It is uncertain to me from reading Foucault’s History of Sexuality what his stance is on pornography, and were he alive today, what his thoughts on cyberporn would be especially in view of various feminist stances on the subject. In Linda Williams essay, she describes the basis for feminist stances on porn as originating from the idea that porn is “a misogynist power in which the text dominates its women victims.” (14) That could reasonably be labelled as the theoretical underpinnings of radical denouncements of porn by women like Catherine MacKinnen and Andrea Dworkin whose views are summarized in the Time article as equating porn with a literal destructive violence on women. This idea seems to stem from Foucault – that texts or discourses create and enforce power relations rather than the other way around. However, it doesn’t seem to me that Foucault would be in favor, as these two women are, of making porn illegal or imposing severe restrictions. Williams cites Kendrick’s argument that such probitions only serve to make the prohibited object more desirable and fetishized and serve to instill the power of the censor. Would he be more in favor then of a more idealized Habermasian discussion of porn in which democratic ideals of rationality ruled? Or perhaps he would valorize porn as a site for individual pleasure that is freer from power relations than other scenarios. Something like the internet that (supposedly) makes the transaction of porn more private, in absence of surveillance systems designed to track which website you visit, I think would also be endorsed by Foucault as a healthy source of individual pleasure. However the internet specifically caters to a sort of “niche” marketing - sites are organized based on particularized fetishes or attractions – that leads to a sort of pathologizing of the sex act. It creates people that must identify as say foot fetishists, big breast-ophiles, pedophiles, voyeurs, etc, in order to access the sites that are most pleasing to them. And in this sense, by identifying with a medium that exploits the transgressive nature of its function in order to solicit increased pleasure, pornography could be said to further intrench subjects in Foucault’s idea of a scientia sexualis.
posted by Anonymous at 12:47 PM

The answer to some of Williams discussion about the impetus toward violence in pornography’s power-structure lies in Foucault’s theory of “an unrelenting system of confession.” The first of Foucault’s scientific views of ‘sexual confession,’ “the clinical codification of the inducement to speak,” sites interrogation as a ‘procedure of confession’(pg. 65). The classic movie-model of police interrogation seems relevant here, especially when a cop needs to manhandle a witness. The move from a receptive confessor to violent elicitor of confession is a step closer on the road of pornographic violence that dead-ends with snuff films. A cop roughing a witness is more exciting to watch than a cop who passively contemplates the testimony, it is simply more engaging to watch people engaged. The fact that the power in this relationship should rest in the elicitor is implicit in the example that Foucault gives of partisan returning to the Serbian front (pg. 60). By writing that the partisan’s “superiors asked him to write his life story,” Foucault understands the inferiority inherent in confession, regardless of how narcissistic the confession seems.

The violence in pornography can not be fully attributed to an excited interrogation unless the objective of the confession is clear. In watching a pornography it is clear that one is not looking for the same kind of sexual discourse that Foucault details in “The Repressive Hypothesis.” The sexual ‘truth’ at stake here seems to simply be that what is on screen is not sex being acted but an actual document of a sex act. The increasing importance of authenticity in pornography seems to be a natural progression of an audience that is less and less interested in suspending disbelief with every “reality” TV show. Just as the confessional booth is the crucial advent of “The Real World,” the confessional is of utmost importance in pornography – but where the booth is a verbal exercise, porn is about eliciting the non-verbal confession of noise and flesh. This is the confession of pleasure that the audience is looking to have verified on the screen. Violence arises as a means to the end coaxing the unfakeable.
Foucault is right when he says that “the veracity is… in the bond, the basic intimacy in discourse, between the one who speaks and what he is speaking about.” (pg. 62). Martin Amis would argue that the most important bond of veracity in current pornography is anal sex. In his 2001 article about the porn industry entitled “The Rough Trade” (link below) Amis asks a porn-tycoon why the so much emphasis is placed on anal sex in pornography his answer is, “what makes it in today’s market is reality,” and apparently the audience finds anal sex more real. It is the same reality that accounts for so much emphasis on the “cum shot” or the man ejaculating on a woman’s face. There is some sort of indisputable filmic document involved, some thing so scientifically certain that at some level it is a conclusive find in the field of scientia sexualis. Each of these confessed ejaculations have a similar gross truth to the archetypal moment of filmic gross truths, the last scene in John Water’s Pink Flamingoes where one can not dispute that Devine eats dog waste because there is no editing or ‘fancy camera trick.’ The audience for Pink Flamingoes saw the dog, saw the dog excreting, saw Devine pick it up and put it in her mouth, and saw her stick her tongue out for that most elementary form of verification.

Devine’s mouth is important, just as a woman who gives a blowjob on camera’s mouth is important, as the “speaking” from Foucault’s “one who speaks.” The honesty in this intimate discourse (perverted by the camera and for the camera) is a truth that is not at all erotic, or erotic only in the staunchness of the fact. And facts are often saddled with the conditionals “cold” and “hard” – two adjectives that seem more about death than about life.




