Spring Break
Relocating Pornography Post-9/11
by Rob Baum
Issue date: 12/1/08 Section: Fall 2008
Relocating
Pornography
Post-9/11
rob baum has taught in Israel, New Zealand and Australia since completing a post-doctorate on gender in the Middle-East. Research publications include Female Absence: Women, Theatre and Other Metaphors (Lang 2003) and journal articles on Palestinian ritual, dance, race/gender issues and identity politics. Her current research concerns
trauma and embodiment. Rob works as a dance/movement therapist, performs improvisational
movement and circus, and directs a theatre for disabled practitioners. She is a poet and a playwright whose roles feature strong roles for women. She currently teaches at Monash University in Victoria, Australia
What would be the value in knowing if one only acquired a certain degree of knowledgeableness rather than the knower's straying afield of oneself...?
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality
inWays of Seeing, John Berger demonstrates how knowledge external
to the art object shapes its reading, and that such acts of interpretation occur subliminally.1 Berger is concerned with awareness of the phenomenological process of seeing, with acknowledgement of the activities and choices that frame viewing, including
or especially the viewing of art objects. I wish to take up the connection between photographs and a particular genus of viewing that seemingly redefines the photograph
itself. I shall also address how viewing is inflected by post-9/11 fears about the future of "the world" (in terms of a predominantly white Western capitalist economy) and the loss of national pride, incurred in part by the reaction to the West's "War on Terror." I intend to critique strategies of viewing, or scopophilia, rather than the proclaimed
"war" or the nature or continuance of global terrorism, but choose to interrogate
images that should already be well known to most readers.
However varied the composition, location and intent of photographs, viewers experience similar stimuli of interest and arousal-a claim based upon physiological rather than psychological processes: the act of seeing requires specific optical and nervous
Pornography
Post-9/11
rob baum has taught in Israel, New Zealand and Australia since completing a post-doctorate on gender in the Middle-East. Research publications include Female Absence: Women, Theatre and Other Metaphors (Lang 2003) and journal articles on Palestinian ritual, dance, race/gender issues and identity politics. Her current research concerns
trauma and embodiment. Rob works as a dance/movement therapist, performs improvisational
movement and circus, and directs a theatre for disabled practitioners. She is a poet and a playwright whose roles feature strong roles for women. She currently teaches at Monash University in Victoria, Australia
What would be the value in knowing if one only acquired a certain degree of knowledgeableness rather than the knower's straying afield of oneself...?
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality
inWays of Seeing, John Berger demonstrates how knowledge external
to the art object shapes its reading, and that such acts of interpretation occur subliminally.1 Berger is concerned with awareness of the phenomenological process of seeing, with acknowledgement of the activities and choices that frame viewing, including
or especially the viewing of art objects. I wish to take up the connection between photographs and a particular genus of viewing that seemingly redefines the photograph
itself. I shall also address how viewing is inflected by post-9/11 fears about the future of "the world" (in terms of a predominantly white Western capitalist economy) and the loss of national pride, incurred in part by the reaction to the West's "War on Terror." I intend to critique strategies of viewing, or scopophilia, rather than the proclaimed
"war" or the nature or continuance of global terrorism, but choose to interrogate
images that should already be well known to most readers.
However varied the composition, location and intent of photographs, viewers experience similar stimuli of interest and arousal-a claim based upon physiological rather than psychological processes: the act of seeing requires specific optical and nervous
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
custom writing
posted 3/14/10 @ 7:44 PM EST
interesting article, but there could be two different points on that topic
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