Post Porn PoIitics

Intro
07 Tn Sgen
EjacuIatory Punctuation:
The Cum Shot as Period, EIIipsis, and Question Mark
MUra ~,oenr 13
Erotic]Eotic
Race and CIass in French Gay "Ethnic" Pornography
Maxne Cer.Ue 19
FizzIe Out in White
Postporn poIitics and the deconstruction of fetishism
la[a Leenbacn 25
Unbecoming:
Pornography and the Queer Event.
ee Foenan 33
The Luck of the DispIaced FeeIing.
The InvisibIe Hand, Penis Surrogates and Se.
Se;nan Ceene 47
Soft ArousaI Late Party:
Web ArousaI and Porno Ehaustion.
laren .acobs ano Cnana Za|ar 53
LibidinaI Parasites and the Machinic Ecess:
On the Dystopian Biosphere of Networks
Maeo PasUne 59
The Architecture of Porn.
museum waIIs, urban detritus and stag rooms for porn-prosthetic eyes
Eear. Precaoo 7
Viva Mc GIam.
Is Transgenderism a Critique of or CaptuIation to OpuIence-driven GIamour ModeIs?
Terre Tnaen. 75
LibidinaI Parasites and the Machinic Ecess:
On the Dystopian Biosphere of Networks
Mcnaea \nscn 87
Bubu de Ia MadeIeine 103
Bruce La Bruce 117
Shu Lea Cheang 131
Werner Hirsch 139
Maria LLopis
Crsvno|e;orno 145
EIizabeth Stephens, Annie SprinkIe and Cosey Fanni Tutti
Pos Porn ErUncn 151
Todd Verow 11
Tobaron Waman 19
WiIIiam WheeIer 177
181 Outro
Tn Sgen
187 Impressum
Conens
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Post Porn PoIitics
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macropolitics. As Foucault has written, ,no local center, no pattern oI transIormation could
Iunction iI, through a series oI sequences, it did not eventually enter into an over-all strategy.
And inversely, no strategy could achieve comprehensive eIIects iI it did not gain support Irom
precise and tenuous relations serving, not as its point oI application or fnal outcome, but as
its prop and anchor point.'
2

Thus the political is determined by a type oI relationality oI its practices, the power
oI which lies in the connections, and by a series oI unsolvable tensions, including the ten-
sion embedded in a concatenation oI practices that gets actualised by a non-calculable event
that paradoxically calls Ior an active passivity, Ior actively awaiting that which could not be
produced either by strategic guidance or subjective decisiveness, the tension between the idea
oI Iragile, non-substantialisable politics as a momentary rupture and the idea oI the necessity
oI giving this rupture continuity by instituting it. In positive terms, through the dismissal oI
the concept oI a pure, once-and-Ior-all break implying a distancing Irom a certain tradition
oI messianic time, Irom the Ioundation oI politics in an essence, a subjective potentiality or
a primary contradiction radical politics become possible. The purpose oI struggle is not
the end oI history or the transparency oI Ireedom, because Ireedom is not a state that can be
achieved but a mode oI acting that it is yet to be produced. The political is a name Ior these
strategic tensions.
3
The past of postpornographic poIitics
In this sense Ondines hymn to a delirious 1965 testifes to a specifc political concatenation
characterised by a striking collection oI pro-Ietishistic subcultural strategies which subse-
quently vanished. The liIestyles, club nights, perIormances and movies oI this pre-Stonewall,
part homosexual, part dissident sexual subculture, loosely connected to the emerging minori-
tarian struggles as well as to the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist approaches oI the New
LeIt, were pro-pornographic, pro-Ietishistic, attracted by and attracting through the glamour
oI commodities, playing with the sex appeal oI things, fowers, clothes, their inscrutability,
their seductive passivity, their namelessness, Ietishistically devoted to beauty, stardom, Hol-
lywood, insisting on and simultaneously displacing and reappropriating the capitalist promise
oI a happy liIe rather than being disgusted by the alienation that a commodity-based society
supposedly produces. In early queer subculture the showing oI beauty was not seen as an act
oI delusion, the shredding oI a veil that had to be torn up to reveal the antagonistic truth be-
hind. As evidenced by the flms oI Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith or John Waters, or as a late
echo by Fassbinders CUeree, beauty was directly combined with experiences and images
oI despair, violence, decay and Iragility. These connections between beauty and dirtiness, or,
in the tradition oI the Theatre oI the Ridiculous, between porn and scenes oI Iailing, silly sex,
are not made in order to provoke the guardians oI normality, to shock the middle classes who
are to demonstrate their appreciation through negative attention, or to ridicule the showing oI
sex. They are made to produce an immanent pleasure oI non-naturalised, non-nurturing, non-
love-dedicated, non-reproductive sex. In this sense postporn politics had already entered the
present a long time ago, but due to the Marx-inspired anti-Ietishism oI the New LeIt and the
essentialist threads in the Ieminism oI the 1970s and 80s, it has been partly Iorgotten.
In the Iollowing text I want to trace a specifc line oI the theory oI Ietishism that
stretches Irom Marxs critical concept oI the commodity Ietish as a phantasmatic but actual
17
GoIden years
Ondine (Robert Olivo), who appeared in several movies directed by Warhol and Morrissey in the mid
60s, said about the year 1965, ,At that point in my liIe, in everybodys liIe, that was the culmination oI
the 1960s. What a year. Oh, it was splendid. Everything was gold, everything. Every color was gold.
It was just Iabulous. |...| Any time I went to the Factory, it was the right time. Any time I went home,
it was right. Everybody was together, it was the end oI an era. That was the end oI the amphetamine
scene, it was the last time amphetamine really was good. And we used it. We really played it.'
1
OI
course, Ondine is exaggerating; 1965 was not the last time amphetamine was good. What made this
time so splendid was a special political concatenation which had almost reached its peak: a combination
oI, frstly, new Iorms oI militant political activism that had broken with the Leninist model; secondly,
new Iorms oI cohabitation, spending time in a non-calculated and unmeasured way, dwelling in com-
munes, not working, taking drugs, experimenting with unknown ways oI doing things together; and
thirdly, early queer politics decades beIore the term was used Ior nonidentitarian gender politics, drag,
the dismantling oI gender dualism, demonstrating ones Ieminist dissidence or homosexuality. Ondines
magic encounter with this rare concatenation, which was only actualised in special moments oI a time
that is remembered as ,1968', hints at the problematic status oI the political, which is important to take
into consideration when discussing what a postpornographic politics might mean.
The name of the poIiticaI
My thesis is that the political presupposes the contingent advent oI an event that allows Ior the com-
ing together oI diIIerent dissident practices, increasing their mutual connections, whereby the normal
distributions oI places and Iunctions are interrupted and the chance oI exceeding the existing order
emerges. Through these connections a militant element is produced in the subject, while the latter is
displaced by the event traversing it. That is to say, there is no preexisting subject oI politics; the po-
litical cannot be substantialised in something subjective, human, or living, nor can it be objectively
Iounded in the advancing contradictions oI capitalist valorisation, wherein its tendential breakdown is
supposed to be inscribed. Instead, the political is nothing other than the historically specifc eIIective-
ness oI a complex oI connections between heterogeneous radical practices that aIIect and, in the best
case, intensiIy each other. The potential Ior a rupture depends on the composition oI these connections
and the non-authoritarian perspective oI the struggles, or rather on a vigilant sensibility and prepared-
ness to oppose authoritarian pragmatics. The political has to contain multiple social diIIerences the
Iorce oI 1968 derives Irom the extreme multiplicity oI the positions involved while combining a
micropolitical with a macropolitical dimension. In the microdimension, the political is located in the
everyday as selI-organised struggle against unbearable Ieatures oI capitalist and governed liIe and as
momentary intensity oI an already transIormed situation that allows the evasion oI those Ieatures as
well as the experience oI brieI moments oI minoritarian happiness. The macropolitical dimension deals
with the question oI organisation and selI-management in the tradition oI council communism in order
to bring continuity to a struggle or to a sudden transIormative moment by constructing and instituting
basic democratic organs, giving militants the chance to distance themselves Irom the political act so as
to avoid the burden oI constant selI-mobilisation. Both dimensions are combined with specifc dangers:
the frst, especially today, being a transIormation to identitarian politics and commercialised liIe Iorms;
the second being the development oI bureaucracy or iI there is no way oI distancing oneselI Irom the
political the reemergence oI cadre subjectivity. Both political dimensions Iace power strategies that
mark and anticipate them, strategies which are also characterised by a mutual conditioning oI micro and
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Post Porn PoIitics
point oI view Preciado elaborates a queer and ironic version oI what Bersani, in his reading oI
Genet, has called the ,gay outlaw'. Preciado`s dildo techniques double Bersanis concept oI
homosexuality as an act oI betrayal and desocialisation. The gay outlaw rejects the concept oI
a Iamiliar triangularity in which the disruptive eIIect oI a third agent guarantees the intimacy
oI a couple, allowing Ior the expression oI a desire that will not be satisfed. Here, it is decisive
that the idea oI an ethical necessity oI betrayal, which Bersani borrows Irom Genet, cannot
be reduced to a merely transgressive relation to loyalty. The thing at stake is betrayal, not ,as
a crime against socially defned good, but |.| |as| a turning away Irom the entire theater oI
the good, that is, a kind oI meta-transgressive oe;assenen oI the feld oI transgressive pos-
sibility itselI'.
5
The aspect that Bersani is particularly interested in is Genet`s dedication to the
intensity oI the unsocial, irrelative homo-ness oI one man Iucking the ass oI another, blessing
a sexual pleasure that repudiates intimacy and interrupts all conventionalities oI the social: a
luminous desubjectivation. While Genets and Bersanis version oI the homosexual outlaw is
heavily bound to gay exclusivity and the absence oI women, Preciado invents a butch version
oI a universal outlaw practice that is in excess to heterosexual sociality. She shows how, in the
space oI homosexuality and S/M, the frst practices that deviate Irom heterosexual intimacy
emerged by making contracts, using dildos, eroticising the ass. In a kind oI magic seriousness,
ranging Irom an explicit radicality to sometimes almost childlike simplicity, Preciado calls Ior
the universal use oI dildos in order to denaturalise sexuality, to inIect it with a thing that is not
a copy oI a penis but an object that is both a way to appropriate the ass as the universal passive
and non-reproductive organ that all people have and a way to multiply sexual acts, distribut-
ing them throughout the whole body. The ConrasexUa Maneso Iormulates several exercises
Ior quoting a dildo: by rubbing a Iorearm, by rubbing a head whose mouth contains 75 ml oI
red coloured water ready to be spit, etc. The dildo thereby becomes a type oI Ietish that is no
longer a substitute, which does not conceal the abject, which is not aIIected by a logic oI lack,
which instead introduces one to the intensities oI becoming an interpassive, nameless thing
that Iucks and is Iucked. In this way the dildo not only betrays distribution into living subjects
and dead things; it also betrays the socially codifed exchange relation between the one who
desires and the one who is desired, thereIore incorporating desire.
In order to discuss the Ietish`s potential as a thing that embodies aIIects, passing
through a subject and decentring it, I will turn to Marxs concept oI the commodity Ietish as
real-imaginary expression oI the impersonal and abstract type oI domination in capitalism.
The spectre of the commodity form
As Derrida was kind enough to tell us,
6
Marx, in the frst chapter oI Ca;a, wrote a spectral
theory oI the commodity-Iorm as social relation, according to which the social appears to man
as phantasmatic while it is actually a set oI 'material relations between persons and social
relations between things
7
. Here we have an interesting Iorm oI real insanity which inhabits
things without being at home in them. This insanity is not a natural Ieature oI these things.
It appears at the moment oI exchange and expresses labour`s social character. A social Iorm
is embodied in the commodity value, which expresses a relation oI substitution, abstraction
and reifcation. Later Sohn-Rethel will call this real abstraction` as actual as it is Iantastic;
Ior Marx it is a spectre that must be driven out. Thus, in the commodities value something
that is otherwise untouchable can almost be touched: capitalism`s mode oI production. In this
sense commodities are sensuously supersensible things, social crystals. This is their secret,
19
expression oI the abstract Iorm oI capitalist domination to Beatrice Preciados aIfrmative concept oI
dildo politics as proto-communist queer act. My point oI departure is the question oI the problematic
state oI the thing and the relation between the dead and the living in Marxs theory oI the Ietish and
Preciados deconstruction oI Ietishism. In the latter the use oI dildos provides a privileged access to the
beautiIul experience oI becoming a sensitive, inter-passive thing that exceeds the heterosexual dualism
oI activity and passivity, intellect and sensibility, the distribution into the one who Iucks and the one
who is Iucked.
Becoming at Ieast a thing
II one ignores the conventionality oI an assumed post` and the Ialseness oI the temporal split into then
and now that the use oI post terms implies, postpornography could, in a strategic sense, stand Ior having
and showing sex while insisting that it is not the real thing, the hidden truth or living energy oI ones liIe.
Postporn politics presuppose the knowledge that bodies have been educated and capacitated, through
centuries oI disciplining techniques, toward becoming a mobilised entity that is ready to work and in
a tricky double movement oI repression and production have been gendered and sexualised along a
dualistic male-Iemale, active-passive axis. Mistakenly, the modern subjects living in these bodies as-
sume that their sexuality expresses a singular vital Iorce that has to be Ireed Irom repression, releasing
them Irom the realm oI labour, rationality and repetition. In the feld oI Marxism this sexual utopianism
extends Irom Reichs orgasm theory to the entire Freudo-Marxist discourse, as well as to concepts oI
emancipatory sensuousness in Herbert Marcuse or AlIred Schmidt; it has also leIt traces in the Ieminist
myths oI amazons or matriarchal naturalness and in a sophisticated, non-naturalised variant still
resonates in the queer over-aIfrmation oI sex perIormances. At the end oI the frst volume oI Tne Hs
or, o SexUa, Foucault wrote, ,And we have to dream that perhaps one day in another economy oI
bodies and pleasures nobody will really understand anymore how the ruses oI sexuality, and oI power
which supports its dispositives, have succeeded in subjecting us to this austere monarchy oI sex, to the
point oI devoting us to the indefnite task oI Iorcing its secret and extorting Irom this shadow the truest
conIession. The irony oI this dispositive: it makes us believe that here lies our ,liberation.'
4
At its best, Postpornography would be this non-utopian movement to another economy oI bod-
ies and pleasure, neither believing in sexual liberation nor in the existence oI a constituent law that gen-
erates desire by introducing it to an unstable symbolic order, nor rejecting porn because oI the existence
oI a straight or gay or emerging lesbian porn industry, which, especially in its straight version, produces
an imagery oI humiliation that draws on the historical enclosure, passivisation and hysterisation oI
women. In addition postporn politics reject the reduction oI subcultural practices to the dimension
in which normativity is simply subverted, as they insist on the non-measurable intensity oI a practice
whileremaining aware oI its Iragility and openness Ior recuperation.
From this postpornographic perspective the body is desexualised and intensifed at the same
time. On the one hand, postporn detaches itselI Irom practices centred around the reproductive organs
and the primacy oI the orgasm; on the other hand, it invents new ways oI using various parts oI the body
Ior having sex. In her ConrasexUa Maneso Beatrice Preciado has analysed how S/M communities
appropriated instruments that were invented and used during campaigns against children`s masturbation
since the beginning oI the 17th century. She proposes the decentring oI the heterosexual system with-
out giving queer sexuality a purely oppositional status. Her point oI departure is the question oI how
S/M practices have made power-pleasure relations visible, played on them, reappropriated them and
transIerred them to contractual relations that are voluntary, momentary and potentially reversible. S/M
shows how sexuality can become an unsocial act that decentres and desubjectivates the body. From this
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Post Porn PoIitics
into the value-Iorm, it becomes its own spectre. As a good disciple oI Hegel, Marx claims that
use value becomes the Iorm oI the appearance oI its opposite. As this unit oI the contradiction
oI matter-object and value-Iorm, the commodity is 'abounding in metaphysical subtleties and
theological niceties',
14
and becomes a bodiless body. In this sense Marx conceptualises the
Iorm oI value as a contradictory law, immanent to the social relations oI Iorces and expressive
oI their composition and dynamics. Thus contradiction wins the status oI a para-individual-
ity that has interiorised the diIIerent relation oI Iorces: one abstract law oI Iorm that explains
the social. In PoUr Marx and re e ca;a, Althusser concentrates his entire methodological
eIIort on giving the Marxian notion oI contradiction the greatest possible complexity, which
presupposes the rejection oI the central logical position oI value theory in the frst chapter oI
Ca;a. In contrast Althusser points out that capitalism, as a complex system oI reproduction
with relatively autonomous instances (whether political, juridical, cultural, or ideological),
cannot be reduced to either the immediate production process or the sphere oI exchange, nor
can its structure be summarised by the diIIerence between surplus value and wage or by the
abstraction oI concrete labour and use value in commodity exchange. By developing the con-
cept oI overdetermination, he shows that the Hegelian notion oI contradiction no longer has a
theoretical Iunction in Marx. While Hegels idea oI contradiction is dependent on the ,presup-
position oI a simple original unity which develops within itselI by virtue oI its negativity, and
throughout its development only ever restores the original simplicity and unity in an ever more
,concrete totality',
15
Marx would turn to the idea oI a complex set oI contradictory relations
structured by the dominance oI economic contradictions over all others. In other words, the set
oI principal contradictions is not the essence, and the secondary ones are not its phenomena.
Instead, they coexist and mutually condition each other, while the economic ones dominate the
others. This idea oI the primacy oI principal contradictions (economics), which, in a process oI
translation and displacement, transIer their principality to the other contradictions oI the social
feld, guarantees the existence oI a unity in Althussers thinking. Regulation theory replaced
this concept oI structured unity perceived as Iormal scholasticism with the idea that the
contradictions themselves are unstable tensions in which a transIormative subjectivity plays a
strategic role,
16
while Foucault replaced it with the concept oI an ensemble oI diIIerent strate-
gies oI discipline, governmentality, valorisation, and practices that resist or evade their given
order. From a poststructuralist point oI view, the multitude oI social relations does not con-
ceal a law oI contradiction that determines their limits. Contradiction is an exceptional Iorm
that the social relation oI Iorces can assume. In this sense the materialism oI an antagonistic
relational Iorm is replaced by the materialism oI an irreducible variation oI heterogeneous
practices that discipline bodies, regulate populations, valorise labour. The historicity oI one
dominant contradiction is substituted by the idea oI a contingent historical event conceived as
an improbable eIIect oI strategies oI power that anticipate the dissidences evading them.
17
This
reIormulation oI the connection between contradiction and social relations, which was carried
out by the New LeIt oI the 1960s, non-dogmatic Marxism and poststructuralist theory, allowed
Ior a new thinking oI the Ietish.
