Main/streaming porn discourse?: 10 years of Porn Studies and reminiscing on South Asian pornocultures

Abstract

ABSTRACT In India, and in South Asia more broadly, the pornographic spectrum is inflected by a wide range of cultural and social imaginaries. Such imaginaries impact social norms, the constitution of what relations are permissible and which ones are tabooed, and more institutionalized aspects such as censorship regulations and laws about obscenity. Starting with an overview of the legal, censorial, and historical discourses about pornography and obscenity, this article sheds light on the complexities of knowing and regulating porn in India. Further, by examining two nostalgic productions about B and C grades, and pornographic films of the celluloid era, we show how there has been a mainstreaming of porn discourse through the filter of arthouse and/or serious cinema and television. In tracking these issues, we also show how porn studies in a South Asian context might not, at first look, resemble ‘porn’ studies at all. Making a case for expanding the ambit of the pornographic, we show how the work of porn studies must ‘accent’ itself as it weaves its way through cultural and geopolitical difference.