Is not the most erotic part of the body wherever the clothing affords a glimpse?
Interpretation
The quote suggests that desire and attraction are heightened by the anticipation or suggestion of intimacy, rather than just the physical act itself.
Roland Barthes' quote highlights the idea that eroticism is often rooted in what is forbidden or concealed. The allure of glimpsing a hidden part of the body can evoke a powerful response, suggesting that desire thrives on the tantalizing possibilities that clothing or modesty can create. This notion speaks to the psychological aspects of attraction where the imagination plays a key role in enhancing the experience of intimacy.
In practice
This quote can be a talking point in a discussion about the nature of attraction.
If I acknowledge my dependency, I do so because for me it is a means of signifying my demand: in the realm of love, futility is not a "weakness" or an "absurdity": it is a strong sign: the more futile, the more it signifies and the more it asserts itself as strength.)
The gesture of the amorous embrace seems to fulfill, for a time, the subject's dream of total union with the loved being: The longing for consummation with the other.
The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.
I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.
All those young photographers who are at work in the world, determined upon the capture of actuality, do not know that they are agents of Death.
Isnβt the most sensitive point of this mourning the fact that I must lose a language β the amorous language? No more βI love youβs.
She loved him so much she concealed his name in many phrases, the inner meanings known only to her.
'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
Great lovers will always be unhappy, because, for them, love is of supreme importance. Consequently they demand of their beloved the same intensity of thought as they have for her, otherwise they feel betrayed.
A hush is over everything, Silent as women wait for love; The world is waiting for the spring.
Dear Valentine, I love you. Whoever you are.
She could not have gazed at him with a more rapturous intensity if she had been a small child and he a saucer of ice cream.
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