Ghost things and enjoying diIdos
For a deconstruction oI Ietishism and a consideration oI the status oI the dead thing, the spec-
tacular element oI Marx`s comments on the character oI the commodity lies in his strategy
oI shiIting the Iorm oI the social into the Iorm oI the commodity in the moment oI exchange,
21
which is shown by not showing, a mysterious mirror that prevents people Irom coming to grips with
the mysticism oI the commodity; it is seen as quite normal that things have a value and are exchanged.
Marx reveals this as a mystery; he is a decipherer who shows that the phantasmatic will not vanish by
being interpreted. It only dissipates once another mode oI production is reached. In a passage in the frst
chapter oI Ca;a, which is, regarding the rationality oI the revolution, as beautiIul in its clarity as it is
mystical, Marx points out that ,the whole mystery oI commodities, all the magic and necromancy that
surrounds the products oI labour as long as they take the Iorm oI commodities, vanishes thereIore, so
soon as we come to other Iorms oI production'.
8
This lesson on spectres is held in the Iourth section oI the frst chapter oI Ca;a, ,The Fetish-
ism oI Commodities and the Secret ThereoI'. Conjuring up the magic oI the commodity, Marx writes,
using a vocabulary infected by the religious and Iantastic, ,Here it is a defnite social relation between
men, that assumes, in their eyes, the Iantastic Iorm oI a relation between things. In order, thereIore, to
fnd an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions oI the religious world.'
9
Marxs
pathos oI truth is that oI a critic oI religion whose critique is still dominated by a religious spell that
he aims to demystiIy he Iorgets to determine whether the distinction between a rationality oI use and
an irrationality oI exchange is in itselI spectral and idealist. In ,Vacillation oI Ideology I', an essay on
the problematic status oI Marxs concept oI ideology, Balibar has shown that the theory oI value is an
attempt to cope with a series oI theoretical and practical diIfculties that Marx was Iorced to conIront
Iollowing the disastrous experiences oI the Iailed class struggles oI 1848-50 and his more detailed read-
ing oI political economy.
10
Marx had conceptualised the proletariat as a universal class whose produc-
tive Iormation immediately precedes the dissolution oI all classes and primes the revolutionary process.
This position presupposes a strict analogy between materialist being and praxis, whereby the proletariat
becomes 'the real movement which abolishes the present state oI things,
11
that is to say, ,a class oI
civil society which is not a class oI civil society,
12
as he wrote in the introduction to the CrUe o
Hege's Pnoso;n, o Fgn. In this respect class stops being a Iormation that makes particular political
demands and becomes a mass that is the practical negation oI all ideology, immediately exceeding the
existing order by unIurling its Iorces. AIter the deIeats oI the workers struggles in France in the mid
19th century, Marx realised how Iar his vision oI the real movement oI the proletariat was Irom what
had actually happened. Furthermore, his study oI political economy had Iorced him to see production
as a process oI separation and exchange that could not be integrated into the idea oI a pure proletarian
act. Hence Marx substituted the opposition oI the reality oI proletarian practice versus the illusion oI
bourgeois ideology Ior the concept oI the real in the imaginary. He no longer opposed the contradictions
in the categories oI political economy to the revolutionary praxis oI the proletariat, but to the praxis oI
capital and its advancing inner contradictions.
13
Contradiction and power reIations
What is new in Marx`s critique is that the commodity Iorm displays the Iorm oI capitalist society itselI,
which is a Iorm oI a contradictory relation between abstraction and exchange. Marx starts Irom the
elementary exchange oI products so that x amount oI commodity A is exchanged Ior y oI commodity B;
Ior example, 20 yards oI linen are worth 1 coat. He does so in order to show that the social Iorm does
not hide in the money-Iorm, but in the elementary value-Iorm, in the exchange oI one commodity Ior
another.
This Iorm is determined by substitution and a double abstraction oI use and oI concrete labour.
When linen is exchanged Ior a coat, the coat acts as a mirror oI the linen`s value; its material purity
vanishes together with its potential use. As soon as the commodity enters the market and is transIormed
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Post Porn PoIitics
alongside labour, catalysing labour`s eIIectivity.
22
In this theoretical context Beatrice Preciado has analysed the paradoxical production
oI the Iemale orgasm. The 17th century saw the beginning oI a number oI medical campaigns
against masturbation, then considered a dangerous and abnormal exposure. These campaigns
reached a peak in the 19th century when a vast number oI instruments were invented to pre-
vent the spread oI the masturbation disease. These instruments, ranging Irom chastity belts,
cock rings and bondage systems to electroshock apparatuses, marked the body with regions
oI pleasure and pain, isolating them in order to medically determine where sex is located.
Through a play oI repression and permission, these anti-masturbation devices show that sex
lies in the genitals and that the orgasm is the corresponding bodily reaction. At the same time,
medicine developed a method Ior treating Iemale hysteria using genital massages to stimulate
orgasm both as a symptom oI and a cure Ior a hysterical ft. For Preciado the Iemale orgasm
was produced at the intersection oI these two reverse strategies oI repression and production.
This is why she suggests that the dildo is the truth oI heterosexuality that will betray its logic
because it is the bad copy oI the penis that denaturalises the sexual feld and its dual distribu-
tion oI positions. In its most strategic sense, the dildo disrupts the distinction between living
subjects and dead things: ,The dildo is detachable and thereIore resists the Iorce with which
the body reappropriates pleasure, as iI pleasure were something that emerged Irom the body.
The pleasure produced by the body belongs to it only to the extent that it is reappropriation.
(.) The enjoying dildo knows that pleasure is never given or taken, that it is never there, that
it is never real but always embodiment and reappropriation.'
For Preciado the dildo, as subversive quotation oI the penis, reveals the inconsistency
oI the heterosexual regime. By a mere act oI multiplication, it exceeds the sovereignty oI the
single signifer and rejects the separations that the latter has instituted. It is what Derrida has
called the dangerous supplement that destroys what it completes. Replacing the one with the
multiple, this instrument demonstrates that the pleasure produced by sex can neither be attrib-
uted to a bodily region nor declared as subjective property: ,The dildo shows that the signifer
that generates sexual diIIerence Ialls outside oI its own game. The logic that it establishes is
the logic that will betray it'.
23
With this line oI argument Preciado uncannily returns to the
idea oI a whole that is structured by one dominant relation that can be reversed into its point
oI inconsistency and, consequently, oI collapse. Hence, with serious irony, she universalises
one specifc lesbian dildo practice as a protocommunist queer act; that is to say, she copies, in
a surprising move, Marxs early idea oI a universal class which is no longer a class, vanishing
the very moment it actualises itselI, and dissolves the order by a mere unIurling oI its Iorces.
,The butch', Preciado writes, ,is not simply one sexual identity among others, or a simple
declination oI masculine codes within a Iemale body, it is the last possible sexual identity.'
24
This, however, resonates with the idea oI the concrete universal
25
, where the metapolitical
idea oI the class as non-class is substituted by an anomalous subject whose particular prac-
tice ceases to be a partial claim as soon as it questions the entire structure oI a situation. This
defnition, in turn, logically re-attributes universality to one act (as momentary stand-in Ior
universality) instead oI showing how universality can only be the eIIect oI a concatenation oI
acts that neither measure diIIerence nor link diIIerence with access to social rights and pos-
sibilities, acts that remain open Ior a militant diversifcation oI their connections.

23
whereby the fgure oI a mysterious embodiment emerges, a real abstraction, a real within the imaginary.
The secret is not hidden behind the object, it is n the object. This shiIt begs the question oI the state oI
the thing. In a striking way, Marx makes the commodity autonomous, transIorming it into a contradic-
tory individuality about which he writes, '|as| soon as |a trivial table| steps Iorth as a commodity, it is
changed into something transcendent |...| and evolves out oI its wooden brain grotesque ideas, Iar more
wonderIul than table-turning` ever was.
18
Ignoring the question oI what will later be called biopolitics (i.e. the production oI a subject that
is ready to work, the regulation oI populations, the reproduction oI conditions that guarantee the expan-
sion oI chains oI valorisation), Marx, in the frst chapter oI Ca;a, gives the commodity a Ietishistic
Iorce. To the both phantasmatic and real value-objectivity that commodities crystallise in order to allow
Ior exchangeability, Marx opposes the material, actual, present objectivity oI a simple thing in use. OI
course this is phantasmatic in itselI even iI it points towards something irreplaceable, a jewel oI social
theory: capitalism is not a natural necessity. However, the theoretical side eIIect oI Marxs concept oI
value is a critical ontology oI presence as actual reality, which idealises the reality oI things, the ratio-
nality oI use and the selI-transparency oI production organised by a Iree association oI workers that is
to come. This idealism oI the simple state oI things characterises the romantic anti-capitalist mourning
oI things that have lost their original state and is echoed in the new social movements rejection oI con-
sumerism, the disgust Ior Iake things and their abundance, the trumpery and glitter oI the commodity
world, etc. In Marxist aesthetic theory the Iemale body became a privileged site Ior the metaphorising
oI the Ietishistic Iorce oI dead things, demonstrating Marxism`s analytical lack in relation to the consti-
tution oI bodies, sexuality and aIIects. Walter Benjamin is a master oI this strange metier oI the Iemale
embodiment oI capitalism. For him Iashion and prostitution show the living body`s coupling with the
inorganic world, explaining its Ietishistic sex appeal. For Benjamin the whore is in addition to the
fneur and the gambler the newly emergent type that expresses the human-becoming-commodity and
the triumph oI exchange over use value, oI death over liIe, oI things over bodies.
19
Perhaps, precisely against this line oI argument, it is necessary to ask how it is possible to become
at least a thing, not through a process oI valorisation but through a dehumanisation and desubjectivation
that opens subjectivity to an impersonal intensity. Deleuze and Guattari have called this opening this-
ness`, a concept that even leaves behind the status oI the thing and reIers to the pure immanence oI an
impersonal liIe, a paradoxical duration in which personal individuality Iades and becomes singular.
20
Critically reIerring to the status oI the woman as metaphorical body oI power, the anti-Ietish-
ist impulse oI the structuralist, Marx-oriented and Ieminist movie tradition oI the 60s and 70s led to
a permanent gesture oI deciphering and showing combined with a deep suspicion oI the gaze and the
superfciality oI the image. Instead oI glamorous visualisations oI women in advertising or mainstream
movies, the complex set oI social relations behind the simple image should be shown, the working con-
ditions, the everyday situations and the diIfculties and troubles experienced by women; analytical and
critical depth was set against superfcial appearances.
21
Though psychoanalysis has heavily hindered any easy reading oI the real by developing the
concept oI disavowal, which constitutes the unspeakable in the space oI the unconscious, the analysis
oI Ietishism becomes materialist and historical when it stops separating an imaginary feld Irom a feld
oI actual reality in order to allow the series oI stratifcations that constitute the Iemale body oI con-
sumption to be reconstructed. Froc \eare by Linda Singer, Ior example, examines how the ensemble
oI bodily strategies and consumer practices transIers a Ietishistic eIIect onto the commodity that is
simultaneously reinscribed in the body, producing aIIective dependency on consumerist activities. This
systematics permanently displaces the boundaries between labour and non-labour, Iree time and plea-
sure, whereby the latter is assumed to be in excess oI the Iormer; while in Iact it emerged and developed
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Reconsidering the strategy oI becoming a thing, the concept oI thisness or naecceas
that Deleuze and Guattari developed in reIerence to the medieval conceptualisations oI Duns
Scotus oIIers an alternative that leaves the subject-object dualism behind. With this concept
Deleuze and Guattari point beyond the paradoxical appropriation oI unreality. They outline
the possibility oI an impersonal intensity in which pieces oI things, parts oI subjects, are con-
nected with one another and are altered through a certain practice in a certain situation. This
thisness is more individual than a subject or an object. That is what Deleuze alludes to when he
quotes Lewis Carroll`s 'grin without a cat.
28
In the conceptual manual at the end oI ~ TnoU
sano PaeaUs, Deleuze and Guattari defne thisness as the media oI Becoming that happens
on a virtual feld without substance and Iorm, which consists only oI the modes oI individu-
ation itselI.
29
What is problematic here is the presupposition oI a IorceIul inorganic liIe that
constitutes this feld, an idea that though the Iorce oI this inorganic liIe is conceptualised
as an eIIect oI the connections it makes contains traces oI a vitalist originality. In the ninth
chapter oI ~ TnoUsano PaeaUs Deleuze and Guattari explain that the political takes place in
a zone where these virtual movements encounter the structured solidifcations oI the societal.
Between the two exists an area oI transduction , the micropolitical area where connections
are established, severed and re-established. It is here that things are going to happen.
30
These
concepts oI thisness and nonsubjective micropolitics could be nice tools Ior a theory oI post-
pornographic politics that deals with an economy oI pleasure withdrawn Irom the axis oI Iuck-
ing subjects and Iucked objects. To avoid being transIormed into a denaturalised version oI
sexual liberation, a call Ior a mere combination oI body parts, sex toys, drugs and hormones,
or a metapolitical universal porn practice that is assumed to dissolve the heterosexual regime,
postporn politics must become aware oI the Iact that politics is nothing but another name Ior
militant connectionism.
Transaeo b, Een[ann Carer
25
On this side of things
Analysing the Iading Iashions oI the 19th century, Walter Benjamin insisted on the past`s actuality in the
present, the presence oI what is not present. He reIers to Marx`s chapter, 'The Fetishism oI Commodi-
ties and the Secret ThereoI, in which Marx presents the opposite position oI the actuality oI what is
present, displacing the question that is posed there. Detecting another promising aspect oI commodities
that are not merely reduced to crystallised Iorms oI privately expended, abstract labour, Benjamin does
not want to exorcise the spectral and to return to elementary use, because he does not identiIy truth with
rational production. Abolition oI hunger and poverty, communality oI production Iorces, just distribu-
tion, etc., are the preconditions Ior another society. However, as a revolutionary spiritualist Benjamin
is searching Ior the promise oI what a liIe could be in the tiniest details, brieI moments oI bliss, Iragile
beauty, the plaything oI a child.
Benjamin recognised in the commodity the sign oI a standstill in what is happening. In the
oerner cr oI yesterday, in the most recent commodity crystal Benjamin fnds the irredeemable oI an
epoch, its dark deception. He claimed that the surrealist, Andre Breton, was the frst to perceive the
,revolutionary energies that appear in the ,outmoded, in the frst iron constructions, the frst Iactory
buildings, the earliest photos, the objects that have begun to be extinct, the grand pianos, the dresses oI
fve years ago, Iashionable restaurants, when the vogue has begun to ebb Irom them'.
26
According to Benjamins messianic understanding oI revolution as something sudden that hap-
pens now, like a shot at the clock tower, the possibility oI something that has not yet been actualised
trembles in the commodities` glitter oI distraction. Concerning our question oI the magic thing or the
thing-like thisness without a thing, what is to be done with Benjamin`s mixture oI messianism, romanti-
cism and materialism? Although it provides us with a way oI perceiving the thing as the embodiment oI
a promise, his methodological fgure oI a ,dialectics at a standstill' is too close to the idealist opposi-
tion between matter oI use and Iorm oI exchange, where utopia and cynicism take up their respective
positions, Iacing each other in the commodity. In his book San.as Giorgio Agamben criticises Marx`s
opposition oI the enjoyment oI use value as something natural and the accumulation oI exchange values
as something aberrant. In this way he takes the artifciality oI the commodity-thing, the will to Iashion,
the distinguished gesture oI the dandy who is a connoisseur oI the commodity world, as the starting
point Ior another relation to things. He looks Ior a way to redeem things Irom the imperative oI use, Ior
the possibility oI an impossible movement: the appropriation oI unreality. But by neglecting the multi-
plicity oI practices devoted to interpassivity and impersonal desubjectivated bliss, Agamben`s consid-
erations remain deconstructive poetry. Agamben takes Baudelaire as an early witness oI the struggle
against utility, and the dandy Beau Brummell as a positive mode oI becoming a living corpse, a thing
and absolute commodity. By Iocussing his examination oI how to become a thing on the aristocratic
distinction between the last dandies and the coming world oI salaried employees, he overlooks the
blockages in their practices oI coolness and beautiIul emptiness, openness to impressions drawn Irom
commodifed things, that paradigmatically became visible in Baudelaires selI-representations, which
Benjamin partly revealed in his Baudelaire study: his pressure to subjectivate, his outdoing himselI, his
anti-bourgeois excess which establishes a negative relationship with what it transcends, the reduction
oI sex to a desire Ior transgression, and the de-socialisation and loneliness oI his gesture oI revolt.
27
The
de-socialisation oI Genets gesture diIIers Irom Baudelaires in two ways: frstly, in the production oI
blissIul moments in which transgression consumes itselI and secondly, through dissociation Irom that
which is to be transcended, a move which Bersani has called a meta-transgressive oe;assenen.
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27
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17
C. Fenne Eabar, "FoUcaU ano
Marx n Mcne FoUcaU. Pnoso;ner,
eo. Francos Fvao (Herorosnre: Har
.eser \neasnea, 99'), es;eca,
a ne eno o ns arce vnere Eabar
con;ares Marx's ano FoUcaU's Un
oersanong o ne reaon beveen
conraocon ano soca reaons, ;;.
' 'o.
18
lar Marx, Ca;a. Vo. , ;. '0.
19
C. \aer Een[ann, Tne ~rcaoes
Pro[ec (Canbroge, Mass.: Har.aro
n.ers, Press, 999), ;;. 490 ''.
20
C. or ns conce; o an n;ersona
no.oUa, Ces LeeU.e, PUre n
nanence: Fssa,s on ~ e (ev Yor|:
Zone Eoo|s, '00).
21
C. aUra MU.e, n ne nrooUcon o
ner boo|, Fesnsn ano CUros, (on
oon: Ersn Fn nsUe, 99o).
22
C. noa Snger Froc \eare: SexUa
Tneor, ano Pocs n ne ~ge o F;
oenc (onoon, ev Yor|: FoUeoge,
99o).
23
Eearce Precaoo, lonrasexUees
Manes (Eern: b_boo|s, '00o), ;. o'
(ransaon b, ne aUnor).
24
bo., ;. oo (ransaon b, ne aUnor).
25
C. or a ;araognac ornUaon o
concree Un.ersa, see ne Magre
ToU Coec.e's "Maneso".
2
\aer Een[ann, "SUrreasn: Tne
as Sna;sno o ne FUro;ean ne
gensa n Feecons (ev Yor|:
Scnoc|en Eoo|s, 9o), ;. o.
27
C. \aer Een[ann, "Cn Sone Mo
s n EaUoeare n Unnaons eo
eo ano nrooUceo b, Hannan ~reno
(ev Yor|: Scnoc|en, 9oo).
