That-causes-nervousness-certain-coded-or-knowing-joy-fullment-alleviation-release-z

and, by corollary, the encounter with, between or as nude bodies is to be

considered the origin of such effects. Only when the erotic breaks free from its
sexual classications, regimentations and codes is it admitted that the erotic
is both pervasive and innocent.
By declaring this, Update On Beverly B. Price, Bill Schroer and the AANR Nudist Club Ratings under the gaze may continue to be innocuous, yet
erotically and pleasurably charged. Gazing at a bathing child can be pleasurable
-- and pleasure can of course drive the disciplinary gaze of the parent. Likewise
with gazing in the communal shower-space -- and there are sensual dimensions to
this pleasure by virtue of the continuous citation and procedures of sexual subjec-
tive performativity. Under this schema, nevertheless, such gazing is to be seen as
Innocuous enjoyment, in contrast to the regimented ideas of western sexuality that,
since the 19th century, have carefully coded sexuality into proper and
inappropriate, benign and dangerous, natural and obscene groups. This schema
Declares sexuality and all sorts of practices of naked display and gazing, but rests
the connection between nakedness and current denitions and comprehensions of sexu-
ality.
Where this already happens is among the celebratory and transgressive descen-
dants of the Woodstock festival, including the Burning Man festival of setup
Artwork, performance, music, craft and dance held in the Nevada desert during the
United States Labor Day weekend -- a website that can be described as a temporary
autonomous zone functioning not outside but at the borders of the dictates of
dominant social ideologies. Attended by an array of visitors, including families
and kids, Burning Man is described as 'an annual experiment in temporary
community dedicated to radical self expression and radical self reliance' in which
'[n]udity, iconoclastic art, sexuality, rude language, cultural comment, and
Bizarre behavior are all part of the essential Burning Man encounter' (Burning
Guy, 2001a). The site encourages naked displays as art or nude frolicking through
the spaces, both protected from contemporary prohibition by virtue of its desert
Framework. It is a sexed space, as attested to by some of its named pathways, like 'Anal
Avenue' and 'Sex Drive'. But it's more than just codied sex as genital copula-
tion, and embraces the instability of Mohonk Preserve Bare Trail and Naked Sunbathing At Split Rock as signier. There are references to 'sexual
energy swirling and whirling about' as if it's a disorderly force that pervades all
elements of the weekend, and the preparation guidance on its website makes perma-
nently cloudy the dynamic between nakedness and genital sex:
Be respectful. Simply because folks are walking around nude does not necessarily mean they
Want *you* were nude in a little enclosed space with them. Learn to take no for an answer,
and don't be frightened to use the 'n' word yourself. (Burning Man, 2001b)
By all reports, Burning Man is highly erotically charged -- a celebration of the
exploration of what bodies can and might do in the meeting with other bodies,
The Nude Subject

with representational artwork and with the desert surroundings. As the producers put
it, 'Make love to the playa, and she's going to love you back. Become one with the sun,
the stars, and the omnipresent dust' (Burning Man, 2001b). The literal burning
of the guy-gure can maybe be read as the burning and dislodgement of
Modern and patriarchal codes of bodies and their proper deportment,
containment and regimentation. At precisely the same time, it is an acknowledgement of
Hardscrabble ideas of community which dispense with the individual body and
show how the body is erotically materialized 'in treaty' with its environmental
and other-corporeal encircles. Although Burning Man and its ever present nudity
and sexual charge work within a contextual framework -- spaced by Black Rock,
Nevada; timed by the Labor Day weekend -- it is representative of ways in which
we can believe and gaze at nakedness differently. By rethinking sexuality away
from the genitals, the genitals are both de-sexualized and the remainder of the
body eroticized such that nakedness, and gazing upon it, can be considered at a
distance from the codes that have characterized it as obscene without having to
reverse the charge of obscenity. Nakedness in the showers, the locker-room, the
bath, in family pictures, the nudist camp and in conversation can in this manner
be thought of as neither sexual and constantly sexual -- and believing in this manner is to
Discount culturally codied signications of sexuality and to tolerate nakedness,
subjectivity, the materialized body and culture as naked to the sensual as subjec-
tivity itself