Porn After Porn: Contemporary Alternative Pornographies by Enrico Biasin & Giovanna Maina & Federico Zecca

Author:Enrico Biasin & Giovanna Maina & Federico Zecca [Biasin, Enrico & Maina, Giovanna & Zecca, Federico]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Politics & Social Sciences, Pornography, Social Sciences, Non-Fiction, Feminism
ISBN: 9788857528274
Amazon: B00SNVO29S
Barnesnoble: B00SNVO29S
Goodreads: 22582801
Publisher: Mimesis
Published: 2014-12-30T00:00:00+00:00

Post Porn and the Breaking of the Heteronormative Order

Let’s just add another element to take our analysis one step further: space. In geography, space is not just a background where human activities take place; space no longer appears as a static platform of social relations, but rather as one of their constitutive dimensions, itself historically produced, reconfigured, and transformed. Recent researches on the connection among sexuality, diversity and space illustrate how public space is built upon the idea of “appropriate sexual behaviour.” Lifestyles that do not follow the criteria of monogamy, heterosexuality and procreative sexual practices are ruled out from this idea, which lies at the very foundations of social order in many patriarchal societies. The spatial exclusion of the “dissidents” – namely individuals who, for different reasons, do not fall into categories largely accepted as being “normal” – contributes to the reproduction of the notion of citizenship and human rights, based on “heteronormative” criteria (see Hubbard 2001; Jackson 2006).

In such a context the body takes a central role, not only as a subject/object of study, but also as an instrument for the creation of new spatiality. When used as instruments for overturning the hegemonic order, non-normative bodies possess indeed a potential for subversion of the norms regulating the public space. Through the performance, it becomes therefore possible to establish “breaches” by interacting with the space in a new way. According to Derrida, “the performative act produces its subject, and an action is performative when it is able to evade an imposed determination and to create its own conventions” (quoted in Daniele 1997, 8).

Thus, the body and its sexuality leave the private sphere to fully enter the public and political space. Performers actually use the public space in order “to break the barriers existing between what is visible and what is not” (Torres 2011a) to break the heteronormativity intrinsic to the public space and to highlight its strongly normative and aggressively normalising nature.

Such a counterculture, that defines itself as anti-capitalist, postfeminist and subversive, must consequently consider the public space as a stage. Thanks to performers who shatter the man/woman dichotomy by bursting into public space with bodies that do not lend themselves to categorizing labels, heterosexuality stops being the tacit “natural” characteristic of public space.

Post pornography becomes therefore a tool to claim full access to the public space, now inclusive and no longer exercising a silent violence upon all those subjects outside the norm. To this violence Diana reacts with Pornterrorism. Slavina states that “post pornography is only one of the instruments we can use. I perceive its power in the discourse and in the practices rather than in its artistic form” (2011a). Thus post pornography contributes to a slow process for the creation of spatial justice, and for the assessment of citizenship rights for all those who refuse fixed gender identities. People like Diana Pornoterrorista, who, when insistently asked by society to define her/his gender and to consequently determine the practices she/he enacts in a public space, prefers to answer: “I love to switch.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.