28
C. Ces LeeU.e, Lerence ano Fe;
eon (ev Yor|: CoUnba n.ers,
Press, 994), vnere ne s reerrng o
~ce's ~o.enUres n \onoerano:
"'\e '.e oen seen a ca vnoU a
grn', noUgn ~ce: 'bU a grn vnoU
a ca 's ne nos cUroUs nng e.er
sav n n, e'
29
C. Ces LeeU.e, Fex CUaar, ~
TnoUsano PaeaUs (Mnnea;os: n
.ers, o Mnnesoa Press, 9o), ;;.
''o''9.
30
C. bo., ;;. ''9'''.
1
Ceo as noo ano nenac oeoca
on on one o ne rs ;ages o Cooen
Years. Maeraen Uno Posonen .U
Ueerer SUb|UUr Uno ~.angaroe,
eo. Leorcn Leoercnsen e.a. (Cra.:
Foon Canera ~Usra, '00o). Crg
na, ron Se;nen locn, Sarga.er:
Tne e, \oro o Fns o ~no, \arno
(ev Yor|: Maron Eo,ars PUbsners,
99).
2
Mcne FoUcaU, Tne Hsor, o SexUa
,. ~n nrooUcon (onoon, ev Yor|:
Tne PengUn Press, 990), ;. 99.
3
For ne corres;onong oea o resrceo
;oca acon, c. Magre ToU Coec
.e, "Maneso
n;:;;vvv.grabs.org;nooe;0o
4
Mcne FoUcaU, Hsor, o SexUa,.
~n nrooUcon, ;. '9.
5
eo Eersan, Honos (Canbroge,
Mass.: Har.aro n.ers, Press, 99'),
;. oo.

.acUes Lerroa, S;ecers o Marx:

Tne Sae o ne Leb, ne \or| o
MoUrnng ano ne ev nernaona,
rans. Pegg, lanU (onoon ano ev
Yor|: FoUeoge, 994).
7
Freorcn Fnges, lar Marx, Cernan
oeoog, n MFC\, Vo. ' (ev Yor|: n
ernaona PUbsners, 9'), ;. 49.
8
bo., ;. '9.
9
bo., ;. 'o.
10
C. Fenne Eabar, "Vacaon o oe
oog, n Marxsn n Masses, Casses,
oeas (onoon ano ev Yor|: FoU
eoge, 99o), ;;. 9'9'.
11
Freorcn Fnges, lar Marx, Cernan
oeoog, n MFC\, Vo. ' (ev Yor|:
nernaona PUbsners, 9'),
;. 49.
12
lar Marx, CrUe o Hege's 'Pnoso
;n, o Fgn', n MFC\. Vo. o, ;. o'.
13
C. Fenne Eabar, Pnoso;n, o Marx
(onoon: Verso, 99'), ;;. '4'o.
14
lar Marx, Ca;a. Vo , ;. '0.
15
oUs ~nUsser, For Marx (onoon: ev
Yor|: PengUn Press, 9o9), ;;.99o.
1
C. ~an ;e., "Fron ~nUsseran
sn o FegUaon Tneor, n Tne ~
nUsseran egac,, eo. F. ~nn la;an,
Mcnae S;rn|er (onoon ano ev
Yor|: Verso, 99o).
n;:;;;e..cUb.r;MFT;MFT_~
nUsserF.nn
Post Porn PoIitics
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thought as identity, queerness occurs as the limit point that enables conceptual closure by ma-
terializing the unassimilability against which totality takes shape. Fluid, contextual, resistant
to every attempted substantialization, queerness is situational but never positivized as an attri-
bute, never fxed, that is, as a stable term that results in a coherent perspective. Such perspec-
tive could only repeat the exclusionary logic oI conceptualization Irom which, because always
excluded, queerness would once again disappear. As permanent eruption oI a nonrelation, oI
an unintelligibility, as the signifer oI social non-closure, the empty signifer oI that Iounding
exclusion through which the social posits itselI, queerness denotes the set oI those things that
stymie categorization, that impossible set oI elements always external to any set, the paradox
oI particularity in the absence oI specifcation. Queerness, to Irame this diIIerently, and to bor-
row the language oI Alain Badiou, reIers to the site oI a truth event around and against which a
given situation attains its defning shape. As a locus oI radical particularity where universality
ultimately encounters itselI by way oI its own negation and where value as such is lacking, at
least Irom the perspective oI the situation, queerness becomes an evental site by attesting to
what that situation necessarily Iails to count within it: what Peter Hallward valuably describes
as the nothingness, the void, oI the situation as it relates to being`s multiplicity, to being as
what can never be counted or conceptualized as a unity, an identity, a one.
4
Queerness, instead, obtrudes the structuring presence in each situation oI an empty set,
a void, an internal gap or excessive elementor better still, a gap that is se the excessive el-
ementthat multiplies identity and opens a radical non-identity whose maniIestation is noth-
ing less than an eruption oI the Real. Such an inconceivable eruption, dissolving, Ior those who
bear it witness, the situation`s apparent reality, permits no verifcation through logics given
by the situation as such. Far Irom the realization oI something latent but nonetheless possible
within the terms oI the situation, such an event is always npossible, even unthinkable within
the concepts, the structuring reality, oI the situation. But its truth is a universal truth, like the
Real oI the situation`s void or the pressure oI nonidentity that fnds expression in the drive.
Hence the queer event proclaims the truth oI a universal queerness that displaces the ;arcUar
universal enshrined in the concept oI the human. With this in mind I want to amend Samuel
Weber`s important suggestion that 'The challenge to the Humanities . . . Irom this perspective,
is to rethink the ,human in terms oI iterability; which is to say, as an eIIect that is necessarily
multiple, divided, and never reducible to a single, selI-same essence (245). The challenge,
instead, is to aIfrm, beyond the iterations oI the human, the queer annunciation oI something
other than the human as aesthetic totality, to aIfrm what will have markedbut marked, we
must dare to ask, Ior whom?the advent oI the posthuman. The consequence oI such a queer
event, whenever it will have taken place, might be glimpsed, proleptically, in what I call here
pornographic posthumanism: an unsublatable encounter with the universal solvent oI identity,
the drive that betrays the endless Iriction oI a structural antagonism whose tension betrays the
internal limit oI social order as sucha limit whose maniIestations appear as pornographic or
obscene because incompatible with Symbolic mastery oI the representational feld.
II.
I begin, thereIore, with a simple assertion: pornography humbles intelligence. One might even
say that the decisive event to which pornography contributes is nonng bU such a humbling.
Like queerness, pornography, oI whatever stripe, denies the subject`s intellectual, political, or
31
I.
Conceiving itselI in terms oI a distinctive capacity Ior conceptualization, the human animal, at least
since Descartes, has defned its relation to the world in terms oI abstraction and separation, establishing
its position oI mastery through the value-laden, value-producing diIIerentiation oI contingency and es-
sence. Genealogies oI the human as traced by thinkers Irom Nietzsche to Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida,
and, more recently, Giorgio Agamben, recur to this thinking oI essence, this conceptual Ioundation oI
the human, to explore how the human, in Agamben`s phrase, 'frst constitutes itselI through . . .exclu-
sion (7). Such exclusions produce the metaphysics oI the human and with it the metaphysics oI human-
ism, generating, on the one hand, the distinction between .oe and bos that Agamben makes much oI
and, on the other, the Roman nUnanas Ior which Greek civilization, as Arendt points out, possessed
no comparable term. According to Arendt both the human and the humanities descend to us through
Rome by way oI the Roman invention oI culture as a practice oI care and preservation, one allied to the
Roman sense oI tradition, oI devotion to the maintenance oI a heritage, in this case a heritage taken Irom
the Greeks, to whom the notion oI
culture was Ioreign.
1
The metaphysical exclu-
sions by which we`re made hu-
man are thus, in their origins,
conservative. And what they
conserve is not simply the human
identity they produce; it`s also the
identity, as separation or abstrac-
tion, that`s inseparable Irom con-
ceptualization. 'The appearance
oI identity is inherent in thought
itselI, Adorno remarks. But be-
cause, as he notes, 'the concept
does not exhaust the thing con-
ceived, the excluded part, the
remainder, returns as antagonism
to conceptual unity.
2
Hence Adorno aspires,
in ega.e Laeccs, to 'change the direction oI conceptuality, to give it a turn toward non-iden-
tity, asserting that such an 'insight into the constitutive character oI the nonconceptual in the concept
would end the compulsive identifcation which the concept brings unless halted by such refection
(12). This nonconceptual element, this determining locus oI nonidentity, occasions the Cartesian search
Ior Ireedom, where Ireedom signifes mastery through abstraction Irom all that is doubtIul, unreliable,
inessential. And iI the essence oI the human as concept is Iound in the concept oI essence itselIsuch
that Heidegger can write, 'in what does the humanity oI man consist? It lies in his essencethen the
essentiality oI the inessential, the constitutive character oI the nonconceptual, the nonidentity internal
to the metaphysical unity that humanism aIfrms, calls into question the human that it calls into being
nonetheless.
3
In this nonidentity whose Ioundational exclusion is constitutive oI essence, I propose that we
fnd the Iunction, trace, and destiny oI the queer, where queerness reIuses the conceptual norms that at-
tempt its discursive containment. Debarred as it is Irom essence, Irom the thought o identity and Irom
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bling block on which every conceptual identity always trips, never fnds itselI in 'the human.
Estranged and excluded Irom the collectivization oI parts into conceptual wholes, queerness
establishes the limit-point that enables conceptual closure by materializing the unassimilability
against which totalities take shape. But it also marks the internal disturbance that undermines
any such closure. Distinct Irom those critical discourses that call on the latent deconstructive
potential inherent in borders, parergons, or Irames to assert the structuring 'centrality oI a
marginalized identity, queerness makes no bid Ior a place in the normalizing economy oI
'the human. Wherever the concept oI the human holds sway, the queer must emerge as its
enemy. Not because queerness necessarily repudiates a universal essence, but rather because
queerness naera.es that essence precisely as conceptual antagonism, aIfrming a universal
queerness that doesn`t allow Ior totalization since it names the excess unaccounted Ior by
conceptual identity.
As the materialization oI the unassimilable or, better, as the very concretion that is the
unassimilable itselI, queerness evinces the negativity, the internal contradiction or structuring
antagonism, that simultaneously undermines and constitutes universality. Queerness, in other
words, eIIects the universal desublimation oI universality against which universality frst es-
tablishes itselI. In order to approach this desublimation that is, as I argue, the common labor oI
pornography and the queer, let me pause at the outset on a passage Irom Hegel through which,
unpromising as it might frst seem, we may gain insight into the impossible event to which
queerness and pornography both speak: the event oI dehumanization that, in the second part
oI this essay, I will broach in relation to barebacking porn that documents acts oI sex between
men who get oII on exchanging the seminal fuids they`ve been taught, Ior more than two
decades now, to avoid, as it were, like the plague.
In Pnenonenoog, o S;r, Hegel addresses the dialectic oI the Spirit`s participation in
the material world. He writes: 'when beng as such, or thinghood, is predicated oI Spirit, the
true expression oI this is that Spirit is, thereIore, the same kind oI being that a bone s.
7
Hegel proceeds to call this an infnite or selI-suspending judgment, one that achieves
no resolution in stable and comprehensible terms, but persists instead in the mediating move-
ment he defnes as 'negativity (209). To lose sight oI this negativity and to take as a 'fxed
proposition that Spirit is identical to the bone, aIfrming, in the process, that Spirit and bone
each possesses a given meaning while each is also simultaneously determined by its identity
with the other, betrays, Hegel tells us, the crudeness oI what he reIers to as 'picture-think-
ing. This, he warns, can lead to Ialse or irrational understandings when the terms oI a selI-
suspending judgment are thought to be conceptually distinct, fxed in what he reIers to as the
'moment oI this asunderness. This is the context within which he writes: 'The oe;n which
Spirit brings Iorth Irom withinbut only as Iar as its picture-thinking consciousness where it
lets it remainand the gnorance oI this consciousness about what it really is saying, are the
same conjunction oI the high and the low which, in the living being, Nature naively expresses
when it combines the organ oI its highest Iulfllment, the organ oI generation, with the organ
oI urination (210).
The depth oI Spirit thus abides Ior Hegel not vn an ignorance, but n it. He aIfrms
a conjunction oI high and low not dependent on fxed antitheses, a conjunction distinct Irom
the logic oI coupling by means oI which heteronormativity responds to the impasse oI sexual
diIIerence, the impossibility oI sexual relation. He speaks, instead, to the diIIerence between
the Iantasmatics oI procreation, with its Iaith in the Spirit`s transcendent truth, and the recog-
nition oI Spirit in the matter that such Iantasy scorns as waste. One need not identiIy Hegel
33
sentimental selI-totalization. As a genre insistently Iocused on parts, it exposes, along with the private
parts, the parts oI ourselves incompatible with the sovereignty oI the whole and so with belieI in the
'private selI as the property oI the subject. It exposes, moreover, epistemological mastery and the
Iorms oI its compulsory pursuit as the subject`s selI-constituting eIIort to sublimate something deeply
oIIensive, even intolerable, to human dignity: the Real that erupts as the death drive at the core oI
Symbolic reality, evincing a machine-like automatism that mocks the subject`s claim to agency and an-
nounces, instead, the insistence oI something at odds with the regime oI the human. But this otherness
to the human that na|es us human makes clear the ideological mystifcations that the discourse oI 'the
human intends. The eIIect oI the anti-humanist position articulated by philosophers since Nietzsche,
however, has not been to announce the achievement oI some 'authentic condition defned as posthu-
manism, but to Ioreground the non-contingent bad Iaith oI our relation to the idea oI 'the human. We
fnd ourselves not posthuman but rather, I want to suggest, posthumanous.
Like the God who survives the Iact oI his death by virtue oI his ignorance, we, the posthu-
manous, linger on in the aItermath oI the human, aIfrming, all the more passionately as its subject
disappears, our outrage at threats
to human rights, at crimes against
humanity. The human, which was
never more than an aesthetic con-
struct to begin with, one useIul
in pushing the democratization
that has morphed into neo-lib-
eralism, Iunctions as little more
than the kitsch oI aesthetic ideol-
ogy, which, as described by Paul
de Man, names a vulgarization
oI philosophy that denies it all
critical rigor as thought and turns
it, instead, into works oI art ap-
pealing directly to the masses as
natural expressions oI their 'cul-
turea 'culture adroitly con-
solidated in its illusion oI organic
coherence precisely by such po-
litical manipulations oI the aesthetic.
5
These totalizations oI 'culture, which produce ethnicity, nation, race, and other categories oI
collective identifcation, both mirror and conIound the totalization eIIected by the concept oI 'the hu-
man, which locates our universal essence in the putative transcendence oI contingent particularitya
transcendence made possible precisely by the ability to conceptualize and generate universals. As a
normative concept, 'the human, that is, depends on the logic oI abstraction said to distinguish the hu-
man itselI.
But this logic allows no place Ior whatever obtrudes in its specifcity, Iailing or reIusing sub-
sumption within this abstract universality. It has no place Ior the 'nonidentity that Adorno describes as
'the utopian particular buried underneath the universal (318); it has no place, in short, Ior the queer.
This isn`t to say that liberal democracies explicitly think queers as inhuman, though every day we`re
reminded how close to the surIace that current still runs.
6
But the queer as such, as the structural embodiment oI resistance to normativity, as the stum-
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sence oI the human, the spiritual quickening oI the conceptual connection between conception
and conceptualization, to the status oI excremental matter, the murderous letter or literality oI
representation itselIa materiality that cannot, in consequence, be represented as such.
Rather than object to moralizing assaults on pornography`s dehumanizing tendencies,
mightn`t we insist on the truth event oI a queer dehumanization? By appropriating, not without
violence, Badiou`s understanding oI a truth event, I mean to claim that pornography, to the
extent that it`s IaithIul to the porneme, to the anti-social transgression that properly motivates
the genre, attests to what we`re always unable to cognize or to recognize: the end oI the
era oI the human. The truth event, in its radical disruptiveness Ior those whom it makes its
apostles, evacuates collective reality by means oI an encounter with the void whose inclusion
determines that reality while remaining unaccounted Ior within it. This Real is the structuring
negativity or non-selI-identity expressed in the death drive. Every aIfrmation oI a truth event
both evinces the negative Iorce oI that drive and also, in the process oI aIfrming the event,
oI proclaiming its unthinkable identity, denies the drive as well. Pornography, as the inherent
limit point oI Symbolic representation, as the antisocial inscription oI the death drive produced
by symbolization itselI, participates in the queer event, which is nothing less than the aIfrma-
tion oI a universal queerness exceeding and conIounding the abstract and normalizing identity
oI the human. TestiIying to the truth that would usher in a general dehumanization, however,
has nothing to do with promoting what we might construe as the inhumane. How could it,
when inhumanity is merely humanity`s specular double, the image, not even inverted, oI its
narcissistic aggressions?
11
Such narcissism is categorical, attached, that is, to the categories oI
identitarian coherence. But dehumanization would abolish the human and the inhuman in one
Iell swoop by dismissing the normative coherence presumed by the logic oI abstract identity.
Like all conservative catchwords, though, 'the human enjoys the inestimable advan-
tage oI aIfrming what we think we know: the universal value oI subjecting ourselves to the
value oI abstract universals, a value endangered by the solicitations oI the local, the transient,
the queer. Constantly proclaiming the imminence oI this danger, 'the human survives by
gorging itselI on the pathos oI its purported Iragility. Any attempt to question it, let alone to
deconstruct it, has the Iorce oI a deliberate assault upon its categorical integrity, eliciting, in
turn, the pathos by which 'the human aIfrms itselI. Paradoxically, then, 'the human be-
comes, in the process, almost invulnerable, drawing new strength as it does Irom the prospect
oI its possible dissolution. Thus its categorical undoing necessarily exceeds our grasp. And the
posthumous survival oI 'the human turns us, the 'posthumanous, into its specters, aesthetic
ideology`s aIterimages, ghosts who endlessly haunt ourselves by clinging to the abstraction
oI coherent identity with a ruthless sentimentality. In the spirit, thereIore, oI Hegel`s analysis
oI Spirit as a bone, I propose here a parallel Iormula: the Spirit is the drive, where the drive
perIorms the work oI negativity expressed in the reanimation oI the human by the queer-
ness that also undoes it. The queer event, in other words, remains, like every authentic event,
impossible at the very moment it`s actually taking place. And iI, in Hegel`s Iormulation, the
negativity oI infnite judgment demands a union oI high and low like that by which Nature
makes the organs oI generation and urination coincide, then the truth event oI the queer de-
sublimates the conception oI the human by identiIying insemination itselI with the matter oI
waste and death.
The 'direct choice oI insemination, thereIore, to return to iek`s phrase, may Iound
our social logic by establishing the substitutive relations oI exchange among meaning, repro-
duction, and cultural value, but the queering or devaluation that always attends aIfrmations oI
35
as a queer theorist a.an a ere to see that his invocation oI the dick, or the 'organ oI generation, is a
challenge to what I`ve elsewhere described as 'reproductive Iuturism: the ideologization oI the social
order as the temporal unIolding oI meaning in a syntax that requires the addition oI the Iuture as its
always unrealized supplement.
