Many splendored things: Sexuality, playfulness and play

Abstract

<p>This article makes a theoretical argument for the productivity of the notions of playfulness</p><p> </p><p>and play in feminist and queer studies of sexuality. Defined as a mode of sensory</p><p> </p><p>openness and drive towards improvisation, playfulness can be seen as central to a range</p><p> </p><p>of sexual activities from fumbling, random motions to elaborate, rehearsed scenarios.</p><p> </p><p>Play in the realm of sexuality involves experimentations with what bodies can feel and</p><p> </p><p>do. As pleasurable activity practised for its own sake, play involves the exploration of</p><p> </p><p>different bodily capacities, appetites, orientations and connections. Understood in this</p><p> </p><p>vein, play is not the opposite of seriousness or simply synonymous with fun. Driven by</p><p> </p><p>the quest for bodily pleasure, play may just as well be strained, dark and hurtful in the</p><p> </p><p>forms that it takes and the sensory intensities that it engenders. This article argues that</p><p> </p><p>the mode of playfulness and acts of play allow for pushing previously perceived and</p><p> </p><p>imagined horizons of embodied potentiality in terms of sexual routines and identifications</p><p> </p><p>alike. It examines the productive avenues that the notions of playfulness and play</p><p> </p><p>open up in conceptualising the urgency of sexual pleasures, the contingency of desires</p><p> </p><p>and their congealment in categories of identity.</p><p> </p><p></p><p>Keywords</p><p> </p><p></p><p>Desire, fantasy, play, playfulness, pleasure</p><p></p><p></p><p><br /></p>