de l'autre les rapports que le groupe entretient avec la population non-indigène de la région. Par contraste avec les concours de beauté organisés dans d'autres contextes autochtones, l'objectif du concours kakataibo n'est pas tant d'exposer et d'affirmer la différence culturelle ou ethnique que de mettre en scène la figure de la femme blanche transformée en objet de désir. Cette performance peut être analysée à partir de certaines transformations étroitement liées à la scolarisation, à la construction du genre et, plus généralement, aux nouvelles politiques du corps, qui se sont développées dans les villages amérindiens au cours des dernières décennies. En privilégiant une approche pragmatique et interactionniste, nous nous intéressons dans un premier temps aux aspects spectaculaires et mimétiques de l'événement (répétitions, costumes, chorégraphie) pour passer ensuite à l'analyse de la dimension performative de ce jeu singulier consistant à « être un autre ». [Mots-clés : Amazonie, concours de beauté, performance, mimèsis, séduction, féminité, genre.] Becoming a Kakataibo Queen. Performance, seduction and gender in Peruvian Amazonia. Through an ethnography of beauty contests organized in a Kakataibo Native Community (Peruvian Amazon), this article examines on the one hand the young Kakataibo women's experience of femininity, and on the other hand, the relations of Kakataibo with the non-indigenous population of the region. In contrast to the beauty contests organized in other indigenous contexts which expose and affirm cultural difference or ethnicity, the Kakataibo version aims to stage the figure of the white woman transformed into an object of desire. This performance can be understood through the transformations that are taking place in Amerindian villages, and related closely to education, modes of gender construction and more generally to the new politics of the body. Privileging a pragmatic and interactionist approach, we initially focus on the spectacular and mimetic aspects of the event (training, costumes, choreography), and then proceed to examine the performative * LESC/EREA, 21, allée de l'Université, 92023 Nanterre CEDEX [dziubinska@gmail.com].

Using Jean Baudrillard's interpretation of 'seduction' one can give an account of how paradigms fluctuate historically, where 'seduction' can occur at the metaphysical, psychological and sociological levels. Using the 'ambiguity' and 'reversibility' that Baudrillard says are features of 'seduction', where we cannot be sure who is seducing who, and in each seeking to become the 'other' only leads to the manifestation of their difference. Applying these notions through the philosophy of science of Thomas Kuhn, when a science is ruled by a governing paradigm it becomes almost identical with nature. As a paradigm is an interpretation of nature and not nature itself we can ask the question: does nature appear a certain way because the paradigm postulates it or is nature leading science in proposing said paradigm? Who is leading who? Why this happens is because paradigms, through the metaphysics of science, seeks to become identical with nature, but in doing so it slowly begins to collapse under the weight of accumulated anomalies. So in seeking to become identical with nature as 'other' they actually begin to manifest their differences. I argue that this metaphor and motif of seduction can be found throughout the enterprise of science when viewed historically.

How does an organization retain and recruit its workforce? How does an organization produce a high level of creativity and innovation? According to Finn Janning, the answers can be found in the trilogy “The Seducer, The Conqueror and The Discoverer” by the Norwegian author Jan Kjærstad.With the inspiration of Gilles Deleuze and Michel Serres, the book revitalizes the field of Human Resource Management, and presents new forms of organizing. Furthermore, Finn Janning offers some new perspectives to the area of coaching by developing a philosophical approach named affirmative coaching.

Seduction is not solely a matter of literary history (anymore). In the 1980s a community has emerged that, up to the present day, developed practical methodologies applicable in any public venue and social gathering. Nonetheless, the leading figures of this PickUp community strongly acknowledge their predecessors as they can be found in literary history. Prominently, Kierkegaard, in his “Seducer’s Diary,” has introduced such a predecessor. As part of Either/Or, the diary meticulously unfolds and portrays the interactional dynamics of seduction. To analyze this process sociologically is the main objective of the present article. In order to achieve this goal, the essay comments on how fictional literature can become material for social science and, after pointing to the multiple layers of the reader/writer/editor-relation, focuses on two questions crucial to seduction as a micro-interactional procedure: (1) What is the effect of seduction, in particular for the seduced? Arguing that seduction involves a form of empowerment, the article finds an explanation for Cordelia’s letters being displayed before Johannes’ narration begins. (2) What are the concrete techniques of seduction? Isolating three of them-including the gaze-the essay concludes that Kierkegaard was not only a theologian, religious author and philosopher, but he was also a social theorist.