8
Such a Iuture, according to Ernesto LaClau, serves to naturalize as the horizon oI political
discourse an endless hegemonic contestation over which fgure will manage, at a given moment, to em-
body Ior the social order the empty signifer oI universality.
9
But the Iuture as the uncontested ground oI
such political contestation establishes the Iuture itselI as the structurally necessary Iormal supplement
to every hegemonic assertion, a supplement that fnds its privileged Iorm in the fgure oI the Child. This
appeal to the Iuture as the assurance oI meaning that sustains reproductive Iuturism would deny, there-
Iore, that the sublimity oI 'generation as Nature`s 'highest Iulfllment merely sublimates and euphe-
mizes Iucking when it celebrates procreation. The Child, who must otherwise Iunction as the material
evidence oI Iucking as such, emerges instead as its spiritualization, transcending Iucking and negating
it. But the dick, which Hegel perceives as the organ oI generation and urination both, doesn`t gener-
ate, properly speaking, at all: it
comes, unleashing its seminal fu-
id as readily as it would a stream
oI urine and scattering, whether
to germinate or not, the cum that
always contains something more
than the co-called germ oI liIe.
That`s why Slavoj iek
glosses the passage Irom the Pne
nonenoog, as Iollows: 'Hegel`s
point is not that, in contrast to
the vulgar empiricist mind which
sees only urination, the proper
speculative attitude has to choose
insemination. The paradox is that
the direct choice oI insemination
is the inIallible way oI missing
it: it is not possible to choose the
true meaning` directly, one has to
begin by making the wrong` choice (oI urination)the true speculative meaning emerges only through
the repeated reading, as the aIter-eIIect (or by-product) oI the frst, wrong` reading.
10
In the analogy
by which Hegel elaborates the conjunction oI high and low, Spirit stands in relation to bone as genera-
tion does to pissing. The idealization oI reproduction as the movement toward universal essence ignores
the actualized universality oI urination, excretion, waste. It ignores the non-identity, the negativity by
which we are riven, made incoherent, particular, queer. But this very idealization produces the discourse
on 'the human, a discourse that makes, in iek`s phrase, 'the direct choice oI insemination, by as-
signing to the register oI spirit the human`s abstract and universal truth. The queer, Irom such a perspec-
tive, by virtue oI repudiating that 'direct choice, must be seen, thereIore, as promoting, indeed as per-
Iorming, dehumanizationthe very dehumanization Ior which pornography is similarly reviled. Like
queerness, that is, pornography attends to the unassimilable remainder, the material excess that refects
the negativity by whichand even as whichwe experience universality. Thus the minimal unit oI
pornography, let`s call it here the porneme, would consist oI an act oI representation that reduces the es-
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cally endorses practices that result in the sero-conversion oI HIV negative individuals, but it
does mean that he recognizes pornography`s Iunction as a challenge to the totalization oI the
subject under the aegis oI intellectual selI-mastery.
This logic, everywhere repeated throughout the general text oI our culture, shapes the
values relentlessly promulgated by aesthetic education, which is also to say, the values pro-
mulgated by education as such. Imprisoned by the principle oI meaning-making in a pedagogi-
cal universe where everything colludes to Iurther the normative project oI becoming-human,
we`re compelled, like the Duke in ~s YoU |e , to 'fnd tongues in trees, books in the running
brooks,/ Sermons in stones and good in everything. What, indeed, is culture but acculturation
to the universal value oI meaning where meaning means abstracting valuea generalized,
exchangeable valueIrom a queer particularity? Nor is porn, not even gay porn, exempt Irom
the injunction to share in this cultural labor oI normative humanization. The representational
regime oI 'saIe sex, especially in gay male porn, has become, as Morris cannily notes, a sort
oI 'restraining caricature that serves what he calls 'the Iunction oI directed education as it
undertakes to discipline what it claims to represent. True to the project oI aesthetic education,
where every appeal to aIIect must teach, where every sensory encounter must instruct, the gay
porn denounced by Morris attempts a sanitization oI sex by acceding to the normalizing im-
perative to confgure sex as continuous with saIety . Like aesthetic education in general, such
porn proves anesthetic. It images a universe whose so-called saIety comes at the expense oI
the expense oI spirit, a universe purged oI sexual liveness, to borrow a concept Irom Lauren
Berlant, purged oI the disruptions oI jouissance, and purged, thereIore, oI queerness as I`ve
been characterizing it here.
14
Queerness remains, in Morris`s work, the unsublatable remainder oI every transcen-
dent spiritualization. And he condenses that queerness in the particular stuII that Iuturism sub-
limates: the cum, the ejaculate that`s idealized within a heterogenerative Iramework as human
essence, as spirit, as vitalizing seed. II the logic oI reproductive Iuturism conceptualizes cum
as the cause oI conception, bestowing upon it a meaning derived Irom its place in a narrative
sequence that exchanges what it is Ior what, under certain conditions, it enables, Morris di-
rects our attention instead to its status as material substance, as the 'viscous fuid jetting Irom
all the cocks onscreen that provides 'the documentary evidence that we are watching the
thing itselI.` That invocation oI 'the thing itselI, though, leads us back to Hegel and to the
negativity involved in the designation oI Spirit as a thing. In Morris`s case, the simultaneous
depiction oI cum as thing or substance and as sgn or noex oI 'the thing itselI marks a ver-
sion oI the split between bone and Spirit, between particularity and universality, that his work
resolves through its aIfrmation oI a materialized universala universal materialized in the
particularity that marks every subject`s access to the experience oI the jouisssance that Lacan,
in Seminar 20, explicitly describes as 'enjoying substance . . . the substance oI the body, on
the condition that it is defned only as that which enjoys itselI.
15
Not transcending the viscous
fuid, nor aIfrming its sublimation, but fnding, paradoxically, within it the index oI 'pure
materialization, Morris`s pornography immerses itselI in celebrations oI contact with cum as
a fgure oI the 'enjoying substance that makes jouissance the 'substance oI the body. Cum
Ior him is the condensate oI the subject in the Real, not as it might be Ior others, what Lacan
reIers to as agalma, the Iantasmatic treasure that defnes a secret, internal essence, a precious,
unique, and compelling attribute that generates desire. To the contrary, cum attains its privi-
lege Ior Morris as the messy excrescence oI a jouissance whose very particularity eIIects the
subject`s universalization, reducing the subject as ego, as conscious agent, as imaginary selI,
37
value disavows through projection the Iatality oI meaning`s meaningless material ground. Perhaps that
can go some way toward explaining why Badiou, in 'Lacan and the Pre-Socratics, calls attention to a
passage where Lacan reIers to the aphorisms oI Heraclitus: 'Among these aphorisms, Badiou declares,
'the most useIul is the one which states the correlation oI the Phallus and death, in the Iollowing, strik-
ing Iorm: Hades and Dionysus are one and the same.`
12
This is the dehumanizing truth that queer-
ness, like pornography, embodies, a truth implicit in the English usage oI 'spirit in the early modern
period to designate not only to the transcendent immateriality oI being, but also cum or ejaculate, as in
the well-known words with which Shakespeare`s sonnet 129 begins: 'Th` expense oI spirit in a waste
oI shame/ Is lust in action. As the work oI the contemporary pornographer, Paul Morris, may help us
to understand, the queer event transvalues such waste by similarly locating spirit in the messy stuII oI
materiality and by reIusing to deny or to sublimate the negativity inherent in the link between urination
and generation, Hades and Dionysus, death and the phallus.
III.
So let`s turn our gaze to the 'waste
oI shame and the prodigious 'ex-
pense oI spirit in Paul Morris`s
pornographic workwork that
will give us a better sense oI how
dehumanization operates and why
I say we can embody or fgure it
but never succeed in achieving it.
Morris, as the Iounder and mov-
ing Iorce behind Treasure Island
Media, has earned a signifcant
reputation by producing and di-
recting barebacking porn that not
only breaks the taboo on Iucking
without condoms in mainstream
gay pornography, but also depicts,
or, more properly, celebrates, the
anal absorption oI seminal fuids
against which condoms deIend. For Morris, a strikingly intelligent, aesthetically selI-conscious, and
politically sophisticated pornographer, depicting what looks like, or may even be, what our discursive
regime has taught us to classiIy as 'unsaIe sex refects not only his investment in the documentary
impulse that subtends pornography, but also his Foucauldian resistance to the aesthetic conIormity and
sexual conservatism embedded in the representational politics oI the mainstream studios producing
gay porn. 'Porn depicts sexual practice, he writes, 'and a uniIormity oI sex in porn is indicative oI
submission oI the subculture to larger power. The careIul porn oI the gay mainstream allows a strictly
policed repertory oI acts and styles that represents not who we are, but what we seem to believe we
should be. . . . Danger, accident and specifcity in porn insoIar as they are honestly depicted (i.e., docu-
mentary) enhance the possibility oI a more complex, demanding and thereIore productive relationship
with power.
13
'Danger, accident and specifcity: this triad defnes the insistent particularity oI the
queer commitment to a jouissance unconstrained by the normalizing logic oI abstraction that promises,
instead, the saIety and shelter oI a humanizing universality. This does not mean that Morris simplisti-
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division that disaggregates the identity it models. We can see that division enacted as Lacan,
paradoxically, posits 'turgidity as the image oI 'the vital fow, or more precisely, as 'the
image oI the vital fow as it is transmitted in generation. Heteronormative ideology congeals
the emulsion oI this 'vital fow, with its fuidity, mobility, and mess, in the turgidity as which
it conceives the phallus and also, by extension, itselI. In the rigid dick the vital fow succumbs
to rigor mortis, to a sort oI mortifcation, to the solidity oI what Deleuze evokes as the wall oI
representation or 'the statue oI the Iather, which immures the material fow he describes as
'a Iormless, nonhuman liIe.
17
By documenting sexual encounters that deIy the protocols Ior depicting anal sex in
mainstream gay male porn, Morris attempts to reverse this norm oI phallic, erotic, social,
and fnally political mortifcation.
18
His porn tapes replace the value oI the dick encased in its
phallic armor with the value oI pure expenditure, with the quantifcation oI cum, and with the
heroic stupidity oI the anus hungry to receive, to absorb, to secrete it. Don`t misunderstand
what I mean by this epithet, 'heroic stupidity. It has nothing to do with a condemnation oI
unprotected anal sex and everything to do with acknowledging the drive, characteristic oI
pornography, beyond epistemological mastery, beyond intellectual comprehension, beyond
reason, sociality, identity, and so beyond the human too. The asshole, as the locus oI cultural
taboo, as the place made to signiIy nothing but waste and the absence oI value or meaning, dis-
places the phallus, in Morris`s work, as the privileged site oI pornography. And that privilege
derives Irom its exemplary relation to nullity and inexpressivity. Removed Irom everything
socially productive, it fgures the absence oI personhood, the hollow core, the structuring
emptiness, that demands, in heteronormative culture, sublation into the human, demands the
positivization oI its zero into the one oI phallic identity. For Morris, though, this void has the
Iorce oI the oracle at Delphi. But where the latter presented its wisdom beneath the inscription,
'Know ThyselI, the asshole initiates, in Morris`s work, a radical Unknowing oI selIhood. As
the site oI evacuation, involuntarity, and penetrability, it localizes the evacuation or dethron-
ing oI the social subject itselI. Like the rocking waves oI Walt Whitman`s sea that whisper the
single word, 'death, the lips oI the asshole in Morris`s tapes speak the death oI the human that
conceives itselI on the model oI phallic Iorm.
Perhaps that`s why the cock in his porn is reduced to mere instrumentality, subordi-
nated to the 'vital fow oI the cum that it conveys. In essence the cock becomes essence itselI,
its value, the waste oI spirit, where waste or expense is prized as a good and sexual hunger
consists in the will to consume this waste as value, as the union oI Hades and Dionysus, as the
material dissolution oI the phallus`s claim to abstract universality. And nothing conveys this
more clearly than the sequence, Ior many no doubt unappetizing, Irom the chapter oI Morris`s
Ereeong Season (Treasure Island Media, 2006) called 'Making the Devil`s Dick.
This segment begins with a prologue that Ieatures a montage oI images traversing the screen
in a series oI visual overlays. In each case the camera directs our attention to an act oI ejacula-
tion, largely Iocused on the hands and the cock oI the man who is shooting his load. But the
spirit expended in this 'waste oI shame will not itselI go to waste. Whether shot into a glass
container directly or spat into one aIter having been ejaculated into someone`s mouth, the cum
is gathered and preserved as attentively as the sperm in Mob, Lc|. Numbers periodically cross
the screen, though not in chronological order, reducing the ejaculations oI these Iree-foating
cocks to so many loads oI cum. Shown onscreen in black and white as the background on
which the sexual climaxes appear, by contrast, in color, a hand slowly pours the ejaculate into
39
to nothing but the largely indiIIerent, iI necessary, adjunct to its production.
Our status as embodiments oI this substanceIor which cum is one particular, and particularly
masculinized, cultural fgure, but by no means the only onemakes the subject universally queer, by
which I mean radically particular in relation to the Real oI jouissance. But such a particularization aI-
frms no identity, neither personal nor sexual identity, nor does it speak to the queerness oI a subject
position, nor to the queerness oI a given subject. It marks, instead, the queerness that eIIectively undoes
the subject itselI through an encounter with what exceeds the identity we acquire through subjectiviza-
tion. This queerness, thereIore, must not be conIused with pleasure, liberation, or desire. Beyond the
feld oI such categories, because beyond the feld oI the human itselI, queerness pertains instead to the
drive that reIutes our Iantasies oI sovereignty and survival, conIounding, in the process, the idealizing
illusion oI epistemological mastery. Like pornography, queerness occupies the space oI what resists
the advances oI knowledge, what conceptualization can`t domesticate by way oI its will-to-identity. As
such it never coincides with itselI, never quickens into Iorm.
In Morris`s work, the cum that 'is and that fgures 'the thing itselI preserves its signiIying link
to heteronormative procreation,
but his tapes subject that asso-
ciation to the rigors oI an infnite
judgment. Though his titles will
Irequently borrow the traditional
language oI reproductioncon-
sider, Ior example, Ereeo Me,
Ereeong Season, Ereeong
M|e C'e, Pann' Seeo, and
lnoc|eo ;the fgures oI in-
semination are stripped oI spiritu-
alizing promise and reIer instead
to an absorption oI cum that oc-
casions an access to vitality only
insoIar as it overcomes the con-
straints oI what we call saIety and
opens onto the jouissance oI an
encounter with the Real that ne-
gates whatever we think we are
and whatever we think we know. ReIerring to the originary moment oI liIe, to the moment oI human
conception, these titles discover within that moment the germ that utterly undoes itthe germ, that is,
oI the impossibility inherent in the sexual relation. Breeding the jouissance oI the drive instead oI the
Child that would signiIy liIe, the inseminations oI Morris`s tapes mock the privilege oI human concep-
tion by calling into question the universal value oI the human as a concept.
That concept itselI is determined by the structuring Iantasy oI the phallus, the Iantasy through
which the phallus as necessary supplement to the material body provides the template Ior the sover-
eignty and coherence oI the subject, who is thereby at once allowed and compelled to enter the order
oI meaning. Enshrouded in the veil oI Iantasy that alone enables it to Iunction, the phallus stands as the
fgure Ior the solidifcation oI the ego that fnds its long-term guarantee in reproductive Iuturism. That`s
why Lacan can remark with regard to this Iantasmatic phallus that: 'by virtue oI its turgidity, it is the
image oI the vital fow as it is transmitted in generation.
16
But throughout his career Lacan attempts
a disruption oI that Iantasy by insisting on viewing the phallus itselI as the rupture, the diIIerence, the
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read 'breeding in the title oI Morris` tape as a trope Ior sero-conversion or 'impregnation
with HIV, the emphasis, quite to the contrary, Ialls on the liveness that sex as such can breed:
not liIe in the Iuture, not liIe in the Child, but liIe in the grip oI the drive itselI, the liveness
oI uncongealing, oI melting Irom meaning as iI into matter, oI escaping the mortifcation oI
a condomized and Irozen imitation oI liIe. The hunger Ior cum throughout Morris`s work is
the hunger Ior such aliveness, Ior such a radically materialized essence, where liIe is not the
reIusal oI death, but aliveness to the constant implication oI death in and as ourselves. As the
site oI an infnite judgment where presence and absence, sign and substance, liIe and death are
held in suspension, cum, Ior Morris, to venture a deliberately provocative Iormulation, posi-
tivizes negativity, risking, as does Morris himselI, the multiple meanings that phrase might
have in the context oI bareback sex. Materializing a drive-like reIusal oI liIe that`s no more
than resistance to death, bareback sex in Morris`s work attempts to approach the Real, the
impossibility, inIorming sex as such. His reIerence to breeding thus ironizes the reproductive
imperative whose alibi translates cum into seed, Iucking into 'trying to get pregnant. Against
these sublimations, Morris` camera insistently returns to assholes and mouths that are avid
Ior cum, heroically receptive, endlessly absorptive, drinking it in like intoxicating spirit, but a
spirit that springs Irom material connections to piss and shit and sweat, to the surplus bespeak-
ing the subject itselI as desublimated ideality, as an orgnar, desublimation, as the desublima-
tion that posits the generative sublime only retroactively.
But porn here encounters a limit. Serving as it does to document something in excess
oI representation, the remainder that constitutes its inevitable surplus, it can seem to re;re
sen that surplus, and so to appeal to the conceptual logic that the porneme seeks to undo. No
sooner does cum start to signiIy the Real that`s inherently excluded Irom meaning than it starts
to allegorize the Real instead, eIIectively turning, like culture itselI, a proft oI meaning on
waste. It thus returns to the infnite judgment by means oI which Spirit and bone are conjoined
much like pissing and reproduction. As sign and index oI 'the thing itselI, cum remains in the
orbit oI Iantasy, obedient to the desire that would tame the drive by Iantasizing an object. The
queer event toward which porn points remains, thereIore, impossible; our very will to escape
the human insistently reinscribes it, keeping the pure porn moment at bay even as it`s arriv-
ing, as iI the encounter with porn meant no more than the endlessness oI postponementthe
very postponement and dependency on a temporal supplement oI the 'still to come by which
reproductive Iuturism attempts to balance its books. Maintained in such a suspension, like
virus or sperm in seminal fuid, we, the posthumanous, trapped in the thought oI the human
whose time has passed, live Ior the moment oI the queer event when something like liIe could
occur. For the event as such is a queer event in its drive-like annulling oI the Iramework that
secures our identity within the Symbolic. The Child may embody the compulsory sublimation
that is reproductive Iuturism, but its 'mewling and puking covertly acknowledge what cannot
be sublimed, as iI, in its very spittle and drool, the Child symptomatically sought to cough up
Hegel`s bone in Spirit`s throat.
