Spirit of the Dead Watching her fear. Mathews says it is too simple to attribute Tehura's terror to her belief in spirits and irrational fear of the dark; she says, following Sweetman, that Gauguin's sexual predilections should not be ignored when trying to understand the work. Rather, she suggests the girl's fear was a response to Gauguin's aggressive behavior, consistent with his known battering (so says Mathews) of his wife Mette, the submissive fear in her eyes his erotic reward. Stephen F. Eisenman, professor of Art History at Northwestern University, suggests the painting and its narrative is "a veritable encyclopaedia of colonial racism and misogyny".
The Politics of Lust The Politics of Lust The Politics of Lust is a book written by John Ince that argues that irrational sexual fear or “erotophobia” is pervasive in our culture, that it is largely unrecognized, and that it affects our political orientation. Sexually repressive cultures produce rigid, authoritarian political systems. The book explores the three distinct forces that Ince believes fuel erotophobia: "antisexualism," an irrational negative response to harmless sexual expression; "nasty sex," which includes rape and violent pornography; and "rigidity," the inability to enjoy "playful and spontaneous" sex. Ince argues that, while we are drawn to sex, in our civilisation it