Es posible que haya escuchado hablar de pedagogía y seducción; no obstante, en la introducción se irá desglosando un parecer fundamentado sobre la pedagogía de la seducción. En este sentido, se propone un ensayo junto a una estrategia metodológica la cual sugiere la interpretación de algunas obras pictóricas para comprender un poco mejor la pedagogía de la seducción. A partir de resultados inspirados en tres acciones: la comunicación no verbal, la comunicación asertiva y la coreografía entre pantallas; habría que tener presente el saber interactuar con el cuerpo, del mismo modo que hace falta mantener una comunicación cercana con la empatía y en la serenidad, en la escucha activa y respetuosa; sin olvidar que el alumnado universitario se desenvuelve con las pantallas: las suyas y la que pueda utilizar el profesorado. Y, a modo de conclusión, toda esta propuesta de aproximación se establece sobre un diálogo simbólico en pro de mejorar la docencia universitaria.

A ghost is haunting the eighteenth-century novel – the ghost of Lucretia, the chaste Roman matron who killed herself after being raped by Tarquinius and whose death ushered in the birth of the Roman Republic. With the rise of the epistolary novel in the eighteenth century, many great writers entered the scene to re-write the story of Lucretia, and new Lucretia stories emerged – among which Clarissa (1748) by the English novelist Samuel Richardson and Julie (1761) by the Genevan philosopher and writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau are two great examples. Both novels are attempts to rehabilitate the virtue of a supposedly “fallen” woman: despite their “tarnished virtue,” the heroines Clarissa and Julie both provide new models for feminine virtue and female heroism. However, the question remains: under what value system are Clarissa and Julie deemed as “fallen” women, and who is it to determine whether they are “fallen” or not? In this project, I will show how Clarissa and Julie are not only physically seduced by men but also ideologically seduced by an aristocratic patriarchy that is perpetuated not just by men but also by women – and whether these young ladies have the free will to consent or not consent to this multi-layered seduction.

El amor es un elemento importante, aunque no primordial, en la poesía de Horacio. Concretamente, en la primera obra compuesta por Horacio, las Sátiras o Sermones, documentamos una postura contraria al amor y a la seducción, en línea con el ideario epicúreo. Horacio denuesta la implicación emocional inherente al amor por las mujeres y, por tanto, disuade de implicarse en prácticas de seducción. Ridiculiza la posición poco airosa del enamorado excluido a las puertas de la amada (serm. II 3, 259-275) y disuade de mantener relaciones adúlteras con matronas (serm. I 2, II 7). Se estudia este tema desde una perspectiva comparatista, con especial atención a la configuración tematológica del motivo, sus fuentes (epigrama griego, comediográfos griegos, Lucrecio) y su proyección (en Quevedo, los hermanos Argensola y el Arte de las Putas de Nicolás Fernández de Moratín).

El artículo caracteriza las performances de seducciónmasculinaen el marco de una academia,ubicadaen la Ciudad de Buenos Aires duranteel año 2019 (marzo-diciembre),que promueve una pedagogía sobre el cortejo heterosexual basadaen los libros The game,Penetrating the secret society of pickup artista(2006)y The Mystery Method: How to Get Beautiful Women Into Bed(2007) que han tenido impacto en la denominada “comunidad de seducción”. Mediante un abordaje cualitativo se empleó el método etnográfico,la teoría fundamentada y la observación participante como técnica de investigaciónprincipal. Se halló que la institución estudiada constituye performances de seducción que establecen vínculos sexo afectivos de dominación de acuerdo con una concepción sobre el género asentada en la masculinidad hegemónica

