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Is there truth in sex or in orgasm? Is that where we turn to seek some kind of authentic self? And what is the relation between orgasm, authenticity, and society?
Such questions are put into play in Orgasmology, a work that presumes little in the way of answers and offers less in the way of judgments. Orgasm serves as the lens through which the author, Annamarie Jagose, explores the social and cultural history of the twentieth century, exposing hidden values through our evolving ideas about that ecstatic state. Through this approach, fake orgasm sheds its identity as an unequivocal marker of inauthenticity and dishonesty, and is instead reconsidered as an opening to generative ways of thinking about new forms of social relations. Such thinking may be attributed, at least in part, to queer theory, the academic rubric under which we may classify this book.
By questioning assumptions around sexuality and gender, queer theory opens the flood gates to questioning all and assuming nothing—or at least, it can often feel that way. Queer theory was an outgrowth of poststructuralism and has been one of the central approaches to critical thinking in the humanities since the early 1990s. It is an approach that was largely inspired by feminist studies, as well as lesbian and gay studies, and takes Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality, Volume I, as a foundational text.1