Strange bedfellows

Pornography, affect and feminist reading

Bibliographic Data

ID4367277
AuthorsPaasonen (0000-0002-6319-9155, University of Jyväskylä, corresponding author), Susanna Paasonen
Year2007
Volume8
Issue1
Pages43-57
Publication date2007-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-7001 • E-ISSN: 1741-2773
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1464700107074195
OpenAlexW2087349885
LanguageEN
Citations received26
References cited19

Feminist debates on pornography have relied on articulations of affect, from anti-pornography rhetoric of grief, anger and disgust to anti-anti-pornography claims to enjoyment and pleasure. The complexity of reading, the interpenetration of affect and analysis, experience and interpretation tend to become effaced in arguments both for and against pornography. This article argues for the necessity of moving beyond the affective range of disgust versus pleasure in feminist studies of pornography. Drawing on theorizations of reading and affect, particularly Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's discussion of 'paranoid' and 'reparative' reading, it investigates the possibilities of analysing commercial email porn spam without reducing the outcome to the literal and the self-evident. This involves taking seriously the power of pornographic texts to move their readers, scholars included. Since affective encounters with porn are ambivalent and often contradictory, their status as basis of knowledge over pornography remains highly unstable

Aesthetics · Affect theory · Ambivalence · Anger · Art · Disgust · Feeling · Linguistics · Pleasure · Pornography · Psychoanalysis · Shame · Sociology · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Philosophy · Psychology · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology · Social Psychology

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