Beyond Explicit: Pornography and the Displacement of Sex

Part II: Intensity and Prurience

Part II Intensity and Prurience Pornography After Sex As shown in Part I, the complex interpenetrations of feminism, transgression , and pornography have resulted in something of a diversification when it comes to contemporary understandings of the pornographic. In the case of Charlotte Roche’s Wetlands, representations of abject bodily substances, along with the affects that such representations might produce, have, as the result of a particular set of cultural operations and terminological difficulties, been brought under the rubric of the pornographic. In this section, I consider the manner in which responses and representations that are not typically viewed as sexual or sexually explicit can be seen to intersect with the pornographic. I move away from reactions of nausea and disgust in favor of examining the sometimes discomforting conjunction of prurient interest and depictions of the violated human form within contemporary Western visual cultures. Chapter 4 examines a number of examples of adult entertainment and considers their engagement with a sphere of interests that exceeds the conventionally sexual. In particular, I address the surprising centrality of other, nonsexual body genres to a marginal subset of pornographic works. Beginning with a brief look at the history of pornography, my analysis will deal with such infamous and well-established contemporary pornographic artifacts as Larry Flynt’s Hustler magazine, as well as with material that has yet to achieve this degree of cultural visibility, including examples of the emerging cultural discourse known as “warporn.” Central to my discussion is the idea of intensity, and its role within sexually 63 64 Beyond Explicit charged representations. Using Leo Bersani’s post-Freudian account of the significance of powerful affective processes for the formation of human sexualities, I ask whether theories of intensity might help us to account for the at times surprisingly diverse nature of adult entertainment’s interest in the body. The other key theorist of intensity is, of course, Jean-François Lyotard, whose analysis of the philosophy of desire in Libidinal Economy frequently positions libidinal intensities as zones of radical possibility. For Lyotard, the “operator of disintensification is exclusion: either this, or not-this. Not both. The disjunctive bar” (14), whereas “every intensity, scorching or remote, is always this and not-this” (15). Like Bersani, he extends the ideas of sexuality and intensity beyond the genitals; indeed, the genitals themselves are displaced in a reading that views the body as a vast surface in which there “are no holes, only invaginations of surfaces ” (21). However, he has a rather looser understanding of the idea of intensity than does Bersani. I find that, in Lyotard’s (admittedly rather beautiful) rhapsodies, the concept of intensity becomes increasingly slippery , expansive, and difficult to use effectively as a critical tool—a critique that this book will also level at the explosion of the pornographic itself. Lyotard argues, for example, that “intensities may withdraw from the skins of bodies [. . .], and pass onto the skins of words, sounds, colors, culinary tastes, animal smells and perfumes” (256), thereby exploding the idea to a point of near meaninglessness. He stresses that the “demand for clarity must be strongly denounced” (258), for the demand that one define the intense is “the first imprint of power on the libidinal band” (258). This anarcho-libidinal conceptualization of the liberating power of affect is seductive, but also seems to bring politics into a wholly eroticized realm, and to reduce it to the libidinal in a manner that feels somewhat anachronistic at a time when the transgressive possibilities of sexuality are increasingly being called into question. Bersani also displays an investment in sexuality’s potential—in the possibilities for rethinking and decentering the self that come with ego-shattering experiences of jouissance , for example—but this is matched by a certain spirit of skepticism in the face of broad claims about the political implications of sexual practices (see his comments on parody and queer S/M in “Is the rectum a grave?”). This skepticism, combined with his more precise and restrained style, is why I find Bersani so useful, and why I favor his work in my analysis of intensity throughout this section. Chapter 5 builds on Bersani’s work to further develop, interrogate, and historicize this concept of intensity. Drawing on the depictions of 65 Intensity and Prurience cyber-voyeurism present within Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel Oryx and Crake (2003), I suggest that a generalized interest in the body in a state...