by Jon Lackman | 22 June 2010 | Contemporary, Theory
In an article in the Dec. ’09 journal of visual culture (8:3), “Apart from Sex,” Adrian Rifkin writes:
“[Andres] Serrano’s dildo picture reminds of Butler’s Derridian theses of the origin-like quality of the copy, insofar as it is quite impossible to figure the boy’s penis without his a priori penetration by the rubber or silicone simulacrum attached to the otherly performed gender; not only does it – the strapped-on dildo – visually come before the boy’s own member, but in its always and already state of erection, it precedes his potential pleasure that can only come to imitate its form — on condition that the copy does not simply reduce the original to anxiety or to the entropic comfort of keeping his penis in the presence of the girl’s acquiring hers – that he feels but does not see.
