Ted asked about the history of love, and I'd like to make the question a little more specific.

"The deployment of sexuality is linked to the economy through numerous and subtle relays, the main one of which, however, is the body -- the body that produces and consumes.
...It has been linked from the outset with an intensification of the body -- with its exploitation as an object of knowledge and an element in relations of power."
(Foucault, History of Sexuality v. 1, p. 107 in the Vintage edition)

It might be interesting to try to discuss this, not academically necessarily, but as people in a world of "intensified bodies." How radically has our sexuality changed in the last several centuries, and to what end?

For instance, to use the somewhat clearer metaphor of food, it's obvious that although people have always eaten, our society's relation to food -- its abundance, its constant marketing, the concoction of endless new snack products and additives -- is radically different than it might have been before commercialized production and industrial farming. And that although we are constantly bombarded with information about how to eat in a healthy way, about the importance of vitamins and diet, we are nonetheless, many of us, profoundly malnourished.

Where food is concerned, one can eat closer to the earth, and try to understand one's own relation to nourishment.

But what about sexuality?
Can one dive into a deeper, pre-industrial world where the erotic is concerned? What would this involve?