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Mika Pasanen

Abstract

This paper focuses on a law that came into force in January 2009 in the United Kingdom prohibiting the viewing and possessing of ‘extreme pornography.’ This law will be approached through Foucaultian notions of discursive power and ‘docile body.’ This will be used to create a framework for understanding the production of sexuality in/through the family, and pornography’s relationship with the family. The paper then moves on to the problematic nature of the politics of representation and the realm of the imagination. The argument here suggests that the law aims to create ‘docile bodies’ through the control and regulation of the ‘pornographic imagination,’ and that this process reiterates the discourse of sexuality found in the institution of the family. However, the law is limited in its ability to create ‘docile bodies’ due to the nature of pornography that eroticises the transgression of restrictions.

Author Biography

Mika Pasanen received his undergraduate degree from the University of Sussex in 2009 with a First Class Honours in Anthropology and Gender Studies. He produced ‘Visual Violations,’ the paper presented here, as his final dissertation in Gender Studies. Mika is currently (2010-2011) a graduate student at the Department of Anthropology, University College London, where he is doing an MSc in Digital Anthropology.

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