-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of joanna bujes Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 1:23 AM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: [lbo-talk] RE: Theory of porn
"** I'll take your word for it. But I'm not disputing the existence of images of nudity and oral sex prior to the 19th century, I'm claiming that the genre didn't exist... or, at the very least, I'm saying that the modern porn industry is unique in history --> both in terms of its form and much of its content."
Why unique? Lots of popular forms were industrialized in the nineteenth century? Modern porn was one of them. It now has the artfulness of a bad commercial. It's actually a fairly degraded form of what Catullus, Ovid, Hokusai, ...even Sade practiced.
Joanna
>>> To draw this thread back to its origin: why do so many men enjoy
watching two women getting it on? What's behind that, where does that come
from - and what are the power dynamics that make this kind of enjoyment
possible? I originally asked about its origins in certain facets of
political economy and a couple people have made suggestions which I find
helpful. My off-handed comment that pornography was an invention of the 19th
century, I thought, was uncontroversial - I was VERY wrong about this.
However, having spend the last 48 hours looking into this further I'm more
convinced than ever. Pornography as a genre, a discipline (in Foucault's
sense) is ruthlessly modern. Given that it is modern this means that all
historical bets are off. However men in ancient Greece felt about seeing two
women having sex is not the same as the modern male experience, there is a
re-creation of any continuous traditions which could be detected and are
ultimately new creations and figurations of identity and sexuality. I see
the creation of pornography in the 19th century as a rupture, a
transfiguration of sexuality and subjectivity. That's probably overstated...
but not unreasonably so, I hope. If there is a thematic relevance it
probably has to do with power, but a power expressed quite differently than
in the past. Degraded... sure, but also transformed.
ken