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Posts tagged ‘Edward Sellon’

  1. Edward Sellon and the Cannibal Club: Anthropology Erotica Empire – VI

    In the third installment of this series, I examined the erotic writings of Edward Sellon. Now I will turn to his “anthropological” work – the two lectures delivered to the Anthropological Society of London (ASL) – Linga Puja: On the Phallic Worship of India and Some Remarks on Indian Gnosticism, or Sacti Puja, the Worship of the Female Powers and follow through with a look at some other works dealing with Phallic worship from the ASL.

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  2. Edward Sellon and the Cannibal Club: Anthropology Erotica Empire – IV

    “in view of the indelibility that is characteristic of all mental traces, it is surely not surprising that even the most primitive forms of genital worship can be shown to have existed in very recent times and that the language, customs, and superstitions of mankind today contain survivals from every phase of this process of development.”
    Sigmund Freud, Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo Da Vince, 1910

    Before I move onto an examination of Edward Sellon’s anthropological and “phallic” works, I want to first discuss the wider context of phallic theories of religion in the nineteenth century. Continue reading »

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  3. Edward Sellon and the Cannibal Club: Anthropology Erotica Empire – III

    And so to Edward Sellon; libertine, atheist, orientalist, anthropologist, pornographer. For this post, I’m going to focus on Sellon’s pornographic productions and then will turn to his anthropological excursions in the next post. To some extent, this is a repeat of the approach I took in my first two essays on Edward Sellon (here and here) but I shall endeavour not to repeat earlier material too much. Continue reading »

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  4. Edward Sellon and the Cannibal Club: Anthropology Erotica Empire – II

    Following on from the previous post in this series, I will now examine the activities of the Anthropological Society of London and its “inner cabal” – The Cannibal Club. Continue reading »

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  5. Edward Sellon and the Cannibal Club: Anthropology Erotica Empire – I

    I have for some time been interested in how representations of India – particularly those related to sexuality – emerged out of the Colonial period and went on to influence twentieth-century stereotypes of India in a wide variety of ways. The ready association made between Tantra and sex, for example, is something I would argue, has its roots in this period, as does much of the romanticism about India as a land of enlightened sexuality. It is this interest that led me into a murky territory which is sometimes called ethnopornography – a shadow zone where a piece of erotic writing can disguise itself as a scholarly work – or a scholarly work can be read as erotica. Where the body of the native is portrayed as alluring or threatening – sometimes both, and colonial territories become both zones of sexual adventure and hearts of darkness. Continue reading »

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  6. Lecture Notes: On Edward Sellon – II

    In the previous post on Edward Sellon I took a look at Sellon’s pornographic writings within the wider of context of nineteenth century attitudes to India & sexuality. For this post, I’m going to take a look at some of Sellon’s scholarly work, it’s reception, and its role in the representation of tantra. Continue reading »

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  7. Lecture Notes: On Edward Sellon – I

    When I’m researching material for lectures, I often find myself poking into a variety of fascinating areas and characters, which unfortunately time often precludes me from doing anything more than briefly summarising their relationship to the main topic at hand. So a lot of material ends up on “the cutting room floor” as it were. What follows is the first of two posts (expanded from the preparation for my forthcoming Treadwells lecture) focusing on Edward Sellon (1816-66). Sellon is noteworthy as his his writings can be located as emerging out of the blurred zone between “serious scholarship” and erotica (sometimes referred to as “ethnopornography”). Sellon wrote both pornographic books and more sober, scholarly works, both of which provide a window into the period’s attitudes to India, sexuality, and Tantra. This first post will look at Sellon’s pornographic writing in the context of the nineteenth-century demand for pornography and Imperial attitudes to India & sexuality, and I will follow up with an examination of his “scholarly” works – the papers he delivered to the Anthropological Society of London and his book Annotation to the Sacred Writings of the Hindus. Continue reading »

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