Ironic Ethics
<p>Tiresias the diviner was turned into a woman by the supreme goddess Hera, having committed the sacrilegious act of killing two copulating snakes. After serving seven years as a priestess and a prostitute, and giving birth to a daughter named Manto (a diviner herself), Tiresias was permitted by the goddess to become male again. One day, Hera and her husband, Zeus, asked Tiresias who had more pleasure in sex, men or women, since he had experienced both womanhood and manhood. He replied that feminine pleasure was infinite, whereas male pleasure was finite, the opposite of what Hera had argued. Hera thus punished Tiresias again, blinding him. This disparity between infinite feminine and finite male pleasure can be seen as the secret that lies hidden within the history of patriarchal political and economic power, insofar as the essential scope of such power, based on the masculine envy of feminine pleasure, is the reduction of pleasure to acquisition, possession, and containment…</p>
Authors: Franco "Bifo" Berardi
Series Editor: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Chus Martínez, Bettina Funcke
Editors: Katrin Sauerländer, Cordelia Marten
Proofreader: Sam Frank
Translators: Nikolaus G. Schneider
Designer: Leftloft
Part of: dOCUMENTA (13): 100 Notes, 100 Thoughts
ISBN: 9783775730563