Publication details
Pornography as Language: From Discourse of Domination to Heretical Subversion
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2007 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Censorship of sexually explicit imagery is currently being called for, not by conservatives, but paradoxically by feminists. In various places throughout Europe, feminist groups have launched campaigns against pornography; campaigns which they conceive in terms of crimes against women, discrimination, humiliation, and especially the silencing of women by men. Anti-porn feminists declare the domination of women to be the only, unfailing, and all-powerful effect pornography has always had, and the only it ever can have. Not only do these efforts reproduce man-woman, either-or binaries, they also construct women as mute by definition - unable to use language in order to enhance their own agency. This paper explores the capacity of porn to impose silence, the unexpected results a discourse of domination may trigger, and the other ways a woman can use language. My analysis of feminist anti-porn arguments - both current European and older American examples - is based on Pierre Bourdieu s concepts of language and symbolic power. |
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