True to the queer event that throws out the baby Ior its fgural bathwater, or at any rate
Ior the piss and cum that designate a zone oI vitality always in excess oI any Child, Morris`s
work risks everything on the risk oI encountering liIe, a risk that exchanges the phallussov-
ereign, veiled, and perpetually turgidIor the sloppy semi-Iredo oI what he calls the devil`s
dick. 'Hades and Dionysus are one and the same, claims the Heraclitean aphorism that Lacan
describes as reIerring to 'the correlation oI the Phallus and death. But the death that the
Phallus installs is itselI the sublimation enIorced by the Child. And the liIe that the devil`s
41
the mouth oI an open condom, taking care to preserve each drop oI the precious fuid thus gathered.
nage 0 0o Page 8
The prologue ends with the men and their cocks evicted Irom the screen, leaving us, instead, with the
swollen condom flled with '73 loads oI cum. nage 4 Page 8
AIter a brieI Iade to black we see the condom again, shown in color and swaying back and Iorth until
Morris, using a flter oI red, superimposes upon it a shot oI this cum, Irozen and removed Irom the con-
dom now, congealed in a solid mass. The camera, tracking back, then shows us this object being held in
the hands oI naked man who smears it all over his cock and chest Ior his sexual partner to lap up beIore
using what`s leIt in solid Iorm to Iuck the other man`s ass. nage 0' 09 Page 8

The montage oI ejaculations in the prologue, then, serves merely to Irame a depiction oI the making
and unveiling oI the 'Devil`s Dicka dick that isn`t a dick at all, but that literalizes phallic harden-
ing as the Ireezing or congealing
into object-Iorm oI Deleuze`s
'Iormless, nonhuman liIe. The
opening kaleidoscope oI images
privileges cum, not the dick that`s
coming. Reduced to an ancillary
Ieature in a series that doesn`t
deIer to chronology and could,
theoretically, go on Iorever, the
dick here loses its standing as
general stand-in Ior the phallus.
Over and against the integrity oI
the phallus, over and against the
unity oI the subject supplied by
the concept oI the human, Mor-
ris adduces the loads oI cum we
see 'milked Irom anonymous
donors and combined to produce,
in the Devil`s Dick, the phallus
under negation. Formed by the Ireezing oI cum in the phallic mold that a condom provides, the Devil`s
Dick unpacks the connection between the phallus and the condom itselI. It reads the condom as a meta-
phor Ior the operation oI the Lacanian veil through which the phallus perIorms its role. The condom`s
association with saIety, thereIore, is in one sense purely Iormal: it deIends the rigid identity oI the
phallus with the abstraction oI identity itselI. As ;reser.a the condom preserves the mastery oI the
human subject, warding oII the messy exchanges oI sex and the encounter with the 'bodily substance
oI jouissance and its trace at once.
Removed Irom the Ireezer, unwrapped Irom its condom, unveiled in its status as object, the
Devil`s Dick immediately starts to melt once again into cum. In doing so it eIIectively allegorizes the
dissolution oI Iorm, including the Iorm imposed upon the subject as se. Where the condom preserves
the integrity oI Iorm, the porneme here denies it, which accounts Ior the mordant irony with which
Morris pointedly inIuses this sequence: the condom appears in this barebacking tape only as the tem-
plate Ior a dick oI pure cum to fll the bottom`s ass. However much this may tempt us, in response, to
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43
dick signifes is that oI Dionysian abandon. The event, however, as Ueer event requires a particular
abandonment: the abandonment oI whatever is Ior something unknown and Ioreclosed Irom being, the
abandonment oI what we think we are Ior the Real that remains unthinkable. As the mad Ophelia tells
Claudius aIter Hamlet has killed her Iather, 'We know what we are, but know not what we may be-
come. More precisely: we nn| we know what we are, but that knowledge denies the drive within that
pursues our unbecoming. That`s closer to the truth oI the queer event evoked in Morris`s porn, which
fgures these various abandonments by literalizing yet one more: the abandonment oI the condom`s
protective veil, the prophylactic container that Ireezes the human in phallic Iorm. Such abandonment
marks the abandoning, the melting away oI our beng human, as iI, by thus dissolving, we might, like
the devil`s dick, be cum and so, in consequence, Unbecone the beings we think we know.
42
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44
09
10
Sa.o[ __e|, Tne Paraax Vev (Can
broge, M~: Tne MT Press, '00o), ;.
oo.
11
c| Toscnes ne;s o sneo gn on ns
;on, noUgn vnoU an, neoreca
seconscoUsness, vnen ne vres ne
oovng senence aboU Honer's e;c
n a re.ev o ~essanoro Earcco's ~n
ao: "Tna ns oUnanneao o \es
ern eraUre begns, exUse,, vn
ne voro "vran, [Us as ne ;oen se
s one o "osna oean ano "cor;se
re, o "nen |ng ano nen |eo, o
".e nngs ano ".e oesn,, snovs
na, |e oner e;c ves;rngs, sUcn
as ne Co Tesanen, nos o vncn
;osoaes Honer, s nore |novng n
s avareness o nUnan,'s nos os
ngUsnng ra nnUnan, nan
eraUre o aer ages. "Cn Earcco's
Honer, ev Yor| Tnes Eoo| Fe.ev,
~UgUs o, '00o.
12
~an EaooU, "acan ano ne PreSo
cracs, n acan: Tne Sen Parners,
eo. Sa.o[ __e| (ev Yor|: Verson,
'0o), ;. o.
13
PaU Morrs, "o ns: ecessar,
Langer n Mae Porn, 99o, n;:;;
vvv.reasUresanoneoa.con;nor
rs;xsrean.nn. ~ sUbseUen Uo
aons ron Morrs's vrngs reer o
ns ex.
14
For ne conce; o sexUa .eness see
aUren Eeran, Tne CUeen o ~nerca
Coes o \asnngon C, (LUrnan:
LU|e n.ers, Press, 99).
15
.acUes acan, Tne Sennar o
.acUes acan, Eoo| XX: Fncore 9'
o: Cn Fennne SexUa,: Tne ns
o o.e ano lnoveoge, rans. ErUce
Fn| (ev Yor|: oron, 99o), ;. 'o.
1
.acUes acan, "Tne Sgncaon o
ne PnaUs, n Fcrs: ~ Seecon,
rans. ErUce Fn| (ev Yor| :oron,
'00'), ;. '.
17
Ces LeeU.e, "Eareb,: or, Tne For
nUa, Fssa,s Crca ano Cnca,
rans. Lane \. Snn ano Mcnae ~.
Creco (Mnnea;os: n.ers, o Mn
nesoa Press, 99), ;. .
18
Morrs' .oeos e.o|e, vnener or no
ne, acUa, oe;c, vna s |novn as
"Unsae sex. ~ cenra o;os s ne oe
;con o ne "o; ener conng n ne
"boon's ass or conng on beore
1
See Hannan ~reno, "Tne Crss n CU
Ure, n Eeveen Pas ano FUUre (ev
Yor| :PengUn, '00o), es;. secon .,
;;. '0o'''.
2
Tneooor ~oorno, ega.e Laeccs,
rans. F.E. ~snon (ev Yor|: Conn
UUn, 94), ;. '. SUbseUen ;age reer
ences o ns eoon v be nocaeo n
;arenneses n ne ex.
3
Marn Heoegger, "eer on HUnan
sn, ceo n .acUes Lerroa, Tne
Margns o Pnoso;n,, eo. ano rans.
~an Eass (Cncago: n.ers, o Cn
cago Press), ;. '9.
4
Peer Havaro, EaooU: ~ SUb[ec o
TrUn (Mnnea;os: n.ers, o Mn
nesoa Press, '00o), ;. o'.
5
PaU oe Man, ~esnec oeoog, (Mn
nea;os: n.ers, o Mnnesoa
Press, 99o), ;. '4.

en: n an arce on ne vebse ga,.,

Fvan McCregor s Uoeo as na.ng re
s;onoeo as oovs o Uesons aboU
ns ;erornance as a ga, nan n Fo
varo EUn's n "Scenes o a SexUa
aUre: on sono na sao sooao
na no recao a ;are o Un sooao
na oeo McCregor, no ;ersonag
go, E,, e Un essere Unano. Cne sa
ga, o eero non a acUna oeren.a.
~onrab, bera as na saenen na,
be, ne neeo o na|e a a sUggess
na nan, ngn no o be UnrUe.
"Cnena: Fvan McCregor n co;;a
ga,, .nevs.,anoo.con;0o'00o;o';
cnenaevanncgregornco;;aga,.
nn, ~UgUs , '00o.
7
C. \. F. Hege, Pnenonenoog, o
S;r, rans. ~. V. Mer (ev Yor|:
Cxoro n.ers, Press, 9), ;. '0o.
~ sUbseUen ;age reerences o ns
eoon v be nocaeo n ;arenneses
n ne ex.
8
See ee Foenan, o FUUre: CUeer
Tneor, ano ne Lean Lr.e (LUrnan:
LU|e n.ers, Press, '004).
9
See Frneso aCaU, "oen, ano He
genon,: Tne Foe o n.ersa, n
ne ConsUon o Poca ogcs, n
Conngenc,, Hegenon,, n.ersa,:
Conen;orar, LaogUes on ne e
(ev Yor|: Verso, '000), ;;. 44o9.
reenerng ne anUs o n[ec ns cUn
vnn. TnoUgn ns .oaes ne ;rac
ce o nansrean ga, ;orn, vnere
concerns o.er HV ransnsson na.e
esabsneo as a norna.e ;rooco
na oe;cons o ana sex ne ;res
ence o a conoon, one snoUo no as
sUne na Morrs's acors are engagng
n "Unsae sex. Tna, o coUrse, voUo
oe;eno on ne HVsaUs o ne acors
n reaon o eacn oner. M, argUnen,
nove.er, s na b, conang Un;ro
eceo sex vn vna regsers as "Un
sae sex n oonnan noUsr, ;rac
ce, Morrs' ;orn nenos o sUgges
na "Unsaeness s enoenc o sex
na exceeos nere, ;nac [oUssance.
~no na Unsaeness, or vncn ne
Ueer vas excoraeo e.en beore ne
e;oenc o HV osease, ex;resses ne
nonoenca ano ne noncogn.abe
vnn Us a, ne sU;o, o ne or.e
na v no be oeerreo b, ne rUses o
oesre. an graeU o La.o Ha;ern
or ns generoUs ano ncs.e sUgges
ons na ne;eo ne o srengnen ano
car, ns as;ec o n, argUnen, bU
ne bears no res;onsb, or ne nan,
va,s n vncn s argUnen, ano ;s,
cnoana,c necon, cear, oer
ron ns ovn.
Post Porn PoIitics
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as ephemeral data - could it be leading us towards loss of desire or more rened articula-
tions of arousal?
II. Show-n-teII and Madame Remedy
Show-n-teII:
Madame Remedy, I just started going to chat rooms. I Iell in love with the energy. Most oI the
people there are in the adult rooms. nage 0 Page 8
Its Iull oI live video, chat and sex. I fnd the space so compelling, the variety oI images
that are broadcast and the way people communicate both in words and picture.
nage 0' 0' Page 8
At frst I decided to show only the top oI my head. I want to hide my identity in case
someone would recognize me. Hiding part oI my Iace Ieels comIorting, but in a Iunny way it
makes me look younger and more exotic. It also emphasizes that I am there to watch.
nage 0o Page 8
I watch naked men waiting in Iront oI their computers. I watch their naked bodies jux-
taposed with the keyboard, the screen and all the cables. Like a tourist in a Ioreign land, I make
screen shots oI my desktop. I capture images oI people, naked, sometimes headless, watching
the screen, waiting Ior something to happen. nage 0 Page 8
Like a street photographer I move in this new kind oI space, and I document all that I
see. Unlike a street photographer, I oIten fnd myselI in oIfce spaces, living rooms and even
bedrooms. The street and the home have blended together.
But you know, my curiosity is irresistible. I want to see how virtual sex works. I have a
vague idea that it is about mutual masturbation; and even though I am pretty sure I wont ,go
all the way,' I still want to see how men react once a woman goes beyond simply firting.
nage 0o Page 8
I own two skirts and choose to wear the shorter one. I walk into a room. My camera
is pointed at my thighs. I am wearing black stockings, I am Iully dressed. No fesh showing, I
start caressing my thighs. nage 09 Page 8
I say nothing. I watch men sending me messages, getting undressed and masturbating.
My moves are repetitive, almost boring. I perIorm slowly because I know the connection is not
good today and I want to make sure that I produce a moving image. I keep caressing myselI
with one hand and moving the mouse around with the other hand, clicking, opening video
windows, copying chat text, grabbing images to document this event. I am very busy. In my
little notebook I write the names oI the men who reach orgasm. The longer I caress my legs,
the longer the list gets. This is the most exciting and bizarre thing I have ever done!
nage 0 Page 8
Men who reach orgasm leave the room, opening space Ior new men to come in. There
are so many horny men all waiting to get into the room. What I do Ieels like social service.
Most men thank me aIter they ejaculate. nage , ' Page 8
Ejaculation looks really impressive on video. Under the right lighting conditions, it
shines. I really like watching these ejaculations happen right on my own monitor, in my own
studio. No mess Ior me. People that I have never met, that I will probably never meet, perIorm
their most private acts in response to my image oI touch. nage o Page 8
59
I. OnIine Se Chat: A Post-Human Cure?
A conversation unfolds in a disembodied space where nocturnal explorations and seductions
crash into the rigid value systems and testing methods of the behaviorial sex sciences. Show-n-tell
is a euphoric chatter who easily grabs your attention. Madame Remedy brags about innovative
technological tools to measure sexual arousal and dysfunctions. Show-n-tell has a supersonic en-
gagement with ephemeral data and modes of sensuality that can hardly be measured by Madame
Remedy.
The goal of dialogue between Show-n-tell and Madame Remedy is to playfully reexamine
the climate of overexposure to sexual data in digital media networks. First of all, it pays tribute
to Sylvere Lotringer`s account and critique of behavorial sex sciences. In C.erex;osUre: Per.er
ng Per.ersons Lotringer explains that sex scientists search for sex zones and perversions ~as a
mechanic checks an engine, they merely search for the mental dysfunction, hoping to remove it
painlessly, with the appropriate tools. (204) Lotringer works out of a tradition of radical critique
of psychoanalysis and wants to propose a Nietzschean post-humanism, as he detects in science an
unending pulse towards quantication and aestheticization of sickness. Lotringer`s study is also
a cynical recognition of the undergrowth of our condition of the unending party - as he raises the
question if too much partying and wallowing in sexual data is leading us to cultural death.
Lotringer observes how, in the lab of Dr. Seymour Sachs, Penile Plethysmography (an in-
strument strapped around the penis to measure erection) is used on male sex offenders to quantify
and modify their positive reactions to awkward or socially unacceptable desires. He explains in
detail that Sachs is not a moralistic person but a pragmatic and cost-effective therapist who tries
to locate and cure the patient`s exact arousal/deviation zone. For instance, one fetishist tells Sachs
that he is turned on by the sight of female sandals, but Sachs` repetitive physio-assessment shows
that he is actually climaxing on toes and feet. Sachs discards the tale of the sandal and tries to
narrow down and dene the patient`s exact deviation from the norm.
These kinds of methods can be called a post-human cure in that they go beyond a patient`s
self-reported knowledge of sexual identity and uctuating desires. It doesn`t matter whether a
patient has some type of sophisticated knowledge about sex, what matters is how to accurately
measure and modulate his/her patterns of excitement. One of the treatments described in detail
by Sachs is that of ~overexposing or ~satiating patients by telling stories of their exact and
empirically tested perversions with such frequency that they lose erection or interest and are
able to move on. The repetitive enactment of the perversions rst leads to a quick erection, but
then the patient reaches a state of lethargy: ~New sexual therapy turns boredom inside out into a
weapon to extinguish every desire. (19) The behavioral therapist tries to replace this emptiness
with stories of healthy sexual communication and domesticated desires that may slowly revive
the patient.
However, the post-humanist philosopher closes the book and argues that we have become
entirely dissolved in processes of communication while they announce a perennial exhaustion or
perhaps a disappearance of the sex drive. So what happens when people are constantly using por-
nography-aided seduction methods on each other? Are we fed up with it or adequately nurtured
through acts of mutual sharing? There are of course many novel pleasures that emanate from
online chat, even if they are problematic categories for the encyclopedia of sex scientists. These
acts of innovation have been criminalized throughout history precisely because they introduce
sexual energy in the face of a cultural nihilism that runs through the sex sciences. But the thrust
of scientic fanaticism is appealing too, as Lotringer has pointed out. A constant exposure to sex
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Madame Remedy:
Let me point you to the study Irom 2004, 'A Sex DiIIerence in the Specifcity oI Sexual
Arousal, in which researchers have posited a rigorous sex diIIerence, showing that sex arous-
al is 'category-specifc in men. This means that women are more responsive to a variety oI
seductions and porn genres and even identiIy with varied sexual orientations and sexual tastes,
but men have more limited responses to shiIting categories and data.
But how do scientists come up with concrete evidence about arousal? Male genital
arousal is assessed with the penile photoplethysmograph (PPG), using a mercury-in-rubber
strain gauge to measure changes in the circumIerence oI the penis as erection develops. A
stretchable band with mercury in it is ftted around the subjects penis. The band is connected
to a machine with a video screen and data recorder. Any changes in penis size, even those not
Ielt by the subject, are recorded while the subject views sexually suggestive or pornographic
pictures, slides or movies or listens to audio tapes with descriptions oI sex scenes. Computer
soItware is used to develop graphs showing the degree oI arousal to each stimulus. The ma-
chine costs about $8,000 and was actually frst developed in Czechoslovakia to prevent draIt
dodgers Irom claiming they were gay just to avoid military duty. I couldn`t get Hong Kong
Tribute University`s lab`s permission to make a picture oI our PPG, but it resembles the 1020
EC model currently used Ior a variety oI other medical tests. We do make the subjects Ieel as
comIortable as possible as we measure those subtle changes in the blood fow.
1020 EC Plethysmograph model nage 'o Page 8
In the 2004 study males were tested with penile plethysmography, while Iemales and
male-to-Iemale transsexuals were assessed with vaginal photoplethysmography, which mea-
sures vaginal pulse amplitude (VPA). In addition, subjective arousal or lack oI arousal was
assessed continuously through selI-reporting by using a lever that moves through a 180 degree
arc. The vaginal photoplethysmograph (VPG) is a small, tampon-shaped device which is selI-
inserted into the vagina and measures Vaginal Blood Volume, Vaginal Pulse Amplitude, and
heart rate in response to an erotic stimulus. The vaginal photoplethysmograph is completely
saIe and is sterilized in Cydex-activated glutaraldehyde. This sterilizing procedure is com-
monly used with hospital instruments and is known to prevent both viral and bacterial trans-
mission oI inIection.
