David Foster Wallace's Toxic Sexuality

Hideousness, Neoliberalism, Spermatics

Edward Jackson

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350117785
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Nordamerikanische Literaturkritik

David Foster Wallace's Toxic Sexuality: Hideousness, Neoliberalism, Spermatics is the first full-length study of perhaps the most controversial aspect of Wallace's work – male sexuality. Departing from biographical accounts of Wallace's troubled relationship to sex, the book offers new and engaging close readings of this vexed topic in both his fiction and non-fiction. Wallace consistently returns to images of sexual toxicity across his career to argue that, when it comes to sex, men are immutably hideous. He makes this argument by drawing on a variety of neoliberal logics and spermatic metaphors, which in their appeal to apparently neutral economic processes and natural bodily facts, forestall the possibility that men can change. The book therefore provides a revisionist account of Wallace's attitudes towards capitalism, as well as a critical dissection of his approach to masculinity and sexuality. In doing so, David Foster Wallace's Toxic Sexuality shows how Wallace can be considered a neoliberal writer, whose commitment to furthering male sexual toxicity is a disturbing but undeniable part of his literary project.

1

Responsibility

Investing against pornification

In his essay ‘The Braindead Megaphone’, George Saunders argues that media sensationalism during the 1990s helped to debase the quality of public discourse. To illustrate this, he references President Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Saunders mimics the media frenzy concerning Lewinsky’s infamous blue dress, which bore the traces of Clinton’s semen: ‘more at five about The Stain! Have you ever caused a Stain? Which color do you think would most effectively hide a Stain? See what our experts predicted you would say!’ (2008: 6) The satire here partly takes aim at a culture that allows for sexual images and meanings to proliferate in public. As such, Saunders articulates a fear that Tom Wolfe also shares, particularly in his essay ‘Hooking Up’. Here Wolfe asserts that ‘every magazine stand was a riot of bare flesh’ (2012: 5), instances of ‘web-sex addiction were rising in number’ (5), and ‘sexual stimuli bombarded the young. … At puberty the dams, if any were left, were burst’ (5–6). This ‘lurid carnival’ (5) that Wolfe outlines implies the greater cultural presence of pornography in particular – in fact, he suggests that pornography has become so normalized that the term itself is now redundant (5). Whether or not this is true, the twenty-first-century boom in easily accessible, hardcore pornography has arguably borne out Saunders’s and Wolfe’s concerns. In fact, given president Donald Trump’s boast that fame and money allow him to grab women ‘by the pussy’,¹ the scandal of Lewinsky’s dress now feels quaint, a lewd historical curio from a time before standards really began to fall.

Wallace shares Saunders’s and Wolfe’s worries.² In the essays ‘Back in New Fire’ and ‘Big Red Son’, and in the stories of Brief Interviews, he laments how a glut of pornography disenchants sex as an arena for emotional connection. Anxieties over pornography’s saturation of the cultural mainstream are not unique to the 1990s, of course, but I am not interested in whether or not this decade differs from others in this regard.³ Rather, I wish to explore how the idea that this was the case informs Wallace’s depictions of male sexuality. Wolfe’s image of dried-up dams in fact resonates with the spermatic metaphors that underpin Wallace’s concern with pornography. Wallace presents men who, when faced with an abundance of pornographic media, waste their sexual resources in casual sex or masturbation. Consequently, he suggests that men need to invest these resources more responsibly, if they want to emotionally connect with others. As Matthew Eagleton-Pierce observes, appeals to individual responsibility have ‘become common in the context of neoliberalism’ (2016: 156), especially as politicians promote logics of ‘self-governance and self-care’ (160) while they dismantle forms of state support. In Wendy Brown’s more precise definition, responsibilization tasks subjects with ‘undertaking the correct strategies of self-investment and entrepreneurship for thriving and surviving; it is in this regard a manifestation of human capitalization’ (2015: 133). Wallace tasks male characters and readers in a similar way. Indicting pornography for inspiring non-reproductive sexual activities, he encourages them to manage their sexuality as a form of human capital, to be wisely invested in the pursuit of greater interpersonal intimacy.

Furthermore, responsibilization in this context constructs what Brown describes as ‘financialized human capital’ (33) in particular. Past theories of human capital, such as those put forth by Gary S. Becker, focused on how investments in one’s education or lifestyle can determine future income, whether monetary, psychic or otherwise. However, recent decades, for Brown, have witnessed a shift towards ‘a new model of economic conduct’ (34), whereby the goal ‘is to self-invest in ways that enhance its [human capital’s] value’ (33). Though an interest in securing returns on investments persists, it now jostles with an understanding of human capital where the objective is to increase one’s value. The ways in which Wallace sexually responsibilizes men accords with this idea of value appreciation. Pornography is indeed such a marker for non-reproductivity in his texts because it devalues male sexuality as a means by which men can emotionally connect with others. Severs has explored at length how Wallace is interested in ‘economic, monetary, mathematical, semantic, aesthetic, and moral meanings of value’ (2017a: 10). In the essays and stories that I examine in this chapter, Wallace envisages male sexuality in relation to the first two terms in this list. He suggests that if men increase the value of their sexuality as a form of financialized human capital, they will be able to form more meaningful connections with their partners.

These dynamics are indicative of what various commentators have described as financialization. Natascha van der Zwan provides a useful breakdown of this term. If, at its simplest, f inance refers to the management of money, and financial capitalism denotes a system in which financial processes dominate, then financialization designates ‘the web of interrelated processes – economic, political, social, technological, cultural etc. – through which finance has extended its influence beyond the marketplace and into other realms of social life’ (2014: 101). One such realm, in Wallace’s texts, is male sexuality. Indeed, in her overview of scholarship that focuses on ‘the financialization of the everyday’ (111), Van der Zwan explains how, for political scientists like Rob Aitken, ‘financialization has created a new subjectivity: the “investing subject” … [an] autonomous individual who insures himself against the risks of the life cycle through financial literacy and self-discipline’ (113). Wallace’s suggestions that men need to invest their sexual resources more responsibly accords with this idea. True to Randy Martin’s assertion that ‘economic fundamentals … become flustered under the financial gaze’ (2002: 11), his texts also inculcate this subjectivity at the expense of ideas of male sexuality that, as I outline them, centre on labour and exchange. This inculcation is necessary, Wallace suggests, if men are to counter the emotionally deadening effect that pornography has on sex.

Commentators have coined a variety of terms to describe the greater presence of pornography in contemporary societies. These include pornocopia (O’Toole 1998), pornified (Paul 2006), pornification (Nikunen, Paasonen and Saarenmaa 2007), and porning (Sarracino and Scott 2010). As Gerry Carlin and Mark Jones note, ‘Authors and publishers compete to effectively signify the pervasiveness of pornography by forming neologisms combin[in]g porn with various suffixes’ (2010: 188). My preference in this chapter is to use Nikunen et al.’s term, which they employ in order to capture how ‘texts citing pornographic styles, gestures and aesthetics – and to a degree pornography itself – have become staple features of popular media culture in Western societies as commodities purchased and consumed’ (2007: 1). However, I will at times stretch this focus on ‘styles, gestures and aesthetics’ to include sex aids as well. Hence when Jeni Roberts purchases a vibrator in ‘Adult World (II)’, I read this as being part of the pornification that Wallace explores and deplores. That said, there are limitations to reading pornification as ‘commodities purchased and consumed’ alone. Wallace often depicts pornography in conjunction with consumerism, and in order to suggest that they are mutually objectionable. However, his presentation of male sexuality as financialized human capital also departs from this realm. Accordingly, ideas of investment and valorization are far more significant to my analysis in this chapter than commodification.

