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Pornography

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Erotic Memoirs and Postfeminism: The Politics of Pleasure

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Abstract

This chapter explores the impact of pornography on contemporary culture and attempts to position women’s erotic memoirs in the nebulous space between “pornography” and “erotica”. It argues that while women’s erotic memoirs are inherently concordant with erotica, postfeminist culture and the mainstreaming of pornography have coopted and colonised the genre. The chapter suggests that the memoirs under discussion inhabit a space that is both progressive and regressive — a challenge to and an affirmation of conventional femininity — the former by forcefully expressing a postfeminist female agency in their (visual) consumption of male and female bodies, and the latter by adhering to the ideological and aesthetic conventions of male-produced pornography.

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Notes

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute of Education, Singapore

    Joel Gwynne

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  1. Joel Gwynne
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© 2013 Joel Gwynne

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Gwynne, J. (2013). Pornography. In: Erotic Memoirs and Postfeminism: The Politics of Pleasure. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137326546_4

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