Vaginal Photoplethysmography nage '4, '' Page 8
Show-n-teII
The other day I met a French guy. He calls himselI FrankSud and is into online SM. He tells
me that online sex is easy. The real trick is virtual SM. it`s very cerebral, he says. I told him
I would try, so he emailed me a shopping list, not a very long one, but quite a lot oI things I
don`t usually have at home, like handcuIIs, a whip, candles, various leather clothes, high heel
shoes. you get the picture?
Anyway, next time I saw him I told him I didn`t like the list. The handcuIIs and the
whip were a bit intimidating. He tells me a whip can hurt, but it can also caress. I don`t know,
I think these objects are too symbolic. I trashed my high heel shoes, because they were not
comIortable. I like the idea oI the leather bustier. But candles? Hot wax dripping on my skin?
That`s painIul! Apparently I am missing the point.
3
Madame Remedy:
Thank you very much, Show-n-Tell. It has been a while since I have received such a compelling case to
think about and respond to. I am not sure iI you are aware oI this, but I received a grant to do research
at the Clinical Division oI the Sexual Psychophysiology Laboratory at Hong Kong Tribute University.
I was invited to clinically test the physical and mental responses people have to pornographic images. I
was so pleased when I arrived there to check out the Iacilities and fnd out what kind oI equipment they
are using, as this branch oI the behavorial sciences is oIten ignored by us theoreticians and scholars oI
digital media. So beIore I comment on your experiences in the adult chatrooms, I would like to give you
some background inIormation about our lab. For decades sexologists trained in the behavioral sciences
have tried to measure arousal as phychophysiological responses to images using advanced technologi-
cal methods, either by recording changing brainwave responses or by asking subjects to write down
reactions in diIIerent kind oI surveys, such as the Sexual Opinion Survey (SOS), the Video Reaction
Questionnaire(VRQ) and the Sexual Fantasy Questionnaire(SFQ). These experiments are carried out in
labs that simulate an intimate home environment and expose subjects to various types oI pornography
in order to test responses.
For instance, the women`s division oI our lab was started in the late 1980s. Researchers in this
division conduct applied clinical research on women`s sexual arousal in order to develop a better un-
derstanding oI the eIIects oI various pharmacological, biological, and cultural variables on sexual Iunc-
tioning, behavior and attitudes. This research utilizes in-depth interviews, selI-report questionnaires and
the vaginal photoplethysmograph to assess womens subjective and physiological arousal. Given the
highly sensitive nature oI this research, confdentiality and an atmosphere oI respect are critical. Each
oI the Iemale researchers has undergone extensive training in research protocols with Iemale sexuality.
Additionally, our instruments undergo a thorough disinIection between uses and are completely saIe.
nage 4 Page 8
Show-n-teII:
Taking about images that arouse us, I have an example that might interest you. My best Iriend in
virtual space is Stephanie. When we are in a room together we acknowledge each other. We respect
each other`s interest Ior guys, we mock fght over the same guy, we embarrass rude guys and we oIten
compliment each other. There is no competition, as the room is big enough Ior the two oI us. Stephanie
is any man`s virtual Iantasy. She types Iast and has a great sense oI humor. She is bilingual and can
accommodate both a French and an English speaking audience. She claims to be a sexually liberated
young French woman living in NY. She chats with guys Ior hours, gets them excited, promises to show
herselI nude and delivers!
Her video window usually shows her fngers typing on the keyboard. This makes all the men
in the room ask to see her body. She doesn`t immediately expose herselI. It`s her chat that keeps them
interested Ior a long time. Her writing is expressive and dramatic.
nage ' Page 8
Rumor has it that Stephanie plays pre-recorded videos, and, in Iact, is not really a woman. Some
men get angry and Ieel cheated aIter they discover that the images that excited them were not live video.
It makes me wonder whether it matters iI Stephanie is a woman or not. AIter all, isn`t the woman who
originally posed Ior the video real? And the image is all we have.
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'o ' 'o
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Then I ask him what he would be wearing: it sounded like we were spending too much time
discussing my outft. He tells me, 'Nothing special. He will be wearing his regular, everyday shirt.
That`s not Iair, I said. Why isn`t he wearing something a bit more special, too? He politely reminds me
that SM is never about equality. I think he was amused.
Finally, maybe because he is giving up on me, he tells me I can wear anything I want as long
as I don`t show it on camera. He explains that virtual SM is a game, a game oI trust. For example, iI I
was wearing a bustier right now, and I told him so, he doesn`t even have to see it. Only seeing my bare
shoulders would complete the illusion Ior him. You see, it`s all about mutual trust. 'You can`t cheat,
he tells me ... nage 'o, ' Page 8
Madame Remedy:
VPG and PPG are also Irequently used by sex therapists in the USA to accurately diagnose, evaluate
and treat sexual disorders and deviant behaviors. For instance, when sex oIIenders reIuse to admit that
they enjoy sex with minors, the PPG/VPG are used to measure psycho-physiological reactions that
can lead to conIessions. The studies we are concerned with here try to measure and quantiIy various
categories oI deviancy. The 2003 study, EEG Responses to Visual Erotic Stimuli in Men with Normal
and Paraphilic Interests was keen on measuring diIIerent arousal levels in diIIerent types oI males.
The study used 'EEG or Electroencephalography to capture neurophysiologic measurements oI the
electrical activity oI the brain. These measurements were recorded Irom electrodes placed on the scalp
and/or on the cortex. As the researchers write, the frst EEG study was carried by LiIshitz in 1966, who
measured the eIIects on males oI artistic depictions oI nude women, compared with pictures oI ulcer-
ated legs.
Simulation oI images used in EEG study by LiIshitz in 1966
nage 'o o Page 8
The subjects in the 2003 EEG study were sixty-two white right-handed heterosexual males who
were divided into two categories: normal subjects and paraphilic subjects. Paraphilic subjects were
defned as those interested in scenes oI transvestism, Ietishism and sadomasochism and were Iound
in special interest clubs and through announcements in niche magazines. The study worked with EEG
analysis because it was based on the hypothesis that 'normal and 'paraphilic subjects get stimuli Irom
diIIerent hemispheres oI the brain. Though the right hemisphere initiates emotionality, aggression and
sexual arousal, it does so under regulatory control oI the leIt hemisphere, which includes sexual triggers
in the Iormat oI verbal cues, rituals and scenarios. The researchers believed that leIt hemisphere activity
could indicate an underlying deviation Irom normal arousal pattern activity and wanted to test the pres-
ence oI paraphilic tendencies in subjects.
The right-handed males were asked to fll out a SFQ (Sexual Fantasy Questionnaire) and were
then seated in a comIortable chair. They were wired with 1 cm diameter electrodes on their scalp and
around their right eye to measure the EEG responses. They were exposed to slides (projected with a Ko-
dak Carousel) that showed a mixture oI 57 heteronormative slides, 57 paraphilic slides, and 57 neutral
slides (Ior instance landscapes and street scenes).
Simulation oI images oI 2003 EEG paraphilia study nage o' o4 Page 8
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Show-n-teII:
For some, group action nights are what`s arousing. For example, last night I was in Jaded`s
Utopia. Everone participated, but the grand show was Tom and Jaded.
nage o' oo Page 8
I Iade into the background and become part oI the group. Images oI our fesh are
transmitted digitally through all the electronic accessories we own. Our keyboards become
an extension oI our tongues. Eyes oI strangers have been extended over the internet through a
series oI wire connections all the way into my studio. Now everything on my table relates to
the body. When I move my webcam around, it`s as iI I am moving their eyes. Our bodies don`t
stop at the three dimensional anymore; they have expanded and now reside in virtual space.
nage o9 Page 8
Tnan|s o Terre Tnaen. or eeobac| on ns ex.
Post Porn PoIitics Texes
6
71 70
Chanla Zakar s an ars vno vas
raneo as a gra;nc oesgner. Sne nas
been oesgnng n,;er narra.es or ne
\eb ;racca, snce s nce;on n
ne ear, 90s. ,.L." vas ;Ubsneo on
ne veb n 994. Sne aso coaboraeo
on a veb [oUrna, Tne TUr| ano Tne
.ev, vn ner nUsbano, M|e Manoe,
vne ne .eo n PUnan, \asnngon,
ano sne n Cncago, nos. n 99o ne,
;Ubsneo ne vor| as an arss' boo|.
n '00 Unoer ne ;seUoon,n ,Snovn
e" sne began a 4,ear ;erornance
ano oocUnenaon o a vebcan con
nUn, vnere ;eo;e nee o na.e
.rUa sex. Her boo|, veb~ars, a
;noo;ex narra.e na sne oesgneo
ano aUnoreo, vas ;Ubsneo n '00'.
Za|ar s a U ne acU, nenber a
ne Scnoo o ne MUseUn o Fne ~rs
n Eoson vnere sne cnars ne Tex
o nage ~rs area. Sne nas rece.eo
nan, grans ano eovsn;s, ncUo
ng a FF gran, C, o Cncago gran,
an noe;enoen PUbsner Eoo| ~varo
ano a MacLove eovsn;. Her vor|
s n ne coecon o ne Eroo|,n MU
seUn o ~r brar,, Ce, Fesearcn n
sUe brar,, lnse, nsUe brar,
ano nan, arss' boo|s coecons.
Sne nas nao soo snovs n ne .S. ano
FUro;e.
Kalren uacobs s a scnoar, cUraor
ano ars n ne eo o nev neoa ano
sexUa, ano vor|s as asssan ;ro
essor a C, n.ers, o Hong long.
Sne vas born n EegUn ano rece.eo
ner Pn.L. n con;ara.e eraUre ano
neoa ron ne n.ers, o Mar,ano
vn a ness on osnenbernen n,ns
ano rUas n 9o0s;90s boo, ar ano
;erornance neoa. Sne nas orga
n.eo ne;orn conerences n recen
,ears vn ne nsUe o evor| CU
Ures n;::;;vvv.nevor|cUUres.
con. Sne ;Ubsneo b_ooc: .oUr
ne,s n ne Perornance o Sex ~r.
('00', Mas|a PUbcaons). Her nev
boo|, e;orn: LY \eb CUUre ano
SexUa Pocs, (annan: Fovnano
ano eeo, '00), ana,.es ;orn on
ne nerne. Her vor| can be oUno on
n;:;;vvv.|aren[acobs.con.
III. ReIerences
Snovne, vebaars, vn an essa,
b, ~UcUere Fosanne Sone (Fgn
een PUbcaons: Eoson, M~) '00'.
laren .acobs, b_ooc: .oUrne,s n
ne Perornance o Sex ~r ([Ub[ana:
Mas|a) '00'.
laren .acobs, e;orn: LY \eb CU
Ure ano SexUa Pocs (CC: Fovnan
ano eeo) '00.
S,.ere ornger, C.erex;oseo. Per
.erng Per.ersons (~: Senoexe)
'00. Crgna, ;Ubsneo n 99o.
.on Mclen.e, "Perorn or Fse, Fron
Lsc;ne o Perornance. (ev Yor|:
FoUeoge) '00.
Mar| Ler,, "Sex Crgans S;roU F.er,
vnere: Tne SUbne ano CroesUe n
\eb Porn, le,noe ecUre oe.ereo
a ~r ano Pocs o e;orn, ~nser
oan, Ccober, '00'. ~bbre.aeo .er
son o ne ecUre a.aabe on Ler,'s
vebse n;:;;vvv.nar|oer,.con.
Frc| .anssen, Leanna Car;ener ano
C,nna ~. Cranan, "Seecng Fns
or Sex Fesearcn: Cenoer Lerences
n Froc Fn Preerence, ~rcn.es o
SexUa Eena.or, .o. o'. o.o. (.Une
'00o): '4o''.
Fogera \asnann, Peer E.C. Fenvc|,
Cenn. L. \son, Terr, L. Heve, .onn
Unsoen e a., "FFC res;onses o V
sUa Froc SnU n Men vn orna
ano Para;nc neress, ~rcn.es o
SexUa Eena.or, .o o', no.', (~;r
'00o): o'44
~ngea Carer, Tne Saoean \onan
~no ne oeoog, o Pornogra;n, (ev
Yor|: PengUn Eoo|s) 99.
Post Porn PoIitics
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1PTU1PSO#SVODI
Post Porn PoIitics
slream esban Ior lhal maller. We osl
orn modernsls are exolc unconvenlona
crealures.
EMS A ol oI my work was n conversalon
wlh Iemnsm, wlh Iemnsm's nably
lo accel sexualy as vabe Ior orno-
gracalon. Il wasn'l reay orn lhal I was
nleresled n bul lhese daogues, debales,
and concels.
TS One diaIogue you had with "The
Dinner Party" (1974-1979), a cIassic
feminist work by Judy Chicago.
EMS Yes, uudy Chcago's ece was aboul
nvlng a lhese mylhc women lo a dnner
arly. I wanled lo do anolher knd oI dnner
arly and nvle some more radca knds
oI women. So my ece, "Dnner Ior Two
(1997), s bolh a homage lo and a crlque
oI uudy Chcago's cassc. I nvled eoe
lhal uudy woud never nvle, ke Luce
Ba, a comedan who was backsled Irom
Hoywood moves durng lhe McCarlhy
era. She had marred a Cuban man, and
lhs ed lo her nol havng access lo lhe
Hoywood slarel syslem. I nvled Vaere
Soanas who wrole lhe Scum ManIeslo,
Emma Godman, lhe radca anarchsl and
Lzze Bordon. Whereas uudy Chcago
worked wlh abslracl Iowery genlaa
aeslhelcs, I made some slraghl u cunl
shols wlh bograhca lexl scrong over
lhem. So I you ook under lhe gass on lhe
labe you can see lhese bg bushy cunls
on TV monlors, reresenlng my guesls.
There are lwo chars vslors can sl down
on al lhe labe. The char seals have vbra-
lors embedded n lhem. So whe you ook
al lhese usses on lhe vdeo monlors you
are beng vbraled. Il's a very hol ece.
TS One major difference in the major
discussion between cIassic feminist
art and something Iike this work Iies, I
think, in deaIing differentIy with fetish-
ism. I think your work "No Regrets,
ner.evs
6
ImeIda" (1997) is aIso very fetishistic.
EMS Yes, l's argey aboul Iool Ielshes and a shoe-
worsh ece. There s a edesla wlh lwo bronze
hgh hees slandng on l. You w aso nd lwo
eehoes n lhe edesla lseI. Behnd lhe ee-
hoes lhere are monlors wlh varous mages oI hgh
hees and grs n hgh hees, ke Dorolhy Irom The
\.aro o C.. II you move lowards lhe hees on lhe
edesla, lhey la reay oud, n a conslanl rhylhm.
Il's mela on mela. In lhe m you see aso conlra-
dclory mages, one oI yourseI wakng lowards lhe
ece, and on lhe olher are cs Irom somebody
gellng oII on neon hees worn by slrers.
TS Since 2005 the two of you coIIaborate on a
muIti-faceted processuaI work caIIed the "o.e
~r aboraor,. The project is supposed to run
for seven years, which means that now, 2009 is
your hfth year aIready. It's partiaIIy inspired by
the work of the highIy respected performance
artist and Iife-ist, Linda M. Montano.
AMS Yes, Lnda was my erIormance arljIe men-
lor. Her ece 4 Years o .ng ~r was somelhng
I was very connecled lo and enjoyed mmensey.
Rghl when Belh and I Ie n ove, lhe US war n AI-
ghanslan was ragng. There was so much voence.
Our nalura ncnalon was lo do arl lhal woud
generale ove, and we decded lhal's whal we woud
do. Then a coue weeks aler Lnda ul oul a ca Ior
arlsls lhal woud ke lo use her seven-year slruc-
lure, wlh each year based on lhe lheme and coor oI
a chakra. We decded lo lake her u on her nvla-
lon. Aboul len olher arlsls are usng her slruclure
loo. Il's a greal exerence. We made a comml-
menl lo do arl exorng ove Ior seven years. Thal
ncudes sex loo, oI course. Each year woud have a
dIIerenl lheme and coor. So Ior nslance, 2008 was
our green year, whch was connecled lo lhe hearl,
and comasson. We decded lo make l aboul eco-
ogy and lakng lhe Earlh as our over. So we came
oul as ecosexuas. We marred lhe Earlh. We're hav-
ng a menage a los. Our work may be aboul ove, bul
ls sexy loo. Al easl I lhnk l's sexy. Love s lhe new
sex! Our new lhealre ece we are workng on now s
caed Lr, Sexecoog,.
97
Tim Stttgen We are sitting around the kitchen tabIe in London. You, Annie
SprinkIe and EIizabeth Stephens, are in town doing your theatre piece, Fx;oseo:
Fx;ernens n o.e, Sex, Lean ano ~r. You've invited artist Cosey Fanni Tutti, whom
you have Iong admired but never met, for brunch and she wiII arrive shortIy.
Thanks for incIuding me today.
Anne M. Srnke Our easure, Tm. As lhey say n hgh schoo lhese days . you're lhe
bas! Thal's a bg commenl. Yeah, we're suer excled lo meel Cosey Fann Tull. I've
aways wanled lo meel her. She was a huge nsralon n my Ie and work.
TS EIizabeth, the story goes that you were aIways fascinated by pinup modeIs
and porn stars. Your work "Tne Porn Sar ~caoenc Eron.eo Pan, Coecon (2004) is
addressing that. In this work, you take the actuaI worn panties of porn stars and of
academics and cast them in bronze. You say in an artist statement that porn stars
and academics are "heroes" for you, "compeIIing, powerfuI and sey. And both
are fetishised in their worIds." In what situation did you become interested in porn
stars - an interest that aIso made you admire Annie? And were you into poIyseuaI
reIationships as you started becoming an artist?
Ezabelh M. Slehens I grew u n Wesl Vrgna. My dad had a machne sho and lhere
were lhese nu caendars on lhe was lhal were adverlsng loos. When I woud vsl my
dad, I ked lo ook al lhe exolc ades who hed lhe loos. Bul lhe guys who worked Ior my
dad aways lred lo bock my vew, so I knd oI knew I shoudn'l be ookng al lhe clures.
Bul lhal eaked my nleresl n nus and sex symbos a lhe more.
Laler on, my Boslon years (1980-1990) were greal. We were a bunch oI whal you woud now
ca queer Irends. We had ols oI sex logelher. Il was mosly women, bul we woud aso see
wlh men I we ked lhem. I eIl Boslon lo go lo graduale schoo al Rulgers Unversly where
Marlha Roser was a roIessor. The schoo had a huge Iemnsl olc and aeslhelc. I was
nleresled n ayng wlh lhal and knd oI lurnng l on ls head. I was nleresled n orn slars
when I was n schoo, and lhey were knd oI anl-orn-slar. So my aler work, lhe Bronzed
Panly Coeclon, s an nsder joke on Iemnsm. I acluay reay do ove Iemnsl work.
