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A Mimetic Ethics of Bodies

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A Mimetic Ethics of Bodies THE PORNOGRAPHICAL: A MIMETIC ETHICS OF BODIES Holly Mountain This thesis is submitted as a partial requirement towards a Doctorate of Philosophy at the University of Greenwich June 2007 Supervisory Committee Prof. Johnny Golding Dr. Steve Kennedy ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis is dedicated to my daughter Eva Puddy. I would like to thank Professor Johnny Golding for all of her support, time and energy. I have learnt a lot and none of this would have been possible without you. I would also like to thank Dr. Steve Kennedy for his time and astute comments -he opened a path for the deluge; and my support team during this time of research and writing: James Puddy, my parents, John and Anthea Mountain, my brothers, Nick and David Mountain, Dr. Anne Cormack, Marilyn and Keith Puddy, Andrew Gould, Sarah Purdy, Mark Walker, Andrina Bindon, Marianne Johnson and Morag Cuddeford-Jones. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION The Pornographical............... .......................................... pp. 1 -28. CHAPTER 1 Evacuating the Body: The Abyssal Logic of a Philosophy of Desire, pp. 29 -82. CHAPTER 2 Fascination: The Paradox of a Philosophy of Pleasure ..............pp. 83 -125. CHAPTER 3 Libidinal Technologies of Comic Pleasure...........................pp. 126 -175. CHAPTER 4 Economies of Witnessing: An Ana- aesthetic Mimetics............. pp. 176 - 220. CONCLUSION Privacies and Practices: Virtual Privacy, New Technologies and Democratic Practices....pp. 221 - 236. BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................pp. 237-258. Holly Mountain The Pornographical: An Ethics of Mimetic Bodies INTRODUCTION: The Pornographical. Whilst this thesis began through curiosity with the peculiar nature of pornography, or rather pornographies, its main focus is not on the pornography industry and it's ideological battles.1 Rather than providing a detailed analysis of specific genres of pornography and particular examples from within these genres, this thesis sketches out and introduces a concept of "the pornographicaF from the 'root form' of pornography.2 The pornographical is put forward as a name for the specific conjuncture between pleasure and the political, one that forms a cultural cartography of the sexual fantasises and fetishes central to a political and sexual account of the forces meshed in the social networks that serve to constitute an ethical reality.3 These paradoxical communities of the 1 Regarding the use of gender specifics, this thesis will be written using she/he; wo/man; her/his etc., unless a quote specifically uses he or she, or unless the above usage changes the meaning of the quote. 2 The concept of the pornographical arose from discussions with this thesis supervisor, Prof. Golding with regard to the relationship between the adjectival and noun forms of the verb, to pomograph. Prof Golding's own work puts forward the arts work of something as having a sexual component; one that forms an aesthetics libidinal economies, projected memories and acoustic ruptures, or as she names it a 'blood poetics': towards a non-fascist life. S. Golding/johnny de philo (ed), Eight Technologies of Otherness. (London: Routledge, 1997). William Haver also ruminates on the subject of a 'pornographic life'; one that he defines as the task ofpoiesis, or as the presentation of the non-relation to singularity. He writes: "Pornography is a presentation of the essential stupidity of the sense and the affects. This is what is called obscenity, the supplement of the possibility of interpretation, where cocks are only cocks, cunts are only cunts, assholes only assholes, and a cigar is only ever a cigar. What is obscene about pornography, and what is essentially pornographic inpoiesis, is the fact that it presents the impossible non- relation to singularity, the very impossibility of interpretation. Again: through its manifold representation, pornography presents what needs no interpretation or representation; in pornography, the senses are invariably stupid, what you see is what you see." W. Haver, "Pornographically man dwells ...... towards an irresponsible reading of Heidegger" in Issues in Contemporary Culture and Aesthetics, VoL 12, edited by S. Golding/johnny de philo. (Maastricht: Jan Van Eyck Akademie, August 2001), p. 3. 3 In this way pornography, as an industry, discourse and genre is manifested in the specifics of it's conjuncture of pleasure to the ethicio-political, but that the politics of these dynamics, that the mannerisms and dynamics of a pornographic code is not subsumed or contained to this one genre, subordinating all other genres. Pornography is not something that just people in the industry produce. Through the impact of technology many lovers and acquaintances make pornography in their memories, videos, photos and web pages. 