Pornography and power in Michel Foucault’s thought

ABSTRACT

This paper reconstructs Michel Foucault’s account of pornography by placing it into his theory of power. To explain the novelty of Foucault’s position, it counterpoises it with anti-pornography feminism and its analysis of the modern state. The paper argues that Foucault considered pornography to be a strategy of biopower to regulate individual sexual conduct. By inciting the discourse on sex, pornography participates in the production of truth about sex. Through confession, its consumers discover their sexual identities, becoming self-regulating. The result is a proliferation of sexualities, but also their rigidification and categorisation, leading to a mass deployment of perversion.

KEYWORDS:

• Pornography
• power
• Michel Foucault
• sexuality
• radical feminism

Notes

1. For example, followers of Marxist psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich view pornography as a distraction from the repressive nature of the bourgeois state; an antidote to genuine liberation.