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Arch Sex Behav (2011) 40:13451347 DOI 10.1007/s10508-011-9836-z
BOOK REVIEW
Porn Studies
Edited by Linda Williams. Durham, North Carolina, Duke University Press, 2004, 516 pp., $24.95 (paper)
Maude M. Adjarian
Published online: 18 October 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011
A major theoretical concern for the celebrated historian of sexuality, Foucault (1978), was the way in whichsex is put into discourse(p. 11). What actually gets said about sex and how especially through various forms of pornographic expression has been a long-standing topic of interest for Williams, a lm scholar.Inthisvolume,Williamsbringstogethersomeoftheliveliest,mostcutting-edgethinkingtodatenotjustonX-ratedcinema, but also on pornography itself: specically, its place, function, and status in contemporary culture.
The 16 essays inthis refreshing collection represent thenew waveof scholarship in a eld of inquiry that Williams helped establishandlegitimizeinHardCore,hergroundbreaking1989 studyofmovingpicturepornography.Wherethisearliertext traces the evolution and meaning(s) of the pornographic within different lmic forms, Porn Studies focuses more on expanding the contexts in which pornography as both an enduring popular cultural form and a multi-billion dollar industry can be studied. Indeed, critical engagement with theobscene (what must be kept off [ob] the cultural scene) is now imperative, sincetheFoucauldiantensionbetweenthespeakableandunspeakableanimates so manycontemporary discourses on sexuality(p. 4). To describe how the once hidden and repressed now nds itself out in the open and is now a vehicle for heightened culturalawarenessofsexuality,Williamsdevelopsthe notionof theon/scene,which becomes the foundational concept for the essays presented in the text. These analyses in turn examine an array of visual and verbal expressions of the pornographic.
TherstsectionofPornStudiestranscendsthegenericbound-aries of its predecessor text, Hard Core, by examining the
contemporary pornographies that have emerged out of court documents, home movies made available to a general audience(suchastheinfamous1997PamandTommyLee:Hard Core and Uncensored video), X-rated Japanese redezu komikku orladies comics,and adult Internet websites. What unites the essays that discuss these diverse narrative forms is an interest in how pornography redenes/is redened by various forms of public discourse and/or the medium through which it is transmitted.InherconsiderationoftheClinton/Lewinskyscandal,for example, St. John shows how the Starr Report takes the events thatdenedthatscandalandnarrativizestheminsuchawaythat theReportitselfendsupplay[ing]likeastaglm(p.42),thatin its prurience repels as it attracts. And for Patterson, who examines the impact of computer...