The “End” of Orgasm: The Erotics of Durational Pleasures

This essay examines how capitalism and colonialism collude to produce a high value on the “end” of the erotic—the orgasm—and rather proposes an end to the hierarchical valuing of orgasmic pleasure. Through an analysis of film, literature, and the pleasures in their consumption, this essay makes the case for asexual pleasures that resist the telos of erotic settler time, moving into a queer, sovereign erotic temporality. In other words, how might we think differently about intimacies and reimagine the durations of pleasure when we interrogate the colonial construction of the normative sexual subject and imperatives toward sexual coupling? By exploring the possibilities of various nonsexual pleasures, we can question how and which bodies are constructed as healthy, desirable, and desiring subjects according to normative constructions of race, ability, age, and orgasmic potential, while also creating different modes of relationality and intimacy with the self and others.