Furthermore, although complaints about commodification are useful in explicating anxieties about pornification, they presuppose that sexuality can or should exist outside of economics. As such, these complaints are indicative of what Brown describes as one of the ‘four deleterious effects’ (2015: 28) of neoliberalism that its critics tend to identify – the ‘unethical commercialization of things and activities considered inappropriate for marketization’ (29, italics in original). Jeremy Gilbert provides a good example of this worry about – in Brown’s words – ‘crass commodification’ (30). In his Introduction to the essay collection Neoliberal Culture, Gilbert notes in passing that the ‘commodification of sex [at the hands of the pornography industry] … is one of the most striking characteristics of neoliberal culture today’ (2016a: 19). To some extent, Wallace’s depiction of sex confirms this line of argument. Kiki Benzon is right to say that Wallace explores how, in ‘a culture governed by neoliberal principles’ (2015: 33), consumer ‘pleasure itself may preclude a conscious, critical engagement with the world’ (33). Yet similar to how, as I noted in my Introduction, C. Wesley Buerkle’s equation of neoliberalism with consumerism does not account for the former’s particularity, reading Wallace’s engagement with pornification in terms of commodification alone elides how he envisages male sexuality as an economic resource from the get-go. Essays such as ‘Back in New Fire’ certainly critique pornification as a form of commodification, but they also urge men to increase the value of their sexuality as financialized human capital.

Additionally, reading Wallace’s objection to pornification as an objection to how it fans individualism – so that sex, in Gilbert’s words, becomes a ‘consumptive rather than a relational act’ (2016a: 19) – is only helpful to some extent. Wallace undoubtedly suggests that pornification undermines sex as an arena in which men can emotionally connect with others. In this light, his treatment of pornification is part of what some critics argue is Wallace’s key concern – as Clare Hayes-Brady puts it, this is his ‘insistence on striving for connection’ in pursuit of a ‘dream of complete intimacy’ (2016: viii, 7). For Vincent Haddad this focus on intimacy is ‘a physical, potentially erotic, transfer as well’ (2017: 3), a reading that Casey Michael Henry has furthered with his argument that, in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men especially, Wallace’s ‘relational model … is most accurately described as sexual’ (2019: 139). Nevertheless, it would be short-sighted to argue that Wallace re-energizes sex as a relational space, if for no other reason than what Jonathan Franzen describes as a ‘near-perfect absence, in his fiction, of ordinary love’ (2012: 39). Though a failure of relationality provides the animus for his problem with pornification, the solutions he posits actually reaffirm an individualistic ethos. By encouraging men to increase the value of their sexual resources by investing them in more responsible behaviours, Wallace highlights the importance of self- rather than other-directed action. Instead of creating emotional bonds with others, then, these processes have the paradoxical effect of transforming non-reproductive pleasures into what Wallace suggests is a worthwhile sexual abstinence.

This goes some way to explaining why the essays and short stories that I examine in this chapter, despite their professed concern for how pornification undermines sex as a form of emotional connection, reaffirm the sexual non-reproductivity that they lament. Thus ‘Back in New Fire’ and ‘Big Red Son’ respectively instruct and imply that men should refrain from sex, rather than take part in the relational bonds that both essays suggest it can facilitate. The fact that these others with whom Wallace implies men need to connect are women, moreover, also explains why his texts bolster such non-reproductivity. For despite his attention to how men engage with, and, in ‘Big Red Son’, perpetuate a pornified culture, Wallace often aligns the dangers of pornification with women. It is fair to read this as sexism, an example of the longstanding association of mass culture and femininity that Andreas Huyssen outlines in his book After the Great Divide (1986). In the texts I examine, such sexism revolves around the suspicion that female sexual agency furthers consumerism – hence Jeni’s purchasing of a vibrator in ‘Adult World (II)’. My concern lies less in accounting for the reasons for this suspicion, and more in exploring how it informs Wallace’s construction of male sexuality as financialized human capital. To some extent, it is central: for by aligning pornification with women, Wallace makes the need for men to resist the former – by valorizing their own sexual resources – an important part of his call for men to resist the latter.

