Overview
In Indie Porn, Zahra Stardust examines the motivations and interventions of independent porn producers as they navigate criminal laws, risk-averse platforms, discriminatory algorithms, and rampant piracy. Herself a porn performer and participant, Stardust takes readers behind the scenes, offering intimate insights into this sociopolitical movement. She finds politicians who watch porn in parliament, protesters leading face-sitting demonstrations, sex workers making COVID-safe pornography, and artists reverse-engineering porn detection software. Against the backdrop of a global gig economy, Stardust documents the promises of indie porn to democratize content, revolutionize production, and redistribute wealth while outlining the fantasies of regulators, whose illusions of what porn is and does foreclose possibilities for transformation. Inevitably, as these paradigms collide, porn producers engage in creative tactics to hustle for survival and visibility, from ethical certification to law reform, sometimes reproducing hierarchies of stigma themselves. By highlighting how porn stigma is bound up with intersecting oppressions, Stardust identifies these junctions as coalitional opportunities for changing social relationships to sex, work, and capitalism.
Full Product Details
Author: Zahra Stardust
Publisher: Duke University Press
Imprint: Duke University Press
Weight: 0.445kg
ISBN: 9781478031062
ISBN 10: 1478031069
Pages: 328
Publication Date: 29 October 2024
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
“There is no one better positioned to tell the story of the indie porn revolution than porn practitioner and scholar Zahra Stardust. From porn sets to festivals, to the online world of search engine optimization and algorithms, Stardust draws on an impressive archive of ethnographic and interview data to illuminate a rapidly changing industry shaped by transnational linkages, regulatory frameworks, political possibilities, and reactionary politics. Deeply researched, beautifully written, and impressive in scope, Indie Porn will have an immediate and lasting impact.” -- Lynn Comella, author of * Vibrator Nation: How Feminist Sex-Toy Stores Changed the Business of Pleasure *
"“There is no one better positioned to tell the story of the indie porn revolution than porn practitioner and scholar Zahra Stardust. From porn sets to festivals, to the online world of search engine optimization and algorithms, Stardust draws on an impressive archive of ethnographic and interview data to illuminate a rapidly changing industry shaped by transnational linkages, regulatory frameworks, political possibilities, and reactionary politics. Deeply researched, beautifully written, and impressive in scope, Indie Porn will have an immediate and lasting impact.” -- Lynn Comella, author of * Vibrator Nation: How Feminist Sex-Toy Stores Changed the Business of Pleasure * “The story of indie porn, as told by one of its brightest stars. Zahra Stardust hails from an international league of erotic artists as a talented performer, passionate advocate, and esteemed scholar. In a world where porn is gawked at by the media, scapegoated by politicians, and shunned by everyone else, Zahra’s nuanced perspective from the inside reveals an honest and enlightened angle that is rare to see unless you've lived it yourself. Indie Porn is the next great book to join the cannons of sex work and adult cinema.” -- Jiz Lee, editor of * Coming Out Like a Porn Star: Essays on Pornography, Protection, and Privacy * ""Zahra is a beacon of light and a massive inspiration for anyone researching around sex from a sex and sex-worker positive perspective. . . . Aside from appealing to sex workers and people in adjacent fields (sex ed, sextech, etc), Indie Porn is a an extremely insightful read for those who are interested in labour politics and the future of work, for people who care about bodily autonomy and sexual justice, criminalisation and abolition, big tech and surveillance capitalism, indie film and DIY culture. The book will also offer helpful insights and analyses to people who have experienced de-platforming and de-monetisation, and those who are thinking about the relationship between respectability politics and law reform."" -- Carolina Are * Blogger on Pole *"
“There is no one better positioned to tell the story of the indie porn revolution than porn practitioner and scholar Zahra Stardust. From porn sets to festivals, to the online world of search engine optimization and algorithms, Stardust draws on an impressive archive of ethnographic and interview data to illuminate a rapidly changing industry shaped by transnational linkages, regulatory frameworks, political possibilities, and reactionary politics. Deeply researched, beautifully written, and impressive in scope, Indie Porn will have an immediate and lasting impact.” -- Lynn Comella, author of * Vibrator Nation: How Feminist Sex-Toy Stores Changed the Business of Pleasure * “The story of indie porn, as told by one of its brightest stars. Zahra Stardust hails from an international league of erotic artists as a talented performer, passionate advocate, and esteemed scholar. In a world where porn is gawked at by the media, scapegoated by politicians, and shunned by everyone else, Zahra’s nuanced perspective from the inside reveals an honest and enlightened angle that is rare to see unless you've lived it yourself. Indie Porn is the next great book to join the cannons of sex work and adult cinema.” -- Jiz Lee, editor of * Coming Out Like a Porn Star: Essays on Pornography, Protection, and Privacy *
Author Information
Zahra Stardust is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology.
