Erotic encounters have assumed a myriad of shapes and forms throughout the histories of the world and, at many stages of those histories, have been understood as possessing the potential to take us closer to some ultimate mode of being that the everyday, in all of its artless modesty, seems unable to do. In this volume, discussions of the erotic as an extraordinary part of the human condition, manifest in examples such as: exoticised voyages to faraway lands; the thrills of ancient combat; the escape and enchantment of eroticized performance; transgressive notions of the female jouissance; the delights of the sexual pursuits in the virtual domain; the political possibilities of stigmatized, queer pleasure; and perceptions of ‘fetishes’ which include relationships with inanimate beings. It would appear that what is required for these out-of-the-ordinary quests, are pointed actions – movements away from the monotony of life’s rhythms and outside the shelter of an otherwise predictable materiality.

Contributors are Jon Braddy, John Dayton, Rita Dirks, John T. Grider, Billy Huff, Maciej Musiał, Naomi Stekelenburg, Dionne van Reenen and Tianyang Zhou.