The swing, sexual vertigo and power games

Every week in "Les 400 Culs" , Agnès Giard, an anthropologist attached to the University of Paris Nanterre and a specialist in Japan, examines contemporary sexual discourses and practices with a skeptical and detached analysis, informed by the latest research in the human and social sciences.

It is associated with playgrounds, but the swing is defined above all as a tool of ritual power: "Its mythological origins date back to the time when the goddess Iris swung from the penis of her deceased husband in the winged form of a kite." From the first lines of A Stunning History of the Swing (Sorbonne, published January 30), Javier Moscoso, historian of the philosophy of science, lays the foundations of his theory... which is also stunning. As he argues, the swing is not a gratuitous amusement: designed to make bodies pivot, it facilitates these inversion relationships which allow, in particular, women to become "mounters" of men. Moscoso's demonstration, rich in anecdotes, erudite, abundant, covers all regions of the world, revealing the extraordinary similarity of the magical games and sometimes cruel tortures that the swing promotes. In the last chapter, "Sexuality," he