On Obsession, the Post-Modern Disease
In case the suggestively deviant ads for Calvin Klein’s Obsession weren’t proof enough that our culture is fascinated with obsession, Lennard Davis had another image that confirmed it, which he snapped at the airport: the ads for Calvin Klein’s new perfume, Secret Obsession, featuring a brown jewel-like bottle glowing gold in its center. “As if obsession is not enough,” he joked with the audience at MOCA. Davis, a University of Illinois at Chicago professor and author of Obsession: A History, explained what exactly obsession is, and why we simultaneously pathologize …
