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On Pornography: MacKinnon, Speech Acts, and “False” Construction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Mary Kate Mcgowan
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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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , Summer 2005 , pp. 22 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 by Hypatia, Inc.

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