[Commlist] Pornography as Culture: A Local Perspective - g/s/i—gender/sexuality/italy 9:I, 2022

Special Themed Issue: Pornography as Culture: A Local Perspective
g/s/i—gender/sexuality/italy 9:I, 2022 – Call for Papers

Guest Editors: Giovanna Maina (University of Turin), Sergio Rigoletto 
(University of Oregon), Federico Zecca (University of Bari)
Email: (giovanna.maina /at/ unito.it) <mailto:(giovanna.maina /at/ unito.it)>; 
(srigolet /at/ uoregon.edu) <mailto:(srigolet /at/ uoregon.edu)>; 
(federico.zecca /at/ uniba.it) <mailto:(federico.zecca /at/ uniba.it)>

(deadline for proposals: July 15, 2021)
No payment from the authors will be required.

This themed section seeks to examine pornography as a nexus of 
practices, knowledges, institutions, and economies primarily concerned 
with bodily pleasure. It considers pornography as a rich cultural field: 
a terrain on which is staged an ongoing struggle over the politics of 
representation, the social legitimacy, and the cultural visibility of 
desires, bodies and intimacies. Pornography has long been the object of 
censorship, surveillance and intense political critique. Once 
principally associated with exploitative sexual practices and methods of 
distribution, as well as a source for oppressive conceptualizations of 
gender roles, it has now become a central sphere of intervention for 
queer and feminist activists, and for radical political work. Within 
pornography, consumption practices often intersect with participatory 
spheres of culture production and community-making dynamics. This 
intersection tests the thin line between social practice, representation 
and fantasy within which porn operates as a cultural and media domain.

In Italy, pornography first emerged as a noteworthy cultural phenomenon 
in the mid-1970s, with the proliferation of adult magazines and the 
first hard-core films by directors like Joe D’Amato. In the 1980s, 
Italian media (print, cinema, and intermittently even television) were 
flooded with sexually explicit images, the production and circulation of 
pornographic materials paralleling and sometimes exceeding the exploits 
of North-European countries such as France or Germany. During this time, 
a significant process of deregulation and legitimization of sexually 
explicit materials transformed what had largely been seen as a 
predominantly Catholic country prone to censorship into a libertarian 
paradise for pornographers and their publics. From the 1980s onwards, 
this process contributed to the blurring of the boundaries between porn 
cultural production and mainstream culture, with eminent representatives 
of the Italian porn industry who were able to cross over to mass 
entertainment and even politics (e.g., Ilona Staller, aka Cicciolina, 
was elected member of the Italian Parliament between 1987 and 1991). 
Over the last 30 years, no other country seems to have embraced porn 
icons (e.g., Rocco Siffredi, Moana Pozzi, Jessica Rizzo, and Valentina 
Nappi) so enthusiastically within its mainstream cultural fabrics. This 
peculiar relation between pornography and the mainstream represents one 
of the major objects of inquiry that this special issue proposes to 
consider.

Currently, the Italian porn industry has been engulfed and somehow 
erased by the processes of global conglomeration and delocalization that 
have reshaped porn production world-wide in the digital age – 
significantly, important ‘national’ players like Rocco Siffredi and 
Mario Salieri have offshored their operations to Eastern Europe. In 
other words, much of what we may call ‘Italian porn’ is now inextricably 
linked to the distinctive global networks of cultural production, 
distribution and consumption within which pornography operates. 
Nevertheless, the idea of a nationally-specific porn imaginary still 
seems to occupy a peculiar position in the globalization of pornography, 
one that self-consciously marks its imagined national boundaries, while 
also shedding light on their permeability. What does Italian porn 
culture look like then? Can ‘Italian’ function as a term that 
‘localizes’ the global production and circulation of porn? What would 
this local perspective open up? And, finally, what would this eccentric 
cultural field say about Italian culture and about its relation to 
globalization and global media?

We invite proposals that explore, but are not restricted to, the 
following topics:
- The history of Italian pornography: from classic stag films to the 
‘double versions’ and adult magazines of the 1970s, from the glorious 
video era of the 1980s and 1990s to the digital revolution and beyond
- Circulation and consumption of pornography in Italy, from illegality 
to the advent of web 2.0
- Italian performers, directors, producers
- Dissident and alternative pornographies, feminist/queer/anti-racist 
experimentations, the relation between pornography and activism
- Italian ‘cross-over’ porn stars (Cicciolina, Moana, Selen, Rocco 
Siffredi, Eva Henger, etc.) and their relationship with the Italian 
‘mainstream’ entertainment industry, and with Italian culture, society 
and politics more in general
- Italian porn stars in US and European production, past and present
- The national industry: past productions practices and studios (e.g., 
Diva Futura), and present delocalization to Eastern Europe
- Nationally-specific trends, genres, styles, tropes
- Regional varieties and subgenres (e.g. Concetta Licata, Mario Salieri, 
1994)
- Gender, age and dis/ability in Italian porn
- Sexualization of race and ethnicity in Italian porn
- ‘Italian porn’ as a (commercial and aesthetic) brand
- The notion of ‘Italian’ as an exotic signifier when related to the 
perception and the branding of specific stars, performers, and directors
- ‘Italian’ as a marker of ‘otherness’ and exoticism when related to 
specific series or products (e.g., Gape in Italy, Omar Galanti, 2013, 
Evil Angel)
- ‘Italian’ as a category in pornographic aggregators (pornhub, youporn, 
xvideos, etc.)
- Grassroots practices in Italian pornography and ‘local’ pro-am 
micro-celebrities
- Intersections between pornography and ‘legitimate’ Italian cinema
- Critical discourses on pornography circulating in the Italian public 
sphere

Deadline for proposals: July 15, 2021
Send your proposals to: (giovanna.maina /at/ unito.it) 
<mailto:(giovanna.maina /at/ unito.it)>; (srigolet /at/ uoregon.edu) 
<mailto:(srigolet /at/ uoregon.edu)>; (federico.zecca /at/ uniba.it) 
<mailto:(federico.zecca /at/ uniba.it)>
The proposal should include a 500-word abstract, bibliography (max 5 
sources), and bio for each contributor.
The Guest Editors will evaluate the proposals and submit them to the 
Advisory Board. If the proposal passes these steps, the Guest-Editors 
will send a g/s/i formal request to the contributors.
Deadline for article submission: January 31, 2022.

The articles will be sent to reviewers for a process of double blind 
peer review, according to the g/s/i policies for guest edited volumes 
(see http://www.gendersexualityitaly.com/policies/ 
<http://www.gendersexualityitaly.com/policies/>). Comments and feedback 
will be returned to authors in Spring 2022, for final editing.


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