After working as a personal assistant during the Second World War to John Godfrey, the Director of Naval Intelligence of the Royal Navy, Ian Fleming designed James Bond as a prominent fictional British agent from the novel Casino Royale (1953) onward. Bond completes the assignments while simultaneously enjoying the bachelor lifestyle and this has always intrigued many readers and spectators. His life is also enriched by consumerism and more essentially, effortless seduction to limitless sex. Meanwhile his sexual encounters stress his freedom from commitment as well as his embodied British national power, his interactions with most of the Bond Girls since the first Bond movie Dr No (1962) however lack mutual comfort and connection. My dissertation analyses four generations of James Bond movies: Thunderball (1965), Moonraker (1979), GoldenEye (1995) and Casino Royale (2006). These four sources substantiate that the legendary womaniser Bond is instead very much incapable of seducing most of his Bond Girls. As each of the Girl provides a certain extent of intelligence leading to the antagonists, the deficient Bondian seduction therefore hinders both his capacity in national security maintenance as well as his possibility of relishing splendid sexual life.

La mode, modélisation de l’apparence, opère principalement par le biais de la séduction. Alors qu’elle est de plus en plus fréquemment interrogée dans le champ universitaire de manière transversale, cela n’a pas manqué d’être relevé, commenté et analysé par des auteurs comme Gilles Lipovetsky, qui, à la suite de Baudrillard, l’explicite à l’aide du concept de « simulacre », voire de « fantomalisation ». C’est particulièrement vrai dans le cas des photographies de mode, produites puis diffusées par des magazines spécialisés. Ces publications sont une interface où s’articule et tente de se résoudre la tension première entre tentation artistique et nécessité commerciale, à travers le désir - certes mimétique, mais désir aussi de continuer à compulser ces images séductrices. Des mensuels américains haut-de-gamme comme Vogue et Harper’s Bazaar, notre corpus, disposant à la fois de grands moyens et d’influence auprès de plusieurs millions de lecteurs, illustrent un glissement du jeu de séduction, depuis les années 1960 (période de bouleversements créatifs, sociaux mais aussi économiques), vers une fascination de plus en plus hypnotique, voire obsessionnelle.

Pour une analyse des spécificités et des fonctionnements de ce système, il faudra d’abord dégager ce qui fait son succès - et ce auprès de deux publics, les lecteurs et les annonceurs, alors que les magazines tentent de conserver leur attrait et leur pertinence dans un monde qui évolue, tout comme le(s) public(s) d’ailleurs. Il leur faut d’une part séduire en proposant des formes esthétiques cristallisant un « moment », et assorties d’un discours de la nouveauté, et d’autre part proposer un idéal qui, en raison d’impératifs économiques, est en fait inaccessible. En offrant aux lectrices un jeu de fascination et d’admiration, les magazines se posent en sublimateurs d’un consumérisme dans lequel ils peuvent conserver leur rôle d’ « intercesseurs de féminité ».

En cela et pour cela, les photographies de mode dans les magazines construisent en fait un système propre, autonome, qu’il conviendra aussi d’étudier. On observe de fait un processus d’iconisation de l’image de mode, qu’il nous faut rapprocher du Pop Art et de ses pratiques, mais aussi d’un « reportage » sur une personnalité, un corps, et bien plus sur un imaginaire qui nourrit la fascination d’actualité à l’ère de la Pop Culture. Comme dans d‘autres mouvements, le lecteur est d’ailleurs ainsi invité à participer à l’action, qui a d’autant plus d’impact qu’elle est sérielle et répétée. L’image originale est à la fois renforcée et dissoute dans ses multiples relectures. Bien plus, à travers un système d’intericonicité, les magazines créent un réseau puissant et autonome, dont le but est triple: se positionner par rapport au monde extérieur (avec tous ses événements socio-politiques), avec les lecteurs (par un processus d’identification) et, de manière inconsciente, comme des objets uniques (ce qui justifie l’existence même des supports). Ainsi, ils créent rapidement de nouveaux modèles forts sur lesquels ils peuvent ensuite s’appuyer pendant des décennies, et ce de manière très fiable à travers un réseau propre de réflexivité qui continuera à se nourrir lui-même de manière endémique.