I mel Anne n 1991 when I curaled her ll rnls nlo an arl show al Rulgers Unversly. I
wenl lo her aarlmenl n Manhallan lo ck u lhe rnls and I ked her rghl away. There
was a sark belween us. Bul she wasn'l a esban al lhe lme, and I had a grIrend. So we
became casua Irends and slayed n louch Ior many years. Evenluay she became nler-
esled n women, and when she Iound oul I was snge she caed me Ior a dale. (2002) We
Ie n ove durng our rsl kss. I slarled meelng her Irends n lhe sex nduslry and I reay
ked lhem. I lhoughl lhey were reay hol. Anne mel my academc Irends and lhoughl lhey
were hol loo. Our Irends mxed reay we wlh each olher.
AMS Beng wlh Belh Ior seven years now has been an ncredbe exerence. I had no
dea lhal a ong lerm commlled realonsh coud be so exclng! Il's so 'radcay lrad-
lona.' Lucky Belh had a oslve lake on sex workers. She aso has lhs wonderIu qualy
oI nol carng whal eoe lhnk aboul her. Lols oI eoe woud be nlmdaled or lurned
oII by a woman who has had sex wlh lhousands oI eoe. Belh wasn'l nlmdaled by my
reulalon al a. I was more nlmdaled by my own reulalon lhan she was. Belh s a lrue
osl orn modernsl al hearl. She's a concelua arlsl. She underslands lhal beng wlh a
osl orn modernsl s qule dIIerenl lhan beng wlh a manslream orn slar, or man-
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EMS II osl orn reay has a olca
dmenson l shoud ncude any age, race
and gender. Today you can see orn mag-
ery oI every knd oI body on lhe Inlernel.
Bul does lhal mean lhal raca or sexua
herarches jusl dmnsh? OI course I
have an anl-censorsh oslon, and I am
lolay suorlve oI grous reresenlng
lhemseves n lhe Inlernel. Bul somelmes
reresenlalon lseI shoud be lhe onl
Ior crlque n osl orn agan.
I remember a erIormance ece we dd
caed "Sex n a Bag (San Francsco,
2003). Il was al some erIormance sace
where a whoe bunch oI arlsls were
erIormng, and a were sex-radca-arlsl
lyes. Hardcore sex erIormance arl s sl
relly radca n mosl arls oI lhe word,
bul somelmes n San Francsco l can
become redundanl. So we Iel ke we were
havng radca sex because we were hdden
nsde lhe bag. I ke lurnng resumlons
on lher head.
AMS I adore San Francsco, and I am
deey connecled lo ls sex communly.
I ca San Francsco lhe clors oI lhe
USA. Some oI lhe erIormances were
greal, ke lhe "Porn Cown Posse, where
aboul len cowns were runnng around n
a crce wlh lher alex goved ngers u
each olher's bulls. Il was oulrageous and
Iun. Bul somelmes lhese erIormance
evenls end u beng ke a comellon
n sorls. How wd can everyone be? So
we decded lo be more myslerous and
chaenge lhe conlexl a bl. We made lhs
bg sver bag, ul l n lhe mdde oI lhe
room and gol nsde l. Then we look oII
our colhes and had sex Ior aboul an hour
nsde lhe bag. Then we gol dressed and
came oul oI lhe bag. Peoe coud le we
were havng sex n lhe bag, and lhe bag was
movng around and we were makng sex
sounds. Bul no one coud see lhe delas.
A ol oI eoe Iound l uzzng, whch
was greal. A good osl orn exermenl.
ner.evs
6
Exermenlng s lhe name oI lhe game Ior me.
Learnng and leachng loo.
TS Are Ionger durations seier for you? And
stuff which is not so hardcore as weII? The
French theorist FIi Guattari coined the term
"soft technoIogies", which I thought of as you
started doing workshops and performances
about cuddIing and kissing.
AMS Belh and I jusl hed a Iour-hour Exlreme Kss
worksho here n London. Aboul 50 eoe came
some came as coues, and olhers ared u. Frsl
we reed lhe grou, slalng our nlenlons, lhen
we a wenl onlo lhe slreel and sal n chars Iacng a
arlner and slarled a lwo-hour kss. Kssng s aclu-
ay n some ways a laboo. For exame, rosllules
and orn slars oIlen don'l kss whe workng. Or a
erson mghl have sex wlh someone bul nol kss
lhem because l woud seem loo nlmale.
EMS We, our ksses roved lo be very laboo,
because a whoe gang oI molhers Irom lhe negh-
bourhood came wlh lher kds and lher husbands
who were carryng baseba bals and lhey lod us
lo gel oII lhe slreel. Because we are overs nslead
oI ghlers, we wenl nsde lhe obby oI lhe Chesea
Thealre and conlnued lhe kssng lhere. Maybe
l was because some oI lhe arlners kssng were
same gender. Il jusl became arl oI lhe ece. We a
gol reay hgh Irom kssng lwo hours slraghllhe
hard arl s nol gong Iurlher lhan lhe kss. Then we
sloed and decomressed and shared our exer-
ences. So I guess I am nlo sow soIl-lechnooges.
(Laughs)
AMS I denley am. We have done lhree-hour
ksses al gaery oenngs. Bul don'l gel me wrong;
hard-core sex sl has ls ace n erIormance and
meda, oI course. And I have nolhng agansl quck-
es.
EMS We were nvled lo erIorm al lhe Museum
Kunsl Paasl n DussedorIlhs huge word-cass
museum. We dd a naked one-hour kss n a gaery
oI elchngs by lhe maslers: Pcasso, Keml, Beuys
. Il was very eeganl. Then we dd a one-hour
naked soonng ece n lhe obby as eoe eIl lhe
museum.
99
EMS We've aso done a seres oI very sexy ubc wakng lours Ior overs. We dd some
duralon kss eces, cuddng as erIormance arl, lhe Chemolheray Fashon show, lons
oI eclures and workshos. We dd a seance where we nvoked lhe srl oI Marce Du-
cham and made ove wlh hs srl aong wlh aboul 100 French arl overs. Fuxus arlsl
Wem DeRdder was our medum. Thal was very Posl Porn!
AMS We are very busy bees sreadng oen a over lhe ace.
EMS One oI lhe bgger rojecls we do s a seres oI weddngs, workng wlh varous
communles n varous counlres. The day beIore we were gong lo gel egay marred n
San Francsco, lhe Sureme Courl sad we coudn'l. Thal ssed us oII. So we decded lo
have a weddng every year. OI course we are nol uncrlca aboul marrage and excusve
realonshs, bul we wanl lo have lhe same cv rghls as helerosexuas. We've done ve
weddngs so Iar and have lwo comng u lhs summer. They're sle-secc. We aways le
eoe no malera gIls, bul we wecome coaboralon on lhe crealon oI lhe weddngs.
Lasl summer Ior our green weddng we had 150 eoe coaborale on makng lhe wed-
dng and Iour hundred eoe allended. Il was oen lo lhe ubc and Iree. In lhe mdde
oI a seclacuar redwood grove, we made vows lo lhe Earlh. A Iew monlhs aler, we dd
anolher green weddng n Zagreb, Croala, wlh aboul 50 coaboralors and 200 eoe
boughl a lckel lo come walch lhe weddng. As Iar as anyone coud ascerlan, l was lhe
rsl queer weddng n lhe enlre Bakans. There was ony one lle dealh lhreal drecled al
our roducer.
Il's amazng lhal rojecls aboul ove can become conlroversa. In Slavanger, Norway we
dd one oI our Free Soeva| Sex Cnc evenls where we smy sel u labes and chars and
gve lhe ubc Iree advce. We were rolesled by a grou oI anl-orn Iemnsls because
we were dong l near a orn sho, and lhen a neo-Naz n a back sk mask sray anled a
bood red uewsh slar and lhe word uUDE on lhe wndow. Il was knd oI scary.
AMS I am roud oI my oysexuay erverse herslory, and Belh has one loo, bul whal's
nexl? Change haens. o.e ~r ab s on a greal lrajeclory rghl now. Our work s Iu oI
humor and Iun, and we ove l. Bul dong work aboul sex was easy comared lo dong work
lhal addresses ove. Love s much more chaengng. Peoe lhnk lhe loc oI ove s "New
Age or "Hamark-y. Bul lhen lhey come lo one oI our weddng erIormances, and lhey
Iee so good, ke lhey jusl had reay sweel sex. Love Iees decous.
TS I remember how puzzIed some peopIe in the audience at the PPP-symposium
were when they heard the titIe of your presentation "Post Porn Love!" But taIking
to eperienced se workers and post porn artists Iike Bubu de Ia MadeIeine and
Virginie Despentes made cIear to me that reproduction, intimacy and reIationship
might be something rare and important after aII these years of muItipIe seuaI
partners and totaI seuaI eposure.
AMS Yes, rghl. Age robaby has somelhng lo do wlh l, bul ls nol jusl age. Il's wanlng
lo go lo lhe nexl sle, lo exore new lerrlory. Wd, romscuous sexua advenlures are Iun
Ior lwo or lhree decades bul lhen l gels somewhal redclabe. Il becomes lhe norm, and
even borng. I wanled somelhng ese al a cerlan onl. I was a lle embarrassed lo become
so excusve, bul I ove l. However, we are whal I ca 'advenlurous monogamsls', because
we have a ol oI erolc advenlures wlh olher eoe n varous ways. I ke lo buy Belh a
dances al slr cubs, I sel u erolc massages wlh our 'husband' uoseh Kramer, and nexl
week I'm surrsng her wlh a bondassage sesson wlh a domnalrx Irend.
98
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AMS I'd say lhal lhe door cosed on Iem-
nsm n genera. When I seak al coeges,
I see lhal mosl young coege sludenls w
nol ca lhemseves Iemnsls even lhough
lhey wanl lhe same lhngs Iemnsls wanl
olcay and socay. They aso lhnk lhal
sex s nol a Iemnsl ssue! Rae s. Brlh
conlro s. Bul nol sex. Sorl oI lhe same od
argumenl, bul n a dIIerenl Irame.
In my book Pos Porn Mooerns I had a
chaler caed "Posl Porn Polcs. Il was
aboul lhe aclvsm I dd Irom 1975 lo 1990
wlh my sex worker Irends around sex work
and whal came lo be caed "sex oslve
Iemnsm. Sex oslve Iemnsm was a
lerm lhal was crealed n resonse lo lhe
anl-orn Iemnsls. Il ddn'l exsl beIore
lhal.
TS It's funny; when I did the sympo-
sium I didn't know that the term Post
Porn PoIitics aIready eisted in your
work. What I wanted to do was to reac-
tuaIize the interface between repre-
sentation and seuaI activism again
in reIation to queer poIitics, which
reIy strongIy on questioning seuaI
representation. The work of Beatriz
Preciado and DeI La grace VoIcano
inBuenced me a Iot.
AMS Tm, I was lhred when I heard you
were dong a conIerence caed Posl Porn
Polcs. Il's so greal lo see eoe ke
Vrgne Desenles, Bealrz Precado, De
La Grace Vocano, Bubu De La Madeene,
Grs Who Lke Porno, Madson Young
and olhers lake u lhe lerm. Whal I oved
aboul lhe symosum n Bern was lhal l
connecled lhe od wlh lhe new and wove
logelher severa generalons. Il was a Ian-
laslc conIerence, and I oved every mnule.
TS You wrote at the end of your book
Pos Porn Mooerns, "I have a vision for
the future where aII the necessary se
education wiII be avaiIabIe for every-
ner.evs
6
one; there wiII be no more need for abortion,
no more seuaIIy transmitted diseases. No
one wiII ever go hungry for se because there
wiII be se kitchens aII over town serving se
instead of soup. Se is a powerfuI heaIing tooI,
which wiII be appIied reguIarIy in hospitaIs and
psychiatric cIinics. We wiII Iearn how to use
orgasm to prevent and cure disease as some of
the ancient Tantrics and Taoists did. Se work-
ers wiII be highIy respected for the important
work they do, and desire wiII be decriminaIized.
Men wiII be abIe to have muItipIe orgasms with-
out ejacuIating so they can maintain erections
for as Iong as they want. Women wiII know
how to ejacuIate. No one wiII care what gender
peopIe have se with. In the future, everybody
wiII be seuaIIy satished, and there wiII be an
end to vioIence, rape and war." Do you think
these Iines inBuenced Beatriz Preciado's "Con-
traseuaI Manifesto?"
AMS UnIorlunaley, I haven'l read l yel. Bul I adore
Bealrz, lhe way she lhnks and lhe lhngs she s do-
ng. Il's so nce lo be acknowedged by her. Bealrz
jusl connecled us lo a curalor al lhe Vence Ben-
nae, so we' be dong our EUe \eoong o ne Sea
lhere. We're havng an arlgasm, we're so excled.
Maybe "sex oslvly s asse now. The eghleen
lo lwenly-ve-year-od women are elher workng n
lhe orn nduslry, or lhey aren'l nleresled n orn
al a. They grow u wlh orn on lher comulers,
and l's jusl an rrlanl. Whereas beIore lhe 1970s,
women vrluay weren'l aowed lo see orn, so oI
course we reay wanled lo see l. We ro-orn Iem-
nsls have done our jobs so we lhal Ior many young
women loday, seeng or walchng orn s a non-s-
sue. When I slarled makng orn n 1973, my cohorls
and I were rskng ja lme.
EMS Hey, lhe doorbe s rngng. Thal's Cosey
Fann Tull!
AMS Cosey, lhank you so much Ior comng loday. I
am so hay lo meel you. You've been a nUge nIu-
ence on me. I've Ioowed your work Ior years.
There are some lhngs I sl don'l know aboul you.
Lke how and why dd you slarl workng n lhe sex
nduslry?
103
AMS Il was an nlereslng exerence lo be so mnma. And so chubby, and so naked.
TS Annie, how did you feeI about performing, at the symposium, your "PubIic
Cervi Announcement" piece where you show your audience your cervi with a
specuIum and a Bash Iight. Is it something you are tired of doing?
AMS I had relred lhe ece Ior aboul lweve years. Bul l was reay Iun lo do l agan. In
Bern al your conIerence l was aboul showng l lo a new generalon. Aso, I udaled lhe
Pubc Cervx Announcemenl by havng Belh ul lhe secuum nI used lo ul l n my-
seIand lhen by lakng my wg oII al lhe end oI l. Reveang my cervx, lhen reveang my
naked bad head. I had jusl nshed chemolheray Ior breasl cancer. So lhal was nleresl-
ng. I hed a mcrohone belween my egs so eoe coud commenl on whal lhey saw. Ils
Iun lo show one's cervx wlh severa hundreds, ke al lhe Voksbuhne lhealre where your
conIerence was, whch was, ke, 800 seals! Such a huge lhealre Ior such a lny cervx. Bul
lhen, lhe cervx s lhe doorway lo Ie as we know l, and a greal myslery.
Your Posl Porn conIerence n Bern was wonderIu. I was lhred lhal you look lhe Posl
Porn lheme u.
TS Both your oId and your new work made cIear to me that for you se is a vehicIe
for both poIiticaI change and aIso for questioning and reworking narrations of
your identity.
AMS True. Il's aso somelhng I jusl enjoy dongl's amusng. And l's good Ior one's
healh. You shoud know lhal lhe lerm "Porn Modernsm was orgnay crealed by Dulch
arlsl Wnk van Kemen Ior a holograhy show he was havng. Hs lle resonaled wlh
me, so I asked I I coud rework l Ior lhe lle oI my rsl one-woman show. I named my
show Posl Porn Modernsl. Laler I slarled cang lhe orn I was roducng and dreclng
Posl Porn, nlendng lo descrbe orn lhal wasn'l manslream orn; l was more olca,
exermenla, Iemnsl, humorous, concelua. and nol necessary Iocused on beng
erolc. In lhe 70s and 80s I jusl reay wanled lo lurn eoe on. Bul lhen around 1988 I
sloed carng I eoe gol hol and jusl dd whalever lhe he I wanled.
I shoud add lhal I owe a ol lo Fuxus arlsl Wem De Rdder, who was my boyIrend n
my md lwenles. Once we were makng ll rnls and I sad lo hm, "lhs can'l ossby be
arl, because l's so sy. And he sad, "lhal's why arl s so greal. He encouraged me lo
exermenl wlh arl and orn.
TS WouId you say that "pro-se-feminism" or "se-positive-feminism" was aIso
an intervention into a certain inteIIectuaIism of academic feminism? I am ask-
ing this onIy because its history in many academic contets I see today is mereIy
forgotten, or at Ieast not represented. Do you think there was a time when peopIe
cIosed the door again on se-positive feminists?
EMS The door was never reay lhal oen, I have lo say. OI course lhere were eoe ke
Gaye Rubn, Pal Caa and lhe grou Samos, and sex-educalors ke Belly Dodson,
Caro Queen, and Suse Brghl. And Iemnsl sex workers, who were a Irends oI An-
ne, ke Veronca Harl, Nna Harley and Scarol Harol. Some eoe were abe lo move
nlo more nsllulona areas, whch mghl have been a resonse lo lhe Reagan era oI lhe
eghles. Bul l was ony Ior a shorl lme lhal lhese eoe woud reay be acceled n lhe
manslream, I lhey ever were.
102
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oI exresson, al besl bolh Ior lhe audence
and lhe erIormers lhemseves. A ol oI lhe
lhngs we dd lhen, even I lhey seem more
common now, woud nol be ossbe n lhe
arlscene. Besdes some guys who make
lons oI money Ior rovocalon or n dong
sexsl arl Irom a mae arlsls onl oI vew,
I have lhe mresson lhe cmale n mosl
arl conlexls became very slII and rgd
agan. I remember when we erIormed
ana sex ve durng an arl erIormance
wlh an objecl made oul oI wood wlh
mela skes a round l and ddos on each
end. We coud use l Ior every hoe oI lhe
body and many arlcanls. So l was ana
and vagna sex n a way you don'l see l n
conlemorary orn or conlemorary arl
now. Il was very rluaslc and lrba, bolh
n a dark and an auralc way, whch had
nolhng lo do wlh lyca ways oI arousng
lhe vewer. Il seemed more ke an nla-
lon ceremony. I have lo say, n an age oI
rovocalons Ior arl saes, lhal a lhs was
very nalura Ior us n a way, lhal l came oul
oI rogressons our movemenls and Ior-
mer erIormances woud have. We ddn'l
Iorce anylhng. The ony lhng we asked
ourseves somelmes was lhs: whch la-
boos do we have, and n whch way can we
work lhrough lhem n our erIormances?
