Sacred Ecosex: Teorema, il Sessantotto, Pasolini # 1

This video is a capture of Dr. SerenaGaia's presentation at the JICMS
Conference at AUR, Rome, June 2017. The study of Teorema presents an
ecosexual perspective on this classic of Italian cinema by Pasolini. It
was a pleasure to give this talk, with the company of Arianna Vidoni and for the organization of Flavia Laviosa. Enjoy!

Saving the Bonobos May Very Well Save the Peaceful Animal Who Lives Within You

“Saving the Bonobos May Very Well Save the Peaceful Animal Who Lives Within You.“

A Review of The Bonobo Way by Susan M. Block.  Beverly Hills, CA: Gardner and Daughters, 2015. 

It is a real pleasure to read Dr. Susan M. Block's most recent book.  It is a pleasure on all counts: the style is fun, humorous, at times satirical with a touch of the surreal.  It is very warm, fuzzy, and down to Earth too, with its main points made very clear.  The book's philosophy is meaningful, persuasive, and especially significant at this time in the evolution of our species, when we are in desperate need of new paradigms to shift toward more inclusive, fluid, and sustainable practices of love.  Thanks Dr. Suzy!

Susan M. Block's research is very significant too.  The book proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that Bonobos are the missing link in the natural chain that connects bisexuality, polyamory, and ecosexuality.  The bi love that reaches beyond genders and the poly love that reaches beyond numbers are just preludes to the ecosexual love that reaches beyond genders, numbers, orientations, ages, races, origins, species, and biological realms, to embrace all of life as a partner with significant and enduring rights.  Which is exactly what Bonobos do, and what we humans could also do if only we were more willing to learn from our amorous cousins.

There is no history of interspecies murder among the members of this species.  Isn’t that something?  And all styles of recreational sex are practiced with the pleasurable result of effectively keeping the social peace.  Bonobos are the cousin ape species that proves the power of a repressed aspect of human nature we would do well to embrace more fully: the one that loves love and is loved back with the gift of peace. 

Bonobos, reasons Dr. Suzy, are also the non-human species whose culture proves that "nature" is replete with all forms of sexual and amorous expression well beyond what's required for the continuation of individual genes.  There is nothing more natural to Bonobos than practicing what has for way too long been considered "perverse" in humans, including such feats as erotic expression between males, between females, among multiple players, across generations, and with the added options of anal pleasure and of making out in full public view.  How interesting for those who disapprove of these behaviors in humans as "unnatural."  More observation of "nature" reveals the ideological meaning of Darwinian concepts of evolution through competition.  When Capitalism is dressed as “science” it can pass as a poor justifications for violence with a touch of Victorian prudishness.

Are we really the pinnacle of evolution and the species "made in god's image"?  Or are we just one of many ape species who would do well to leave that pedestal voluntarily before our hubris destroys the lover we all share: Gaia, or the third planet Earth?

We’ll leave the answer to your wisdom.  Meanwhile, aping the apes may provide all the experiential knowledge one needs.  And as you get to read this highly recommended book, you’ll be blessed with more lessons from the art of analytical observation as practiced by Dr. Suzy.  Her research on Bonobos proves that the kind of amorous behaviors many of us believe to be the exclusive mark of human love are actually natural in a much wider sense.  For instance, Bonobos practice their own style of French kissing, they make love face to face with abundant eye-to-eye gazing, they take care of each other when in need, while also enjoying abundant mutual grooming.  Romantic, no?  Perhaps, in defining our species as distinct from “nature” we have been a bit too hubristic too.  How could we be the inventors of "true" love if our apish cousins do it too?  And, if romance is just as natural as an orgy to Bonobos, could this wide range of erotic and amorous expression not be natural for us humans too?  “No couple is an island,” claims Dr. Suzy.  And of course it isn’t, as even old-pal Dante knew when he wrote: “love which will not absolve a beloved from loving (someone) in turn,” and then proceeded to explain that Paolo and Francesca kissed while turned on by the courtly love book they were reading.  "Amor ch'a nullo amato amar perdona," reads the original.  Perhaps love, as this ancient poet knew, is “the force that moves the sky and other stars.”  It’s the ecology of life: the ecosexual energy that connects all live beings, as our team of authors claim in Ecosexuality.  Bonobos seem to have a real sense of this: they build social networks of mutual support and sustainability via erotic and amorous behavior.  They honor wisdom, age, and femininity, which is another way to allow nature to inspire the arts of love.

