Toronto Metropolitan University
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Representing orgasms and pleasure in pornography: the face in Beautiful Agony

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thesis
posted on 2021-05-23, 09:18 authored by Shannon Bell
"In this paper, I will investigate the potential for finding a counter-aesthetics within pornography. First, I will briefly describe a history of ignorance surrounding female pleasure within medicine and science. I will argue that female bodies have been subjugated, regulated and repressed in mainstream Western society, and that this subjugation has created a sense of unknoweability within many women about their bodies and more specifically, their orgasms.1 I will then discuss the relationship between bodies and screens, showing how interactivity and a sense of domesticity within online pornography operate to create an intimacy between the viewer and the bodies that he or she is engaging with. I will explain what is at stake when we try to find a "truth" within the bodies onscreen, drawing on Michel Foucault's concept of the scientia sexualis and Linda Williams' "frenzy of the visible." I will then move to a description of eroticism and "moral pornography,"2 and the ways that pornography can be productive in creating subjectivity, rather than objectifying bodies"--From the introduction pages 2-3.

History

Degree

  • Master of Arts

Program

  • Communication and Culture

Granting Institution

Ryerson University

LAC Thesis Type

  • MRP