Pornography
| Abstract | Pornography has attracted a good deal of academic and political attention, primarily from feminists of various persuasions, moral philosophers, and legal scholars. Surprisingly less work has been forthcoming from film theorists, given how much pornography has been produced on video and DVD and is now available through live streaming video over the Internet. Indeed, it is not until 1989, with the publication of Linda Williams’ groundbreaking Hard Core, that pornography is distinguished, in terms of its content, intent, and governing conventions, as a filmic genre of its own. Still, not all pornography exists as film, and so a full discussion of it must encompass its other manifestations (e.g., magazines, websites, comics, etc.). The central questions about pornography are these: (1) What is it? How is it to be defined? (2) What are its effects? (3) How, if at all, ought it to be regulated? While these questions are simple, providing answers to them, as we shall see, is complicated. There is plenty of disagreement about how to define pornography; research about pornography’s effects is not univocal; and this in turn leads to substantial debate about what can and may be done about pornography. It is to these matters that the bulk of this essay is addressed. To begin, however, we will take a brief snapshot of the emergence of pornographic film and of the pornography business as it exists today. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,679 |
| External links | This entry has no external links. Add one. |
| Through your library | Only published papers are available at libraries |
Similar books and articlesDaniel I. A. Cohen (1994). The Hate That Dare Not Speak its Name: Pornography Qua Semi-Political Speech. Law and Philosophy 13 (2):195 - 239.
Alisa L. Carse (1999). Pornography's Many Meanings: A Reply to C. M. Concepcion. Hypatia 14 (1):101-111.
Jorn Sonderholm (2008). Having Fun with the Periodic Table: A Counterexample to Rea's Definition of Pornography. Philosophia 36 (2):233-236.
Amy Allen (2001). Pornography and Power. Journal of Social Philosophy 32 (4):512–531.
Theodore Bach (2010). Pornography as Simulation. In Dave Monroe (ed.), Pornography: Philosophy for Everyone.
Christy Mag Uidhir (2009). Why Pornography Can't Be Art. Philosophy and Literature 33 (1):pp. 193-203.
Lori Watson (2010). Pornography. Philosophy Compass 5 (7):535-550.
Andrew Aberdein (2010). Strange Bedfellows: The Interpenetration of Philosophy and Pornography. In Dave Monroe (ed.), Porn: How to Think with Kink. Wiley-Blackwell.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads99 ( #6,304 of 549,088 )Recent downloads (6 months)0How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
