On pornography: Mackinnon, speech acts, and "false" construction

Hypatia 20 (3):22-49 (2005)
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Abstract

: Although others have focused on Catharine MacKinnon's claim that pornography subordinates and silences women, I here focus on her claim that pornography constructs women's nature and that this construction is, in some sense, false. Since it is unclear how pornography, as speech, can construct facts and how constructed facts can nevertheless be false, MacKinnon's claim requires elucidation. Appealing to speech act theory, I introduce an analysis of the erroneous verdictive and use it to make sense of MacKinnon's constructionist claims. I also show that the erroneous verdictive is of more general interest.

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References found in this work

Truth in fiction.David K. Lewis - 1978 - American Philosophical Quarterly 15 (1):37–46.
Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts.John Rogers Searle - 1979 - Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
On being objective and being objectified.S. Haslanger - 2002 - In Louise Antony & Charlotte Witt (eds.), A Mind of One's Own. Boulder CO: Westview Press. pp. 209--53.

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