[Commlist] cfp: Special Edition of Porn Studies: Marxism and Pornography

Special Edition of /Porn Studies/

*Marxism and Pornography*

**

guest edited by Brandon Arroyo

*call for papers*

**

Within an internet environment flooded with ‘free’ pornography, it is 
more important than ever to reconsider the production and labor 
structures producing pornography today. All of this ‘free’ pornography 
is supported by billions of dollars’ worth of platform support and 
consumer spending. It is essential to consider both the infrastructural 
assemblages enabling this new type of financial structure and the 
primary critique that has helped us to imagine possibilities both inside 
and outside this structure—Marxism. While the labor practices, financial 
structure, and innovative payment systems developed by the pornography 
industry are well-worn sites of both popular and academic writing, a 
thorough Marxist analysis is lacking. This is particularly curious 
considering that one of the most important terms to emerge from 
pornographic discourse, the ‘money shot,’ is a cornerstone of Linda 
Williams’ Marxist analysis in her 1989 study /Hard Core/. In situating 
the ‘money shot’ as an ‘ideal instance of commodity fetishism,’ Williams 
establishes a fundamental connection between commodity and sexual 
fetishism that has yet to be expanded upon in the popular internet age. 
Alan Soble’s /Pornography: Marxism, Feminism, and the Future of 
Sexuality/ (1986) book-length Marxist analysis of pornography 
anticipated a dynamic future for this type of approach. However, both 
Williams and Soble’s provocations encouraging deeper Marxist analyses in 
the future have mostly fallen on deaf ears.

Perhaps the utopian thinking from writers such as Wilhelm Reich and 
Herbert Marcuse, imagining a Marxist future where freedom from the 
labors of capitalism would translate into a freedom where pornography 
would no longer be needed, worked to stunt many scholar’s ability to 
consider the Marxist aspects of contemporary pornography. Today, this 
‘utopian’ fantasy of a pornography-free world seems too closely aligned 
to the anti-pornography feminist position that sees pornography as 
merely a result of unfair and unequal economic and gender dynamics. 
However, as with every other moving image form, if one is to have a 
comprehensive understanding of pornography, it must be conceived of as 
part of a comprehensive cultural landscape.

This special issue of /Porn Studies/ seeks to address this problem by 
collecting articles that situate a Marxist analysis of pornography 
within our contemporary moment. Questions might include:

-What does it mean to consume ‘free’ pornography within a capitalist 
superstructure?

-How does/doesn’t amateur pornography upset conventional labor practices?

-What can non-pornographic work structures learn from the pornography 
industry?

-What is the role of affective labor within pornography?

-What can Marxism teach us about the intersection of sex work and 
pornography?

-How does Marxist discourse intersect with pornographic discourse on the 
internet?

-How has anti-pornography feminism historically relied on Marxist rhetoric?

-How are capitalism/Marxist ideals represented within pornographic texts?

-What does it mean that our contemporary understanding of sexuality as 
it relates to gender, race, and practice can only be understood within a 
capitalist framework?

The special issue will be published in 2021. First drafts of articles 
will be due in January 2020 and final drafts in December 2020.  Please 
send abstracts of up to 500 words and a short biographical note to 
(arroyo.brandon /at/ gmail.com) by June 1, 2019.


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