Resumen.

El presente trabajo intenta, a partir de la revisión de las obras fundamentales de Jean Baudrillard, dar cuenta del origen de la personalidad narcisista, que no conoce límites entre ella misma y el mundo que exige la gratificación inmediata de sus deseos, así como la erosión de la vida íntima tenida lugar en la sociedad del espectáculo. El American way of life aparecerá caracterizado como el imperio de la seducción y de la obsolescencia decretada; un sistema que rinde culto al fetiche de la mercancía y la pornografía de la información. Finalmente, se buscará dar cuenta de cómo el consumo no es, en absoluto, la base sobre la que descansa el progreso, sino más bien la barrera que lo estanca o, al menos, lo lanza en la dirección contraria a la de la mejora de las relaciones sociales.

Cet article s'intéresse à la duchesse de Châtillon (1627-1695) et à son utilisation, fréquemment feinte, des émotions, et plus précisément de l’affliction, comme stratégie d’intervention sociale.
Issue de la prestigieuse maison des Montmorency, cette éminente aristocrate a fait l’objet de très peu d’études. Veuve à deux reprises, elle a pourtant tenu le rôle de négociatrice officieuse pour Louis XIV dans le Saint-Empire romain germanique, alors que les femmes étaient à l’époque tenues à l’écart des affaires politiques.
L'argumentation s'appuie d’une part sur la correspondance diplomatique de la duchesse avec d’éminents hommes d’État de l’époque, dans laquelle elle tend à mettre en scène ses émotions afin d’obtenir satisfaction de la part de ses correspondants.  L'article se base également sur plusieurs Mémoires de l’époque où il est reproché à la duchesse, de manière répétée, son manque de sincérité et son « caractère de déguisement ». Grâce à l’analyse d’une correspondance politique essentiellement inédite, c'est donc une trajectoire féminine atypique du Grand Siècle qui est ici explorée, au travers d’une approche originale, celle de l’histoire des émotions.

This chapter explores consciously manipulated sexual ‘consent’ from legal, psychological, and philosophical perspectives. As a prism through which to explore these issues, the paper looks at the lucrative ‘seduction industry’, with a particular focus on courses which purport to teach single men how to ‘programme’ women in the pursuit of sexual ‘consent’. Sitting between the extremes of consent by hypnosis, and consent by charm, we ask whether (and how) the law should engage with such activity, and what, if anything, this phenomenon tells us about the nature of consent. We analyse techniques of programmed consent over three parts. In Part A we discuss attacks on the mind in general terms, exploring the extent to which the law protects against mental manipulations. In Part B we focus on the seduction industry, and the detail of the claims made about their techniques. Finally, in Part C, we discuss how the current law (in the sexual context at least) could be used to protect victims’ mental integrity, whether the techniques attempted for programming consent are successful or not.

Prompted by what is seen as central to all concepts involved in what teaching is, this essay attempts to explore the power relationship between student and teacher.  Teaching is traditionally seen as the knowledgeable, as teacher, teaching the learners, as students.  There are innumerable aspects that make up what teaching is considered to be and how it comes about.  To name but a few, knowledge transfer, opening of the mind, communication, emancipation, creating valuable members of society, reproducing the status and so on. While some of these goals or attributes of teaching may be complementary, others may be considered antithetical.  Arguably, many aspects of teaching may be considered equally relevant to assisting in looking for what “a sense of teaching” is, however, an exploration of the power relationship between teacher and student, highlighting the centrality of the relationship to teaching and learning, shall be the focus of this essay.  Some of the perspectives drawn shall be taken from interpretations of Sidorkin, Adorno, Rancière, Dewey, Wittgenstein, Kant, Heidegger, Castoriadis, and Lee.

Keywords: Relationships, power, seduction, truth, education, teaching, learning, love.
“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1984)

After a previous analysis of the glances, words and
gestures in seduction,the author now reflects on the effects of time and distance, the latter being understood as space. Time does not go by for seduction, or rather time produces seduction Seduction is understood as a song with an a llure akin to the sirens songs described by Ulysses