Leon de Kock Deconstructs the Psycho-Sexual Politics in His Sell-out Success, Bad Sex

by Amanda on Oct 28th, 2011

In a cerebrally stimulating interview with LitNet’s Bibi Slippers, Leon de Kock deconstructs the themes and undercurrents in his latest novel, Bad Sex, of which the initial print run has nearly sold-out. De Kock discusses the politics of sexual exchange and the various meanings behind his book’s title – from the operational definition (as in, “that was really kak sex”), to the theoretical (“the moral problematisation of pleasure”).

De Kocks says he thinks an understanding of sexual politics is vital for human relationships. He says “without good, real, strong intersubjectivity, we’re basically fucked”:

At the launch of Bad Sex at the Open Book Festival, Ashraf Jamal referred to the sensuality of your work, as opposed to the “sexlessness” he perceives in English literature in South Africa. Are you deliberately writing in against the grain of this “sexless” literature, or is this sensuality something inherent in your writing?

I hesitate to use the word “deliberate”. All I know is that when I found myself writing this kind of voice into this particular space of human engagement I realised that there wasn’t a lot of it in South African literature. I must say, though, that just about all Nadine Gordimer’s serious fiction deals substantially with sexual leverage between consenting adults, except that her political disposition means she uses the sexual negotiation as a set of signifiers for real-world political orientations. My work declines that gesture, and sees sexual politics as sexual politics, period, situated within the immediate, embodied psycho-sexual-political domain, which I regard as vital for intersubjective human congress. And without good, real, strong intersubjectivity, we’re basically fucked. (We could also discuss JM Coetzee in terms of sexual politics – see especially Disgrace – that would open up a very large area for further discussion.)