The Paradox of Feminism, Technology and Pornography: Value and Biopolitics in Digital Culture

Abstract

In this chapter, I move on to examine the tensions and contradictions that characterise feminist and queer pornographic production and self-exposure practices in the era of ‘selfie’ culture. Here I begin to untangle some of the past and present feminist debates on pornography by addressing issues around web visibility and communication technology more generally, and by contextualising them in light of contemporary postporn politics. Moving away from questions of representation, my question is: What is political about these practices? My analysis first focuses on how postporn cultures raise critical questions about communicative capitalism, about what it means to be human and how we can live with digital technologies, and how they reflect on profound anxieties about what constitutes authenticity and individuality. Then I continue to explore two exemplary cases: nofauxxx.com, a queer and women-owned porn production company that claims a feminist identity; and Shu Lea Cheang's 2001 film I.K.U., a Japanese sci-fi postporn/artporn film, and make special mention of explicit selfies and the so-called ‘selfie feminism’. By employing a biopolitical framework of network capitalism, I offer a substantive account of the complex relationship between feminism and the online porn market, to show how queer and feminist identities are becoming increasingly diffused. Although scholarly work in queer and postporn studies has variously conceptualised bioart and sex-positive blogging as expressions of resistance to a normative sexual order, I argue that content generation by both artists and companies is largely guided by neoliberal discourses of consumer choice and sexual agency, in the same way as any other porn production without a specifically feminist or/and queer agenda. At the same time, producers of queer porn and participants in postporn networks are aware of their subordination and the new forms of biodigital vulnerability, which differentiates them significantly from heterosexual amateur porn cultures. It is because of this awareness and negotiations of vulnerability, I suggest, that the networked connections, events and practices of these actors can be politically empowering.