| Abstract: | This paper conceptualizes eroticism as emotional experience. I use the Renaissance Faire to illustrate the construction of asexual eroticism along three dimensions: the carnal experience of Faire, its focus on physicality, and intimations of increased interpersonal access. This approach forefronts the complexity of eroticism and situates the erotic squarely in the sociology of emotion, providing a model for understanding a range of emotional, embodied, and nonsexual charges as erotic. More broadly, the analysis seeks to contribute to the study of all emotion as embodied. |
