The measure of 'sexual dysfunction' : a plea for theoretical limitlessness

L. Downing

This article submits the concept of 'sexual dysfunction', as it is used in sexological and psychiatric diagnostic manuals, to deconstructive reading using the insights of gender and queer theory (especially Michel Foucault and Judith Butler). It shows up the culturally and historically relative meanings of diagnoses of sexual disorders, by demonstrating how the institution of psychiatry has bowed to the changing face of political agency when classifying pathological sexualities (the case of homosexuality). The article then proceeds, by examining extreme models of sexual desire, such as sado-masochism and 'asphyxiophilia', to challenge both the logic of dys/functionality and the model of sexual agency offered by progressive discourses such as queer theory. It argues for a radical 'tarrying with the negative' as a foil to the persuasive lure of 'bio-politics' which delimits sexuality as either 'good' (life-driven) or 'bad' (death-dealing). The conclusion warns of the dangers both of classifying sexuality according to taxonomy and of privileging sexual 'fluidity' over 'fixity', because both strategies risk shoring up historically redundant meanings and generating the possibility of unforeseen societal interpretations.