Obscenity, Pornography, Morality: Moral Power as Carnal Resonance
Main Article Content
Abstract
This commentary focuses on the cinematic and intellectual work of Miguel De, expressed through The Kiss and its accompanying essay. The objective here is to problematize some of the historical and technocultural connections raised by the essay, and to frame De’s experimental essay film within a wider tradition of (mostly European) film-making who has as its main aim a troubling of the notion of “pornography”. This troubling is often done through a double deployment of vision: the audience is shown a named something, but maybe not what they were expecting to see, and it is through the disconnect between the naming and the showing that the connections between sexuality, obscenity and carnal resonance are made apparent and contingent. However, as these acts of troubling circulate within the contemporary technological capitalist mediasphere, they quickly become a locus for a potential site of capture, normalization and redeployment of power relationships.
Downloads
References
Aberdein, A. (2010). Strange Bedfellows. In D. Monroe (Ed.), Porn—Philosophy for Everyone (pp. 22-34). Wiley-Blackwell.
Agamben, G. (2004). The open: Man and animal. Stanford University Press.
Agamben, G. (2005). O que é um dispositivo?. Outra Travessia, 5, 9-16.
Attwood, F. (2002). Reading Porn: The Paradigm Shift in Pornography Research. Sexualities, 5(1), 91-105. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460702005001005
Becker, H. S. (1997). Outsiders: Studies in Sociology of Deviance. Simon & Schuster Ltd.
Borghi, R. (2013). Post-Porn. Rue Descartes, 79, 29-41. https://doi.org/10.3917/rdes.079.0029
Bourcier, M.-H. (2014). Bildungs-post-porn: Notas sobre a proveniência do pós-pornô, para um futuro do feminismo da desobediência sexual. Revista Bagoas, 11, 15-37.
Butler, J. (2005). Giving an account of oneself. Fordham University Press.
Butler, J. (2017). Problemas de Género. Orfeu Negro.
Cardoso, D. (2018). Bodies and BDSM: Redefining Sex Through Kinky Erotics. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 15(7), 931-932. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsxm.2018.02.014
Cardoso, D., & Paasonen, S. (2021). The value of print, the value of porn. Porn Studies, 8(1), 92-106. https://doi.org/10.1080/23268743.2020.1760125
Cascais, A. F. (2009). O que é um dispositivo? In A. F. Cascais, N. Nabais, & J. L. C. Leme (Eds.), Lei, Segurança, Disciplina. Trinta anos depois de Vigir e Punir de Michel Foucault (pp. 31-53). Centro de Filosofia das Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa.
Derrida, J. (1982). Différance. In A. Bass (Trans.), Margins of Philosophy (pp. 3-27). University Of Chicago Press.
Foucault, M. (1994). História da sexualidade 1: A Vontade de Saber. Relógio d’Água.
Foucault, M. (2017). Subjectivity and truth: Lectures at the Collége de France, 1980-1981 (F. Gros, F. Ewald, A. Fontana, G. Burchell, & A. I. Davidson, Eds.). Palgrave Macmillan.
Foucault, M. (2019). História da Sexualidade—IV: As Confissões da Carne. Relógio D’Água.
Freud, S. (2003). The uncanny (D. McLintock & H. Haughton, Eds.). Penguin Books.
Hunt, L. (Ed.). (1993). The Invention of Pornography, 1500-1800: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity. Zone Books.
Kieran, M. (2002). On Obscenity: The Thrill and Repulsion of the Morally Prohibited. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 64(1), 31-55. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2002.tb00141.x
Kristeva, J. (1984). Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Columbia University Press.
Paasonen, S. (2011). Carnal Resonance: Affect and Online Pornography. MIT Press.
Pereira, M. do M. (2017). Power, Knowledge and Feminist Scholarship: An Ethnography of Academia. Routledge.
Preciado, P. B. (2011). Tecnologías del Sexo. In J. Díaz & C. Meloni (Trans.), Manifiesto contrasexual (pp. 135-157). Anagrama.
Preciado, P. B. (2017, February 3). Après le livre, imprimons la chair. Libération.Fr. http://www.liberation.fr/debats/2017/02/03/apres-le-livre-imprimons-la-chair_1546205
Prozorov, S. (2011). Pornography and Profanation in the Political Philosophy of Giorgio Agamben. Theory, Culture & Society, 28(4), 71-95. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276411405076
Rojas, L. E. (2014). Una categoría imposible: El postporno ha muerto, Latinomérica no existe. #Errata, 12, 242-249.
Rubin, G. (2007). Thinking Sex: Notes for a radical theory of the politics of sexuality. In R. Parker & P. Aggleton (Eds.), Culture, Society and Sexuality: A Reader (2nd ed., pp. 150-187). Routledge.