L’organisation spectaculaire de l’intime : l’exemple de la pornographie

Abstract

The dividing line between private and public is upheld by a solid tradition in sociology which purports that society is only possible if individuals can preserve their privacy. At one and the same time, sociology defines its field of investigation while organising it around a blind spot. Privacy is off camera, a subject for psychology, and the actor is only apprehended in his observable, and therefore public, activities, where his behaviours make him the least conspicuous. This notion postulates an implicit model of the actor having substantial reserve, which today is disrupted by the phenomena of voluntarily exhibiting private life, where, on the contrary, the actors draw assurance of their own existence from its reflection in the eyes of others. Big Brother , previously the dreaded symbol of totalitarianism based on transparency, has become the title of a successful televised reality show. Here, pornography helps to elucidate the mediate forms of intimacy in the post-modern period, stemming from what has always been its focal point -sexuality, as the limit beyond which the actor runs the risk of forgetting himself. From an initial approach, it is no more than a sex spectacle which can be interpreted as a form of sex itself, an instrument which makes sex possible (between the artists themselves and between the artist and the final consumer) through médiatisation via the filters of distance, the photographic and cinematographic tool and the remuneration of services rendered. This interpretation postulates another model of the actor, founded on the specular/spectacular structure of the subject and inter-subjectivity, which makes for an indecisive line between inside and outside, but enables us to understand that whatever type of exposure the actor is submitted to, he always manages to withdraw part of himself from the spectators’ eyes. This also calls on sociology not to set aside what is most elusive in the social world.