This brings me to the very significant political point of the book.  "The evolution of peace through pleasure" invoked by Dr. Suzy will really happen if we all get to release our inner Bonobo.  In a process of Deleuzian reminiscence, Susan M. Block suggests we can resuscitate the "animal" within.  As announced by the visionary French theorist, "becoming-animal" is the transformative process that sets the tone of humility, and yin energy, and vulnerability that will make our species more capable of learning from our more "natural" cousins.  Let’s ask the ecosexual primates whose life is more connected to Gaia’s metabolism, the lover we all share.  What can we do about the problems that besiege our time, including endless wars, climate change, and the relentlessness of extractive industries?  Releasing our inner Bonobo may be it.  I hear your skepticism.  “Evolving peace through pleasure?  It’s just a pipe dream,” you may pout as you read this.

Well, here’s the good news.  The Bonobo Way offers the scientific context to believe we can do it.  It injects the humor that makes one want to act on this idea.  And it provides the step-by-step guidance to actually engineer the transformation.  How do we become “Bonobos”?  The 12-step program designed by Dr. Suzy is very well engineered to evolve peace through pleasure on a personal and planetary scale.  It leads Earthlings like us through the stages of observation, introspection, imitation and experimentation, creation of community, biophilia, and planetary awareness.   

Saving the Bonobos might very well save the peaceful animal that lives within.  As a person who takes pride in living my life as an experiment in the ecosexual arts of love, I have enjoyed most of the practices described in the program and am eager to experiment with those that are new to me.  My world has become a lot safer for that, healthier, happier, and one where I am at peace.  Like Ecosexuality as we do.  We've invited Dr. Suzy on our team for this upcoming book, and hope she accepts. 