The readings that I pursue here will at times appear counter-intuitive. The ‘Adult World’ stories, for instance, critique the sexual self-investments that I focus on, albeit in relation to women. Nevertheless, by showing how these texts are still indebted to logics of responsibilization, my readings are indicative of the revisionist approach that I adopt more generally. Hence, this chapter argues that Wallace urges men to invest their sexual resources in conducts that increase their value as a means to create emotional bonds with others. To the extent that these conducts either proscribe or preclude orgasm, however, then this process ends up implying that non-reproductivity is central to masculinity. This occurs by virtue of how Wallace’s proposed conducts endorse displaced forms of abstinence, and also in how his suspicion of female sexual agency means he prioritizes scenarios that foreclose intercourse with women. My argument unfolds in two stages. First, I show how Wallace’s hostility to casual sex and masturbation supplants ideas of labour and exchange with an emphasis on financialized human capital. Secondly, I explore how his attempt to critique these processes when carried out by women ultimately works to stress their desirability for men. By preserving the negativity that Wallace suggests pornification inspires, his texts imply that men must control, rather than challenge, their sexual toxicity.

The labour of ‘Back in New Fire’

‘Back in New Fire’ is Wallace’s most direct engagement with sexual mores. It is also, perhaps, his most controversial text, arguing as he does that AIDS is ‘a blessing, a gift’ (2012c: 171) that could ‘be the salvation of sexuality in the 1990s’ (168). Wallace makes this argument based on the threat of ‘heterosexual AIDS’ (168), and does not mention homosexuals beyond an oblique reference to ‘brave people’ (172) suffering from the illness. In his review of Both Flesh and Not, a collection of Wallace’s non-fiction that includes ‘Back in New Fire’, Charles Nixon calls Wallace’s logic here ‘indefensibly graceless and uncaring, and, in fact, [it] has virtually nothing to recommend it’ (2013b). It is hard to disagree with this, though one can perhaps caveat Wallace’s position by pointing to the essay’s original place of publication – Dave Eggers’s less literary precursor to McSweeney’s, Might magazine. This magazine included issues with titles such as ‘For the Love of Cheese’ and ‘Are Black People Cooler than White People?’ To some extent, Might’s satirical tone can help explain Wallace’s provocative stance in ‘Back in New Fire’. That said, Might’s approach was tongue-in-cheek rather than broadly parodic, and there is a substantial difference between the racist cliché that blacks are cooler than whites and the deeply uncaring suggestion that AIDS is a blessing. Moreover, there is no doubting Wallace’s earnestness in this essay when he proposes that AIDS can deliver Americans from pornification’s ‘erotic despair’ (2012c: 171), namely, by compelling them to consider sex as a way to emotionally connect with others.

For Wallace the ‘60s “Revolution” in sexuality’ (2012c: 170) led to the sexual hangover of the 1970s, when sex reached a cultural ‘saturation-point’ (170), the legacy of which his ‘bland generation’ (171) inherit. Such excess includes ‘swinging couples and meat-market bars, hot tubs and EST, Hustler’s gynaecological spreads, Charlie’s Angels, herpes, kiddie-porn, mood rings, teenage pregnancy, Plato’s Retreat, disco’ (170). This list contains only two expressly pornographic phenomena – ‘Hustler’s gynaecological spreads’ and ‘kiddie-porn’. It therefore deploys what Rosalind Gill, in her criticism of arguments that document the ‘sexualisation of culture’ (2009: 139), calls ‘a violent generalizing logic that renders differences invisible’ (139). For Wallace the ‘rampant casual fucking’ this pornification inspires has indeed degraded ‘human sexuality’s power and meaning’ (2012c: 171). This idea resembles a similar complaint that Edelman perceives in P. D. James’s dystopian novel The Children of Men, which depicts a crisis of human fertility where sex has become ‘meaninglessly acrobatic’ (James 1992, cited in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Responsibility: Investing against pornification
• 2 Risk: Securitizing male homosexuality
• 3 Contract: Gazing within masochism
• 4 Property: Privatizing feminist critique
• 5 Austerity: Sacrificing and scapegoating little men
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright