Abstract
Digital production tools and online networks have dramatically increased the general visibility, accessibility, and diversity of pornography, which can be accessed for free, anonymously, and in a seemingly endless range of niches, styles, and formats. This book moves beyond the usual debates over the legal, political, and moral aspects of pornography to address online pornography in a media historical framework, investigating its modalities, its affect, and its visceral and disturbing qualities. Countering theorizations of pornography as emotionless, affectless, detached, and cold, it addresses experiences of pornography, largely through the notion of affect as gut reactions, intensities of experience, bodily sensations, resonances, and ambiguous feelings. The author links these investigations to considerations of methodology (ways of theorizing and analyzing online pornography and affect), questions of materiality (bodies, technologies, and inscriptions), and the evolution of online pornography. She discusses the development of online pornography, focusing on the figure of the pornography consumer, and considers user-generated content and amateur pornography. The author maps out the modality of online pornography as hyperbolic, excessive, stylized, and repetitive, arguing that literal readings of the genre misunderstand its dynamics and appeal. She also analyzes viral videos and extreme and shock pornography, arguing for the centrality of disgust and shame in the affective dynamics of pornography. The book’s analysis makes clear the crucial role of media technologies—digital production tools and networked communications in particular—in the forms that pornography takes, the resonances it stirs, and the experiences it makes possible.
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