CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT
CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT
Pornography and Pop Culture: Reframing Theory, Re-thinking Activism
March 23-25, 2007
Wheelock College
Boston
The so-called “porn wars” that were fought over the feminist critique of
contemporary mass-marketed pornography derailed important academic and activist
work. It is time to move on by reframing our thinking on pornography, especially
in light of the important changes that have occurred in both technology and pop
culture over the past two decades. In the world of the internet, cell phone
porn, Howard Stern and “Girls Gone Wild,” the central insights of the critical
feminist perspective are more important than ever. What was once called
soft-core pornography has become the norm in mainstream pop culture, while
hard-core porn has become increasingly accepted and increasingly misogynistic.
What do such economic and cultural shifts mean for feminist theory and
activism, and how can we rebuild a vibrant feminist movement that addresses the
harms of misogynist images that help define our culture, our visual landscape
and our sexuality? These issues will be addressed at a national conference on
March 23-25, 2007, at Wheelock College in Boston. Titled “Pornography and Pop
Culture: Reframing Theory, Rethinking Activism,” this conference will (1)
feature recent feminist theory and research on pornography, prostitution and
pop culture, and (2) provide space for collaborative discussion on how we can
prepare the ground for building a broad-based, energized and vibrant feminist
movement that can address the harms of pornographic images in the context of a
more general political and cultural crisis.
For a full schedule and registration details, please go to
http://www.wheelock.edu/ppc/
Gail Dines
Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies
Chair of American Studies
Wheelock College
35 Pilgrim Road
Boston, MA 02215
617-879-2336
gdines@wheelock.edu
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Robert Jensen
School of Journalism
1 University Station A1000
University of Texas
Austin, TX 78712-0113
rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu
office: (512) 471-1990
fax: (512) 471-7979
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/%7Erjensen/index.html
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Julian Real:
When this thing is LED by radical women of color, and by activists, not academics, I’ll be excited. Until then, I’ll stick with organizing around sexual and racial exploitation, sexist-racist violence, and racist-misogyny issues with radical activist women.
6 November 2006, 10:30 pmTom Wells:
Julian,
7 November 2006, 10:30 amJensen is about as much of an activist as you can get. I wouldn’t let the fact that he is also a true academic keep you from attending if you’re close to the location.
Jensen has written extensively about race, gender, US foreign policy, and pornography utilizing op-eds, web articles, and books.
Can’t comment on Professor Dines, but her last name is ringing soome faint bell which I haven’t tried to track down as of yet.
Tom
Elaina:
Wish I could go to this thing. I’m too poor to buy a plane ticket.
7 November 2006, 7:55 pmRequired:
It would be very beneficial if someone could record the talks at this conference and upload them somewhere.
8 November 2006, 3:41 amspook:
i emailed robert jensen about making an audio recording or transcript of the event. he said they hadn’t thought about it and he’d talk with the organizers.
8 November 2006, 3:52 pmFire Witch:
Maybe someone could videotape this conference and upload the footage to You Tube.
Reposting from You Tube would then give the discussions even more exposure.
8 November 2006, 9:11 pmJulian Real:
Hi Tom.
I am well aware that Jensen is an activist, and I am grateful for all the good work he and Gail Dines have done. (She has some excellent commentary in the “must-see” documentary, Mickey Mouse Monopoly, in case anyone reading this hasn’t seen that film yet on video: it is available for free through the national library’s interlibrary loan system.) And except for the ways white men typically eroticize ourselves through our writings, intentionally or not, to make ourselves sexually alluring to vulnerable women and young men at such conferences, where equality and consent are not interpersonally meaningful or socially real, I appreciate the book Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality, co-authored by Gail and Robert, along with Ann Russo.)
Let me be more specific: Robert is a white academic, who also does activism of various sorts. He is a spokesperson for the anti-pornography movement, and an articulate one. But no white men should be leaders in a movement about subjects which are most affecting women, especially women of color. His leadership should be aimed at decentralizing himself, and making space for radical women of color to speak, and, at least as importantly, LEAD this movement.
Robert does not carry in his being the knowledge that most needs to be known, about how women of color, worldwide, are affected by various systems of whitemale supremacist violence. His knowledge is limited simply by the political (structural) fact that he is a white man, and a personally privileged one at that–not just systemically privileged, that is to say.
What any conference on matters of racist-sexist violence need, is to be organized BY women of color, by radical women who are not white, who then invite in radical white woman, and, if at all necessary (which I find doubtful), radical white men. This is my opinion. And it is non-academic activists who have far more knowledge than academics do about what is going on in the real world. The U.S./European-derived Academy is a powerful liberal arm of whitemale supremacy. It cannot not be. That some folks who are radically clear about gender, if not race, make it in the Academy, that is an aberration, an exceptional phenomenon, and not one the Academy can support if it becomes more than aberrant: one gets a “Liberal Arts” degree from such places, after all.
I do not say this as some sort of outsider. I am a very privileged white man. I have had plenty of access to the Academy. I learned about it, not from it, about how dominant white/U.S. Liberalism functions, as well as dominant white/U.S. Conservatism–which is but one part of the whitemale Liberal spectrum, to muddy the brains and numb the hearts of students, so that, upon graduation, very few, very, very few, have any idea what is really happening in the world of suffering and endurance. White U.S. men do not suffer what women of color suffer, endure, and fight worldwide. Many white women suffer and endure as well, but not the same way as women of color. This statement is not intended to minimize the real suffering white women face, in many parts of the world.
It is the activist whose learning has happened outside the academy, which is to say, from living a real life in an unprotected world, fully aware of whitemale supremacy (because one’s life depends on knowing a lot about it) who ought to be the organizers of and key presenters at such conferences.
Those with white academic power and status have an obligation to decentralize their own organizational positions, and welcome into academic and non-academic spaces, usually controlled and maintained by white people of means, such real-world activists–who know about whitemale supremacy PRIMARILY from daily life, not PRIMARILY from books and research (and whitemale reflections on living a privileged life). If white academics are to organize a conference, then from day one, it should be radical women of color who are central in deciding the locale, the structure, the agenda, the acceptable and unacceptable forms of speech, etc., that will “be” the conference.
There is no real hope for radical change unless or until radical women of color are leading the way. This is what I have come to understand–in fact to learn from radical women of color, especially, in my life, from radical African-American women, quite clearly. And I say this as someone who has been in the white-dominated movement to end sexual, racist violence against women, for decades. But race is almost always marginalized or subsumed in white academic and activist discourse about “male supremacy” which has the effect of marginalizing radical women of color. All of this, and more, systematically practices and maintains white supremacy, intentionally or not. And, in this case, as in so many others, intentions don’t matter much, or at all.
As Pearl Cleage succinctly notes in Deals With The Devil and Other Reasons To Riot (page 28): “I am reminded of my grandmother’s admonition about what paves the road to hell.”
10 November 2006, 11:22 am