Race and desire in the porno-tropics

Ethnographic perspectives from the post-colony

Datos Bibliográficos

ID19004525
AutoresThomas Hendriks (0000-0002-7676-6171, KU Leuven University, Belgium)
Año2014
Volumen17
Número1-2
Páginas213-229
Fecha de publicación2014-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSexualities (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1363-4607 • E-ISSN: 1461-7382
EditorialSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1363460713511100
OpenAlexW2128045163
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas6
Referencias citadas24

In this article I explore the limits of Anne McClintock’s conceptualization of the ‘porno-tropics’ as a concept to understand the everyday lives of an isolated group of European expatriates working for a logging company in the Congolese rainforest. Based on long-term ethnographic research, I give a reading of two sets of images I encountered during my fieldwork – a soft-erotic calendar and a hardcore porn site – to come to a better understanding of the actual discourses and practices of interracial sex along the racial divide. To get a grip on the economy of desire at my fieldwork site, I focus on two figures who are largely overlooked by McClintock’s analysis: the continuing influence of the white woman as an ‘absent presence’ in the post-colony and the ambiguous presence of the black man as both an emasculating body and a resource in the construction of ‘white’ masculinities

Conceptualization · Ethnography · Focus group · Political science · Sociology · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Sex work and related issues · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology