How to Do Things with Pornography

Pornography, ideology, and propaganda: Cutting both ways

“…In his review of HTDTWP, Tsagdis () suggests that there is not enough indication in it of sufficiently broad familiarity with different kinds of pornography, mentioning, for example, the total disregard for homoerotic pornography. Moreover, he (thus agreeing with (Boyle, ) review in Times Higher Ed ) points out that Nancy's engagement remains restricted specifically to the philosophical literature on pornography, thus disregarding the significant scholarship on pornography in other fields such as gender theory and film studies. My guess is that this is due to the fact that Nancy is deliberately engaging specifically with the philosophical debates on pornography, which themselves (regrettably) tend to neglect scholarship on pornography from other fields.…”

“…(Let me start with a disclaimer: This is a piece inspired by How to do Things with Pornography (HTDTWP) by Nancy Bauer (), but it is not a commentary on the book as such. I here discuss a number of themes that I think are already latent in the book, but I end up developing a few ideas of my own.…”

Propaganda and the Authority of Pornography

“…(1993: 60) However, whatever authority pornography possesses is presumably nothing like the authority of the state, and some philosophers have been sceptical that we can specify an interesting and relevant sense in which pornography is authoritative (e.g. Green 1998, Bauer 2006. There have been several responses in the literature, some of which try to show that the premise that pornography is authoritative speech can be defended (e.g.…”

“…Another possibility is that we might try to occupy some middle ground between MacKinnon and Fricker here; perhaps pornography exploits pre-existing misogynist ideology, but is the source (or a principal source) of certain particularly harmful aspects of the dominant sexual ideology, particularly the so-called rape myths, and this might be enough to justify special treatment even while we acknowledge, with Fricker, that we shouldn't overstate the significance of pornography. 17 15 See also Bauer 2006, andFinlayson 2016: 161-6. 16 Katharine Jenkins raised this worry at a workshop in Vienna.…”

“…However, a number of Langton's critics (e.g. Green 1998 andBauer 2006) have contended that it's not clear what kind of authority this could be, nor that pornography possesses it. Philosophers sympathetic to the silencing argument have adopted various different responses to the authority problem, some of which take the problem head on and try to show that pornography does possess the relevant kind of authority, and others which try to advance the argument while rejecting Langton's claim that it rests on the premise that pornography is authoritative.…”