Uncommon Placement: Reading Sexuality and Masochism in the 19th Century Commonplace Book

Abstract

On the commonplace book of American author and benefactor of Yale University, John William Sterling. "For Sterling, the commonplace book acts as a technology of the self. He subjects himself to the self-discipline elicited by the commonplace book’s form and function, relishing in extreme exercises of reading, writing and oration. The commonplace book not only supplements the strikethroughs and gaps in Sterling’s self-representation in his journal, with literary indications of affect and (sexual) taste, but also acts as the very arena of his masochistic, pleasurable submission to academic toil. In my analysis, I propose a way of thinking of the commonplace book as a site of sexuality itself, as both the means and presentation of an engagement with excessive intellectual labor, which is itself experienced as masochistic pleasure."