An Erotic Re-Imagination of Human/Nature Relationality

Ecosexuality and the Legacies of Coloniality in Love and Sex

Authors

  • Pınar Türer Utrecht University, Netherlands

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22029/oc.2020.1177

Keywords:

ecosexuality, love, sex, coloniality, modernity

Abstract

In this paper, I set out to uncover the legacies of coloniality in our understandings of love and sex by looking at ecosexuality as a conceptual framework. I argue that sex and love as defined and categorized by the logic of Western modernity stand in the way of imagining a manner of otherwise relating to others (both humans and non-human beings or matter). To imagine love and sex differently and to uncover their intertwined complexity within the pervasive discourses of coloniality, I base my approach on trans-corporeality, which problematizes ‘relation’ as understood in terms of subject/object binary. Attempting to expose the anthropocentricism in our understanding of sex acts, I engage with the implication of ‘likeness’ to dissect the ecosexual idea of ‘having sex with nature.’ Finally, in a discussion of the entanglement of sex and love and their rootedness in modernity, I bring forth both the pitfalls and the potentialities of ecosexuality for a re-imagining of love and relationality.

Author Biography

  • Pınar Türer, Utrecht University, Netherlands

    Pınar Türer is a graduate student in the Gender Studies program at Utrecht University. She has a background in Comparative Literature with a BA from Koç University, Istanbul. Her research focuses on the question of the self in intimate erotic relationality. Working across different mediums such as literature, dance and film from 20th and 21stcentury, she researches the intersection of corporeal and discursive imaginations of love as ‘movement,’ and intimacy as the in-between space of narration, imagination and queer potentialities. She also writes and publishes fiction and non-fiction; her latest review on Clarice Lispector can be found on emptymirrorbooks.com.

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Issue

No. 9 (2020): Love

Section

_Articles