'The pornographical' is a site of degrees of paradoxes; a site that locates, through pornography as an industry, genre, name and in the 'human' bodily communication of pornographic codes, degrees of social taboos; fetishes; fantasies; sexual, gender and racial identities; repressions; oppressions; prohibitions and proprieties that are central to a sexual and political account of the forces meshed in the social and cultural networks that serve to constitute reality. Holly Mountain The Pornographical: An Ethics of Mimetic Bodies pornographical are both public and anonymous, yielding a peculiar cultural 'memory space' or psyche of fantasy sexual identities. One of the aspects that this thesis examines is the way in which pornography embodies a peculiar singularity, particularly around aesthetics and its ethical relationship to the universal and the personal. Pornography creates a strange community through its technological distance, manner and anonymity. These pornographical communities operate with and permeate a peculiar language structure that belongs paradoxically to the political presence of bodies, of skin. It is argued that the pornographical is a kind of dynamic, an unsayable something that has tonalities and techne to it, one that contours a bodily meaning; one that is bloody, stripped of moral consolation in presenting the unspeakable, in demonstrating the fluidities of sexual roles, the shifting of identities, the complicity of ideologies and the confusion between victims and oppressors. In addressing the body politic, the pornographical is a very different kind of dynamic than the bloodless absolute negativity of Enlightenment and the weight of its contingent necessity. As a dynamic to thought, the pornographical, is raised as a way of thinking that allows thought to be muscular and sexual rather than driven by a need for administrative efficiency to classify, categorize, and cleanly represent. The pornographical is posited as an economy of identity that does not arise from a castration, a lack, a deep cut, an inbetween or an economy of signs or a politics of equivalences. It is a dynamic to the art and music, to name just a few, of Spencer Tunick; Marlene Dumas; Helen Chadwick; Cindy Sherman; Patricia Piccinini; Throbbing Gristle; Big Black; Benny Benassi; and Michael Collins.4 4 These artists and musicians comment in their works on the body, its grotesqueness and visceral nature of the skin; of the skins folds, of the physicality and politics of the bodies flesh. Patricia Piccinini's works Holly Mountain The Pornographical: An Ethics of Mimetic Bodies This thesis derived the notion of the pornographical not as a general overarching term but from specific defining manners and traits of pornography and the pornographic genres. Pornography is not a timeless entity. Despite it's ancient etymology from the Greek word lpornographos' 5, defined as the 'writings of prostitutes', it is only during the 1800s that the genre, the series of written, engraved and printed products, was given the name: "pornography."6 Previous to the seventeenth century it is problematic to chart a history of pornography that would be delimited by the concept 'pornography', given that the delimitation itself is a modern invention.7 This is not to say that there were express the nature of responsibility and vulnerbilites of our world and our changing relationship to the technological and the natural world. Her 'We Are Family' sculptures are detailed and emotive in their portrayal of the sexual nature of the body and its warmth, detailing the wrinkles and crevices of the skin and the accuracy of the body stances of the differing sculptures and their relationship to each other and even a 'gameboy'. Piccinini makes the bizarre and unbelievable come to life in a believable and non-sci- fi manner: http://patriciapiccinini.net/ Marlene Dumas' paintings again comment on the political and ever present nature of bodies violating taboos of motherhood; childhood; sexuality; gender; religion and racism. Her painting undermines the moral underpinnings of society and any sense of a universally held belief system. Spencer Tunick presents installations of skin and bodies and emphasises their political presence in these urban landscapes. Cindy Sherman's works again play with the body and the identifications, fears and fantasies that surround it. Helen Chadwick too challenges sexual and gendered assumptions of identity and the universal systems that uphold them. Her works attempt to approach the body in terms that Chadwick describes as an "exchange of matter and energy beyond power relations". Helen Chadwick quoted in Eva Martisching, "Getting into the Artist's Head" in Helen Chadwick, edited by Mark Sladen. (Ostfildern, Germany: Barbican Art
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