17.06.2021
The Pornographic Body and Non-Desire, 6.00 – 8.00 p.m. CEST
Research Alum Dr. Amir Taha (Independent) presents his research on "The Pornographic Body and Non-Desire". Please note: Instead of 13 May 2021, this talk will now take place on 17 June 2021.
Speaker
Amir Taha gained his PhD in English Literature and Cultures from the University of Tübingen in 2017. He is a former postdoctoral fellow at Centre for Indian Studies in Africa (CISA), University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Taha taught Film Studies, Cultural Studies and Global South Studies at the University of Tübingen and at Wits University. He is the author of Film and Counterculture in the 2011 Egyptian Uprising (Palgrave Macmillan 2021) and is the co-editor of the upcoming Cinemas from the Global South. Towards Southern Aesthetics (Routledge).
Abstract (excerpt)
Pornography is the perfect space for the reappropriation of power, control and norms. In terms of gender, the female body, no matter the genre, is the object of power assertion, control and colonialization for and by the male body. In terms of race, colonialist racist practices flourish. In the pornographic genre, “Interracial,” the colonialist and slavery notions of the black body are freely reproduced. In this paper, I would like to discuss what I call, non-deisre in relation to the concept of the pornographic body. Non-desire here as it is assembled in pornography is, I argue an inversion of Deleuzo-Guattarian concept of desire. Desiring-production for Deleuze and Guattari is explosive and incapable of being assembled without demolishing entire social structures: a circuit breaker and disrupter of the social norms. What takes place in pornography is the nondesiring reproduction of the stratified and hierarchal spaces of the social machine. This process of non-desire also relies on the notion of tabu as a an exaptational space in which power, oppression, racism and control are legitimately practiced. I aim at exploring the concept of non-desire with the example of racist/racial representation in pornography.
Please send an email to alumni@uni-tuebingen.de to receive the zoom link.
ECTS points for students of the University of Tübingen: By attending the seminar series during the summer term and submitting an essay on a chosen topic, students can obtain 1 ECTS point. Please see ALMA for more information.