Anolher lhng oI course was sayng "Iuck
you lo lhe conlemorary arl scene, bolh
n Iorm and conlenl. We haled lhe gaery-
slruclure, and we wanled lo make cear lhal
lhese raclces come Irom somewhere ese
lhan arl schoos. Il was a work agansl a
syslem oI degrees and slars.
TS A highIight in this working phase
of yours was the ProsUon show at the
I.C.A. in London. I have the impres-
sion that this brought a Iot of the ideas
together that you were working on for
years and pushed it to its highest point.
CFT Yes. The show was aready a knd oI
goodbye lo lhe arlscene. Il was ke a vng
ner.evs
6
archve, ncudng a wakng Tamax slck and a
lhese seazy mags wlh orn mages oI us lhal we
woud roduce ourseves, ncudng a ol oI SjM m-
agery, whch we dd Ior our own easure. Everyday
we woud brng more lhngs. We aso nvled a slr-
er, who seemed somehow ess enlhusaslc lhan
even arls oI lhe ress aboul lhe show. 197 was an
nlereslng hase, a hase where l became cear
lhal musc woud become our nexl lhng and nol
jusl anolher Cuom rojecl. Thal's how Throbbng
Grsle slarled and ul a symboc end lo Cuom. Bul
yeah, ProsUon broughl a ol oI lhngs logelher.
By Ido was lhere, and lhere was Suzy and lhe
Banshees, Macom McLaren, ress eoe, nude
modes, Iamous arlsls and hslers. Il was a bl our
erverse verson oI Warho's Iaclory. Bul l was aso
a reay exosve cockla. Geness gol hs nger
broken n a ghl over beng accused oI exolng
me. The dreclor al lhe lme, Ted Llle, was kcked
so bady lhal he had lo be laken lo hosla. There
was a seven-Iool back drag queen caed uava
who was lhe bouncer lhal nghl. Then lhere was a
scare lhal someone had sl lher wrsls n lhe men's
loels. Ths lle od man n a unIorm came runnng
n causng havoc. The ony lhng lhal had haened
was lhal Gen had lhrown lhe Iake bood he'd been
usng durng lhe TG erIormance down lhe loel.
The whoe evenng was ke lhal. Tola chaos on ev-
ery eve. Thal's how Throbbng Grsle gol Iamous
and Cuom became hslory.
TS How do you see the reIation of porn and
epIoitation today? Some peopIe say it's aII e-
pIoitation, and some say that se workers have
much more agency than peopIe think.
CFT I Iel very beraled n whal I dd and haled eo-
e lryng lo make me nlo a vclm. Bul I aso have
lo say lhal lhere were qule a ol oI asshoes n lhe
busness. Al lhe end, ke aways, l has lo do wlh
who s n ower oI lhe means oI roduclon. Il was
greal lo see lhal eoe ke Anne Srnke and Ve-
ronca Harl n lhe U.S. became erolc m dreclors
lhemseves. Even eoe who now have lhe mage
oI beng Iamous and radca arlsls, ke Erc Kro or
Rchard Kern, woud abuse lher modes, shool lhem
as lhey were on heron or any Iuck lhem.
105
Cosey Fann Tull By accdenl, as oIlen haens when women seem lo be good objecls
Ior lhe mae gaze (aughs). When I moved lo London I ved n lhs slrange area al lhe
Whlechae Road, whch was bascay uack The Rer lerrlory. The Kray-brolhers, who
were lwns and eaders n organsed crme n lhe London oI lhe 0s and 70s, hung oul n
lhe Bnd Beggar ub, whch was jusl on lhe corner oI lhs camera sho where I worked.
There was a room above lhe sho where eoe coud lake clures oI a mode whch was
me!
AMS So dd you do l oul oI curosly and advenlure, or dd you need or jusl wanl lhe
cash?
CFT A oI lhs. I was lod I woud gel used Ior osng and I coud become a mode. The
usua bushl (aughs). Somelmes l was borng or even dsguslng, bul I was hay
lo gel more jobs and ose al holograhy cubs. OI course, I woudn'l meel greal arl-
sl holograhers al lhese cubs. They lled more lo lhe sad-bul-lrue cches oI swealy
men and lran sollers. Bul I lhnk l was good lo know lhe sex-scene Irom lhe ground. So
soon I had a mode agency and slarled dong work Ior magaznes, sex ads- or underwear-
calaogues. Il slarled lo become more Iun and more money. Then ms became a arl,
car-shows and slrlease.
AMS So how dd you connecl wlh lhe arl-scene lhen?
CFT Geness, who woud aler become lhe Ironl erson oI our band, Throbbng Grsle,
was very morlanl. I mel Geness way beIore I moved lo London, whch musl have been
around 199. Acluay, l was al an acd-arly al Hu Unversly. Then we moved lo London
n 1972.
TS Did you take part in the Iegendary performance coIIective Cuom Transmis-
sions since the beginning, aIso marking the start of your IifeIong coIIaboration
with Genesis P. Orridge?
No. Al lhe begnnng Cuom was very sound-cenlred and was aboul acouslc mrovsa-
lons. I woud do ros and coslumes bul nol erIorm wlh lhem. Then Cuom became
more abslracl and erIormalve. We deveoed abslracl scenaros and envronmenls lo
gve lhe whoe rojecl a much deeer dmenson and joy. We woud have dIIerenl lexlures
and ghls n every slualon, bul ess slysh and osh lhan l s done loday. Peoe had lo
craw lhrough a oylhene lunne lo gel nlo lhe concerl sace, and lhese knds oI lhngs.
We were very much nlo dsguslng and crude lhngs, whch was greal, as ong as eoe
woud resond roduclvey. Bul somehow, lhs changed one day and l gol deslruclve. Il
was al lhs onl lhal we became nleresled n more exermenla lhealre or erIormance
raclces, lhngs whch al easl nvoved a bl oI dslance Irom lhe audence.
TS Did peopIe aIready caII it performance art at that point in time?
No. There was no casscalon Ior l.
TS And how did seuaIity and nudity become a part of Cuom? I remember hrst
that Cuom's work was very strange and absurd, Iike FIuus or Duchamp.
Yes. Our rsl work, as l became more erIormalve, was reay nlo anl-meanng and
deslroyng lhe vaue oI arl. We haled lhe arl-scene! As I became a nude-mode, my exer-
ences became a lheme n our work loo. We wanled lo ush our boundares and work oul
our nhblons. PerIormng nude was one way lo do lhal, and bodes are beaulIu objecls
104
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~nne S;rn|e ;erornance a PPP n Eern
Pnoos Marea lesng
AMS Inlereslng lhal you say lhal Cosey. Maybe a good arl oI whal Posl Porn s aboul
has somelhng lo do wlh lhe knd oI realonsh lhe ornograher has wlh hsjher er-
Iormers and audence. Whal are lhe nlenlons behnd lhe orn? Makng Posl Porn comes
Irom our desres lo do somelhng unquey ours. Il comes Irom our sexua urges, Irom
wanlng lo exress our seves, and lo share our nlmale deas wlh olher eoe. Whelher
we resecl, or don'l resecl, our modes, and our audence . and ourseves, s an nlegra
arl oI lhe na crealon.
Vs ne .rUa none o ne o.e ~r aboraor, a n;:;;o.earab.org
Ce Cose, Fann TU's nUsc a n;:;;vvv.cose,annU.con;
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vdeo camera lhen so I coud have recorded
lhem. I remember one where I had a boody
nose and used lhe bood lo cover myseI
and my enlre balhroom and lhen melcu-
ousy cean l beIore my molher gol home.
When I slarled makng moves n arl schoo
(Rhode Isand Schoo oI Desgn) I woud
aways be bolh n Ironl oI and behnd lhe
camera. I dd a erIormancejvdeo ece
caed ,10" n whch I made an hour ong
lwo channe vdeo lhal ncuded mages oI
me usng ma ns lo mark lhe vens n my
body, swaowng len yards oI colh, elc.
Then Ior lhe erIormance I susended my-
seI naked belween lhe lwo monlors usng
ony my head and Ieel lo suorl myseI.
I was n lhe darkness, and lhe audence
coud nol see me as I hed my body slII Ior
lhe hour lhe laes ayedhen when lhe
laes were nshed lhe ghl came u and
lhe audence saw me and reazed I had
been lhere lhe whoe lme. For my rsl m,
,V s Ior Voel" I was one oI lhe man char-
aclers, osng Ior musce moves n lhe
,50s, lhen a ealher cad husler n lhe ,0s
lhen a swnger n lhe ,70s and nay a bus-
nessman n lhe ,80s. In anolher memorabe
shorl exermenla m durng lhose years,
,Bul Ior Endurance" I shove a coke bolle
u my ass. I have aways seen my body as a
ro, a canvas, lo be used Ior my ms.
There are peopIe who produce porn
but never watch porn, and there are
peopIe who enjoy both. Regarding the
way I eperienced you at the Porn FiIm
FestivaI in BerIin in 2006, where you
aIso sat in the jury, it seemed that you
are more of the second kind, enjoying
the aIternative porn cuIture which is
reemerging at the moment. Can you
teII me a bit how you eperience the
hype surrounding porn and where you
situate your practice in it - porn hc-
tions, aIternative porn, gay porn, or just
part of the porn famiIy? AIso, I want to
ner.evs
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know what porns you, after aII these years of
shooting yourseIf, stiII enjoy watching and hnd
inspiring and]or hot.
I do enjoy bolh roducng and walchng orn,
lhough I musl say I lhnk I enjoy makng orn more
lhese days. I can undersland how some roducers
never walch orn; Ior me l s ke walchng moves.
I have lo be n lhe rghl mndsel olherwse l s ke
work. I have lo shul oII my crlca mnd. The lhng
I nd so exclng aboul lhe alernalve orn culure
lhal s reemergng s how mxed l s. Slraghl, gay,
esban, lrans, elc., a comng logelher. Thal s
somelhng you never reay saw n gay and esban
m. Il's nol jusl a ole accelance oI each olher's
work; lhere s a genune nleresl n each olher's ms
and melhods oI workng.
My work s vared, some woud say schzohrenc,
bul lo me lhey are a realed. My work n more
manslream gay orn, my alernalve orn (or sexy
arl ms) and my exermenla sex moves and my
narralve work a nIorm each olher. I oIlen work on
severa rojecls al lhe same lme so one scene Ior
a orn move woud gve me an dea Ior a narralve
scene and vce versa. My slyes may vary, bul lhere
s a dslncl qualy lo my moves lhal runs lhrough-
oul lhem a.
Do you feeI you ht in the pornworId? Do you
enjoy contemporary porn? I say this because
its easy to see that your hIms go beyond the
typicaI cIichs of (gay) porn.
I have never Iel ke I l n. Nol n lhe arl word, nol
n lhe m word or lhe gay word, cerlany nol n
lhe slrghl word or lhe ,ndeendenl" m word,
or even lhe underground m word, bul lhal s okay.
I am ne wlh nol llng n. I have aways been an
oulsder and have grown lo nol jusl accel lhal bul
resh l. So I don'l Iee ke a arl oI lhe alernalve,
gay or orn word.
I enjoy orn lhal s nol so sck, I aways lhnk lhere
are loo many ghls on! I enjoy od orn, nol jusl lhe
moves lhemseves bul lhe Iacl lhal lhey had lo be
seen n lhealers; so lhey were reay jusl backdros
Ior lhe aclon haenng n lhe lhealer. Thal lo me s
exclng. UnIorlunaley you can'l gel lhal anymore.
I wanled lo be n lhal word. I hale lhe Iacl lhal m-
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I remember you doing your presentation at the very beginning of the PPP-sym-
posium. After a very theoreticaI Iecture on Derrida and Mar you came to the
podium, took off your cIothes and started your speech, caIIed ,how to shoot se
scenes and become a porn star".. the moment was both very to the point and
entertaining. What were you taIking about in your presentation and how directIy
or indirectIy did you touch on your presentation's titIe? of course i aIso ask this
as you are an independant gay hImmaker who doesn't aIways stay dressed and
behind the camera whiIe shooting your porn-hctions.
I have never underslood when eoe say lhey Iee vunerabe when lhey are naked. I have
aways Iel lhe oosle. There s no more owerIu a Ieeng lhan beng naked n a room
Iu oI colhed eoe. Peoe are Iorced lo reacl lo you, whelher lhey ook al you or ook
away, whelher lhey Iee dsgusl or are lurned on, whelher lhey are embarrassed Ior you or
ready lo jon you. As an arlsl l s my job lo rovoke and gel a reaclon. As someone who s
n lhe enlerlanmenl nduslry l s my job lo enlerlan, and as a comedan l s my job lo gel
eoe lo augh. Whelher lhey are aughng al me or wlh me doesn'l maller as ong as lhey
are aughng.
Is it easy for you to taIk about your work?
I am nol an nleeclua or a schoar or a crlc, Iar Irom l. I am an arlsl, I work on an emo-
lona, gul, sub-conscous eve. II I even allemled lo lheorze aboul my work I woud be
osl, I eave lhal lo lhe roIessonas. Il s dIcul Ior me lo lak aboul my work. I reIer lo
el l seak Ior lseI, lhal s why I make my ms, so lhey can seak Ior me. So when I am
asked lo seak aboul my work l s aways besl Ior me lo lhnk oI lhe seakng as anolher
ece oI work lseI. So whal am I dong now? Wrlng aboul l? Is lhs anolher ayer oI er-
Iormance? Can you ever reach lhe core? Or s l jusl ke an onon? Layer aIler ayer. We,
no, acluay. Go back lo lhe ms, ke I sad beIore l s a lhere.
But you did do a performance about your hIms.
For my resenlalon or as I woud reIer lo ca l my erIormance ,how lo shool sex
scenes and become a orn slar", my basc dea was lo smy break lhe ce by sayng how
nervous I was and how much more comIorlabe I woud be naked. So I slred down lo
nolhng and sal lhere wlh a mcrohone n hand and walched and commenled on my m
Anonymous n whch I am lhe ead characler. In lhe m my characler engages n anony-
mous sexua encounlers whe lryng lo manlan a modern gay Ie n a monogamous
realonsh. For lhs erIormance, I am lakng aboul shoolng myseI whe I am naked
on screen whe lhe audence s walchng me naked. I wanled lo jusl be n lhal momenl,
reaclng lo myseI onscreen and reaclng lo lhe audence. I woud be nleresled n hearng
whalever lheores lhe audence had aboul my erIormance.
Like I said at the beginning, you are aIso a performer in your own hIms. Did this
come out of a shortage of money and time or out of not hnding the right perform-
ers, or was ,becoming a pornstar" something you reaIIy wanted to do?
I have aways been bolh n Ironl oI and behnd lhe camera, bolh guralvey and raclcay.
As a chd I was aways dong lle erIormances. I was oIlen home sck Irom schoo and
woud do eaborale roduclons Ior an audence oI sluIIed anmas. I wshed I had had a
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Post Porn PoIitics
pIeasurefuI situations, not onIy having
the story in your head, but aIso differ-
ent actors and audiences in mind.
I reay enjoy makng orn ms. Il s ke
we a become a bg Iamy. The dIcul-
es come Irom lhe slgmas lhal are sl
allached lo orn. Ths eads lo aclors nol
showng u, eoe ony beng nleresled
n money. There aso can be ogslca
robems ke aclors nol beng lurned on
or nol kng lher arlner. Those are easer
lo dea wlh; you jusl have lo have an oen
mnd and alence. I reIuse lo shool orn
under a ,orn name". I'm roud oI my orn
work.
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gong n genera has become so sck and assve. I ove lhe dea oI a move jusl beng a
backdro, an melus Ior sexness. I lhnk lhs has been reaced by amaleur m ke lhe
cs you can see on xlube and ornlube, lhese cs made by men and woman oI lhem-
seves and lher sexua exols lhal lhey lhen ul onne.
I woud ove a relurn lo more abslracl, obscure orn (nol so overy l) combned wlh a new
a-encomassng sexualy. I am workng on a esban move rghl now caed The Fna
Gr lhal I am very excled aboul, and I woud ove lo do somelhng wlh lranne boys and
grs.
Can you teII me more about Bangor hIms, its contet and history?
My crealve arlner uames Derek Dwyer and I Iormed BANGORFILMS shorly aIler my
rsl Iealure m Frsk n 1995. We were Iruslraled wlh how moves were made, wlh bg
crews oI eoe slandng around and mmakers havng lo wal years lo gel lhere vson on
m. We wanled lo make moves whenever we Iel ke l, wlh jusl me and lhe aclors n rea
ocalons shoolng wlh avaabe ghl. Our rsl move was Llle Shols oI Haness and
aIler lhe sucess oI lhal one n 199 we vowed lo make 10 Iealures by 2000, mosly lo rove
lhal we coud do l and because we had a bunch oI deas we wanled lo do. AIler makng
lhose len moves we camed down a lny bl, and snce lhen we make aboul 2 moves a year.
For nIos check: www.bangorms.com(somewhere ese?)
How is your reIation to narrative? In porn, narrative is either referred to as a bad
vehicIe for se scenes or as something which makes the se scenes secondary.
I lhnk you can do a narralve m wlh orn wlhoul l beng cheesy or cam by roolng
l n a characlor andjor characlors lhal are rea, and lhe sex s a arl oI lhal reaness. In
narralve m, sex s ke voence; l s beller I you can gel nsde lhe audence's head and
suggesl lhe scene, use lhe audence's mgnalon, lo make lhe sex rea. My move Anony-
mous s narralve, bul l s a move aboul sex. The key s lo make lhe sex as rea as ossbe.
For my orn move I lend lo kee lhe ,slory" lo a mnmum, lhere s very lle sel-u lo lhe
sex. Il s somelhng lo walch lo gel oII on (nol lhal you can'l gel oII lo lhe narralve ms,
bul lhal s nol lher man goa.)
Can you teII me a bit about the narrative of BuIIdog in the Whitehouse...
Budog n lhe Whle House came aboul because oI lhs scanda n lhe Bush Whle House
where lhs mae rosllule was al a lhese ress brengs and gven ress credenlas
lhal he was nol quaed Ior. He was n lhe Whle House on hundreds oI occaslons so
obvousy he was Iuckng someone and mosl key l was Bush. I was so angry because
here was lhs jucy sex scanda and lhe ress was gnorng l. Il gol me lhnkng aboul
haw craIly lhe Bush admnslralon was al snnng lhe lrulh, and lhal remnded me oI
Dangerous Lasons. I read lhe book, and l remnded me so much oI lhe Bushes lhal I
mmedaley slarled adalng l. I new I had lo make lhs chea and Iasl, so I decded lhal l
needed lo be ke a sma communly lhealer roduclon. We were ayng rea characlers,
bul we were a aclors who barey knew our nes. Il was Iun and calharlc, and I was abe lo
squeeze n jusl aboul a lhe Bush scandas. So l s an educalona m.
You aIso did a documentary about shooting porn - shooting your own. How dif-
hcuIt is it making porn and staying reBective about the difhcuIties of producing
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