Academic Cult Erotica: Fluid Beings or a Cubicle of Our Own?
Academic publishers are wary of illustrations for books or articles on sexual representation; they typically discourage such illustrations, and authors have adopted their deeply ingrained worries. And, indeed, the warning signals are spelled out clearly, as one publisher writes in its stylistic guidelines for authors on a forthcoming book about cult erotica: Please note that although the volume deals with the [End Page 126] subject of explicit film/video material, the book will be available in mainstream bookshops/retailers. To ensure widespread distribution, the editors retain the right to edit or reject any images for inclusion in this volume. This is quite a discouraging policy statement and shows that this aspect of our research is in trouble.
Are academic publishers more or less uptight than the mainstream ones? Mainstream book retailers have booming niche markets for illustrated books on erotica and porn, which I think could be developed by academia as well. Why not cherish the idea of selling our academic books in the erotica corner of the bookshop? We can argue that academic presses should go more visual and more pink, or we can hope for mainstream presses to be interested in our sexier work. We can publish our illustrated ideas on pornography in nonacademic books or journals, publish and perish as we may think of it, yet there are some benefits to issuing a sexy publication. We can also work with specific academic publishers and editors on creative solutions to the potential censor, which is definitely a possibility and most rewarding thing to do, if we want to think about intellectual honesty and depictions of sexuality as an integral part of visual culture studies.
The decision to include images in texts on sexual representation gives the determined author a legitimate thing to fret about, or proactively fight for, from the early promises or warning signals until the very end of the production process. For instance, I have just selected twenty-five photographs for my forthcoming book on DIY (do it yourself) porn culture on the Web and worked with producers to get copyright clearances. The images include those of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, which have been viewed online and elsewhere by most of us (and our children), and have been jokingly or critically discussed as instances of warporn. I jumped for joy when I received the signed license agreement from an editor of Salon.com allowing me to reprint some of the images from the Abu Ghraib Files. 1 Even though I know from experience that the images may be rejected later on, and that the specific reasons for exclusion will likely be haphazard, I would argue that we have to try to include these and other politically sensitive or arousing images. (Refer to CD for Jacobs Figures 1 and 2.)
I want to write illustrated texts to reframe and analyze DIY netporn culture, add my own critical angle and voice, and scrutinize the photos beyond their first appearances on the Internet. But the photos are also included to radiate and rethink erotic appeal and/or feelings of gloominess beyond what a critical commentary could accomplish.
Georges Bataille admitted to losing himself in representations of eroticism when writing his illustrated philosophy book, Tears of Eros, a fragmented treatise into eroticism s legacy in rituals of sacrifice and violence. For instance, images of Chinese torture victims evoked in him a dark and deeply sensual meditation, as he thought those images were once divinely ecstatic and intolerable: I wonder what the Marquis de Sade would have thought of this image, Sade who dreamed of torture, which was inaccessible to him, but who never witnessed an actual torture scene. In one way or another, this image was incessantly before his eyes. 2 [End Page 127]
In my work as a porn scholar and curator of sexually explicit new media art, I argue for a need to dig up obscure collections, recycle clich images...
