Overview
What does it mean to re-conceptualize pornography as a material practice rather than as speech? Sidestepping the legal debates over their civil ordinance, and drawing on phenomenology of the lived body, Mason-Grant returns to the innovative core of the Dworkin-MacKinnon critique of mainstream pornography. She develops a practice paradigm that capture and extends their insights, showing how the use of mass-market heterosexual pornography contributes to the cultivation of troubling forms of sexual know-how.
Full Product Details
Author: Joan Mason-Grant
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Imprint: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Dimensions:
Width: 16.30cm
, Height: 1.80cm
, Length: 23.40cm
Weight: 0.381kg
ISBN: 9780742512221
ISBN 10: 0742512223
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 12 March 2004
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
In direct and conceptually vivid prose, Mason-Grant extradites the core of the Dworkin/McKinnon analysis of pornography from its distorting entanglement with legal issues of freedom of speech. In restoring the 'practice paradigm' Mason-Grant elaborates a compelling and disturbing phenomenological account of pornography as a lived corporeal practice of sexual know-how. For the many of us who have misconceived Dworkin and McKinnon's work, this intelligent book is a welcome and vital corrective. -- Sue Campbell, Dalhousie University This work is a valuable contribution to political theory, because it provides not only a systematic overview and critical evaluation of the literature on identity, but also an original theorization. Political Studies Review A carefully researched, elegantly written analysis of pornography as an irreducibly embodied, systemic material practice of subordination. Mason-Grant exposes the constitutive effects of sedimented mind/body, reason/emotion, and male/female dichotomies in shaping the everyday sexual politics and practices of western societies. Thoughtfully conceived and argued, innovative and resourceful in showing how pornography is no mere speech act-though it is that too-this book points toward ways of repairing a rift between practice and theory by recentering pornography debates around issues of knowledge, of (often tacit) know-how. -- Lorraine Code, distinguished research professor, York University
A carefully researched, elegantly written analysis of pornography as an irreducibly embodied, systemic material practice of subordination. - Lorraine Code, Distinguished Research Professor, York University
Author Information
Joan Mason-Grant is a professor at the Social Justice and Peace Studies program of King's University College at the University of Western Ontario.