I can’t recommend Susan M. Block's Bonobo book too much, and I wish a lot of joy to all those who follow Dr. Suzy’s wisdom.

~~~~~~

Dear Earthlings:

For all the above mentioned reasons, I, SerenaGaia have decided to name 2015 the Year of the Bonobo.  Please "like" the Facebook page for our upcoming Ecosexuality book. 

Oh, and if you feel you need some personal coaching on how to become a Bonobo, please feel free to browse my Bonobo Coaching practice and connect with me.  I will pass my lessons along. 

Thanks for your interest.  Stay tuned for more good news.  

Namaste.

SerenaGaia

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, PhD

Author of Gaia, Eros, and many other books about love 
Professor of Humanities, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

    Follow us in the social media:

Like Latest Book Ecosexuality
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ecosexuality-Notes-for-an-Orgasmic-Earth/1393535414244382
Become a Fan of the Book Gaia: www.facebook.com/GaiaBlessings 

Go to Author's Page/Lists all Books:  
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JS1VKA 

Read and Download Academic Works:
https://uprm.academia.edu/SerenaAnderlini

Go to Poly Planet GAIA Blog:   
http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/ 

Go to Website: www.serenagaia.com

YouTube Uploaded Videos: 
http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini
Be Appraised of Ecosex Community Project PostaHouse
 
 

3 of 3: The Initiatory Magic of Franca Rame

Dear Earthlings:

Have you enjoyed visit one and visit two?  We sure hope you have.  Here goes the third one: 

The Initiatory Magic of Franca Rame, cont'd

On this third visit the gifts are more magical, the lessons are deeper, and the threads come together in an interwoven tapestry.  Now I have a vast experience in the interdependent dynamics of co-creativity in a wider horizon of amorously inclusive collaborative alliances where dyads, albeit open, still count.  As a sexigenarian, I’ve

explored a vast array of relational possibilities in my life.  I have learned to love the person beyond gender because I have satisfied all my cravings for same-gender love.  I’ve come to the age of wisdom when one is at peace with premature recycling.  And I’ve organized my emotions around entire networks of interwoven relational tapestries where fluidity abounds, negotiation is an art, and safety keeps people in balance.  I also have a vast experience in collaborative writing, with men, with women, in same-age groups and dyads, and across generations.  I would not be where I am if Franca had not opened her door to me in that far back 1984. 

I do know why Franca Rame inspired me to explore the co-creative dynamics of her dyadic relationship with Dario, and why her initiatory power brought magic to my life. 

It was a very wise decision indeed.  I pledge to honor her magic and am humbled by her initiatory power. 

SerenaGaia, a.k.a. Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

Playa Azul, Puerto Rico, 2014

Works Cited and Consulted

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio.   “Franca Rame: Her Life and Works.”  1985.  Theater: 17: 1: 32-39.

______  .  “Franca Rame donna e attrice.”  (Translation.) 1990.  Il Ponte: 65: 6: 99-110.

______  .  “When Is a Woman’s Work Her Own?  An Interview with Franca Rame.”  (Translated by Tracy Barrett.) 1991.  Feminist Issues: 11: 1: 22-52.

______  .  “From The Lady Is to be Disposed of to An Open Couple: The Theater Partnership of Franca Rame and Dario Fo.”  Atenea: 20: 1: 31-52.  Republished in Walter Valeri ed. Franca Rame: A Woman on Stage.  West Lafayette, Indiana: Bordighera Press, 2000.  (183-221.)

______  .  “Holistic (Dis)Organizations: Gaia at Alcatraz, Italy.”  2005.  Rhizomes: 10 (Spring) http://www.rhizomes.net/issue10/index.html.  Also in Utopia Matters: Theory, Politics, Literature and the Arts.  Vieira, Fatima and Marinela Freitas eds.  Editora da Universidad de Porto.

Note: To read and download more of SerenaGaia's scholar activist work, visit here page on Academia.edu:  https://uprm.academia.edu/SerenaAnderlini

 

Dear Earthlings:

This is the end of the article.  It's been a joy to be back on this blog site.  Thanks for staying with us.  Now we have much more to come as our teamwork book on Ecosexuality goes into production.  All about this amazing collection at these links:
http://orgasmicearth.org/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ecosexuality-Notes-for-an-Orgasmic-Earth/1393535414244382 

Enjoy the love of the universe and all dear ones.  Stay tuned and check our social media websites.

All good wishes for a joyful Holiday Season.  

Namaste,

SerenaGaia

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, PhD

Author of Gaia, Eros, and many other books about love 
Professor of Humanities, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

    Follow us in the social media:

Like Latest Book Ecosexuality
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ecosexuality-Notes-for-an-Orgasmic-Earth/1393535414244382
Become a Fan of the Book Gaia: www.facebook.com/GaiaBlessings 

Go to Author's Page/Lists all Books:  
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JS1VKA 

Read and Download Academic Works:
https://uprm.academia.edu/SerenaAnderlini

Go to Poly Planet GAIA Blog:   
http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/ 

Go to Website: www.serenagaia.com

YouTube Uploaded Videos: 
http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini
Be Appraised of Ecosex Community Project PostaHouse
 
 

2 of 3: The Initiatory Magic of Franca Rame

Hi again dear Earthlings:

as promised, here goes the second visit of my mentor and initiator Franca Rame.

Enjoy! 

The Initiatory Magic of Franca Rame

The second visit was on the occasion of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Dario, in 1997.  His awareness of his wife’s talent and lack of embarrassment at publically recognizing it turned on my interest in them again.  I never had the shadow of a doubt that the Prize was deserved.  I just realized how often collaborative efforts are overlooked in the arts and humanities.  And was

impressed with his eagerness to redress this.  I thought, “well, perhaps now he knows his wife is an author, and they’ve co-evolved as a dyad to feel comfortable about it.”  This compelled my attention for an article on the integration of their respective creative energies in works that neither could have managed without the other.  The result was the article “From The Lady Is to Be Disposed of to An Open Couple: Franca Rame and Dario Fo’s Theater Partnership.”  In Open Couple, I felt an affinity for Franca’s character, and her obsessions with her partner’s affair-persons.  Their pheromones were in the air, and “pussies” were hiding everywhere: in a shoe, on the soap bar.  She sensed their sadness and felt called to rescue them, as I also have in my early experiences of amorous inclusiveness.  This guided me to appreciate the rhetoric of polyamory, a responsible form of non-monogamy that assuages competition and rivalry.  The lovers of one’s lovers are called “metamours,” or lovers by interposed person. 

In the interim period between then and now, I became interested in the creative output of their son Jacopo Fo.  I designed a research project around the intentional community 

of Alcatraz, visited repeatedly and wrote about it.  I was curious: “how would someone growing up in a theater family handle communal life?”  As I found out, Jacopo invented Alcatraz as the answer.  It combined the joy of living in nature with the expanded sense of “family” that theater companies are organized around.  It offered education in the arts of loving and sexual expression within a closed dyad.  And training in the arts of keeping one’s personal ecosystem healthy and well balanced.  It was for me a step in the path of exploring forms of sexual fluidity and amorous inclusiveness that respect the integrity of dyadic relationships, and their respective cultural variants.  That resulted in the article “Holistic (Dis)Organizations: Gaia at Alcatraz, Italy,” in the open-source journal Rhyzomes, 2005.  All of this helped me assess a cross-cultural understanding of intentional and open lifestyles and eventually coalesced in my overarching interest in Ecosexuality.

To be continued a week from now.  Come back for the "second visit" on December 2, 2014. 

Namaste,

SerenaGaia

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, PhD

Author of Gaia, Eros, and many other books about love 
Professor of Humanities, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

    Follow us in the social media:

Like Latest Book Ecosexuality
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ecosexuality-Notes-for-an-Orgasmic-Earth/1393535414244382
Become a Fan of the Book Gaia: www.facebook.com/GaiaBlessings 

Go to Author's Page/Lists all Books:  
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JS1VKA 

Read and Download Academic Works:
https://uprm.academia.edu/SerenaAnderlini

Go to Poly Planet GAIA Blog:   
http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/ 

Go to Website: www.serenagaia.com

YouTube Uploaded Videos: 
http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini
Be Appraised of Ecosex Community Project PostaHouse