Desire in relation to others

pp. 59-68

in: William Wilkerson, Ambiguity and sexuality, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007

Abstract

In the process of showing that our experience of desire is contextual, I have many times claimed that the context that mediates our experience of desire is social and historical. Individuals come to have the desires they have in part because of their specific cultural and historical location. I now need to explain how this occurs. This chapter and the next show how an outwardly directed and future-oriented desire finds fulfillment and conditioning in social interactions that are governed by normative standards: desire takes on meaning when it comes to have a place in a network of social interactions governed by a society's standards of proper and improper.