Here is the Amis link (he is one of my favorite novelists)
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/story/0,6000,458058,00.html

posted by Anonymous at 11:25 AM

Whether or not the Internet is a print-based or broadcast-based medium as the Time article inquires, the government technically has no ability to undermine pornography on the web, let alone the ability to restrict the use of the famous seven dirty words. A case-in-point example would be the recent rulings regarding Napster. While its specific presence on the Internet has possibly been removed, Internet file sharing still pervades the sphere of high broadband networks (e.g., Morpheus, Limewire, etc.). Going after one “bad entity” will merely spur the exponential birth of others. Further, notions of anonymity on the Internet further complicate any attempts to stamp out societally defined injunctions.

As the CDA proceedings acknowledge, “the Internet is not a physical or tangible entity, but rather a giant network which interconnects innumerable smaller groups of linked computer networks. It is thus a network of networks.” (ACLU v. Reno, II) Information is not routed in a linear fashion, but through an infinite web of packet routes. Dead paths are merely rerouted so as to bypass them. Acts of censorship will be answered by catered alterations that detour any governmental restrictions. “As Internet pioneer John Gilmore famously put it, ‘The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.’” (Time)

The only way to successfully deal with social repercussions that Internet pornography might perpetuate or imply is to actively engage with the medium and structure to the threshold where its very definition collapses. As Foucault writes, “At issue is not a movement bent on pushing rude sex back into some obscure and inaccessible region, but on the contrary, a process that spreads it over the surface of things and bodies, arouses it, draws it out and bids it speak, implants it in reality and enjoins it to tell the truth…” (72) Internet censorship then, is not only futile, but harmful in provoking enlightening discourse, through its reliance on the margin (i.e., Foucault’s concept of the confession) – censorship generates interest to the censored subject/act.

This is not to say that pornography as it is represented is not sexist. Of course it is, but the question remains as to what exactly is sexist, as Williams purports is the anti-censorship feminist stance. Instead of repressing and suppressing pornography, it should be brought to the forefront, critically examined and scrutinized.

posted by Anonymous at 7:02 AM

Note: After reading this response over, I realize it might be construed as bigoted. I promise you it was not meant to be offensive to anyone in any capacity whatsoever. It is merely an observation.


From the “Pop Culture” section of “Exoticize This!”

“I like Cibo Matto a lot, though I think it's interesting how a one-at-a-time succession of "new" "ground-breaking" Japanese girl-bands are making the circuit of the short-attention-span-afflicted "indie" music fan collective brain (populated, duh, by annoying hipster white guys).”

I must reluctantly admit I was a bit put off by “Exocitize This!” I have to say. A number of things jumped out at me as I perused the site, particularly when viewed in the context of this week’s readings. First and foremost, upon arriving at the front page, I was immediately excluded, it seemed, by the excess of associations and identifications the owner, Mimi Nguyen, makes regarding herself and her site. Juxtaposed with critical and displeased comments about the overabundance of websites geared towards a heterosexual white male’s Asian fetish are enforcement’s of Nguyen’s status as three things: female, Asian, and queer.

Am I to feel excluded by this? I am neither a woman, nor am I Asian, nor would I identify (see, there I go too…) myself as queer. I am, in fact, a heterosexual white male. This furtive and exclusionary identification has succeeded in drawing me away from the contents of this site due in large part to my sexual preference, and perhaps more so, the sexual habits of the remainder of my demographic. Nguyen’s active alienation, no doubt, is in large part due to a number of sexual codes, norms, and prejudices, all of which are criticized by Foucault and Williams in their respective texts.

Foucault writes about the “persecution of the peripheral sexualities” (p. 42) and how this resulted in the definition of individuals based upon their sexual preferences and incongruences. Thus, as Williams paraphrases from Foucault, “scattered sexualities rigidified” and “pleasure thus discovered “fed back into the power that encircled it” (p. 35). Nguyen identifies as queer for this reason, as well as the deliberate reason to oppose and exclude the dominant heterosexual ideology present in her society. She goes so far as to attack heterosexuality in the context of it being a catalyst for the fetishization of her race.

In Williams’ account of the struggle between the anti-pornography feminist movement and the anti-censorship feminist movement, she argues the anti-pornography side. Transitively, through an anti-phallic sentiment, it would seem that these feminists believe that “if female sexuality were ever to get free of its patriarchal contaminations it would express no violence, would have no relations of power, and would produce no transgressive sexual fantasies” (p. 20) However, through the elimination of sexual deviances from an accepted catalogue in hopes to fight the objectification and abuse of women (and in Nguyen’s case, Asian women specifically), sexual norms are strengthened further.

What does this all mean? What does this have to do with Exoticize This? Where does Cibo Matto fit in?

In her opposition of Asian fetishism, Nguyen effectively argues against pornography depicting a modicum of violence/disrespect towards Asian women. In doing so, she ostracizes the entire community of heterosexual white males from her site, though only a portion enjoy pornography and an even smaller portion enjoy Asian pornography, which by the sexual standards of society. However, she herself is a lesbian, a practitioner of sexual “deviance” according to the same standards. Thus is the paradox of anti-pornographic feminism. One would argue that Nguyen is the quintessence of Williams’ argument, in as much as she demonstrates to a tee, the abstracts of the anti-pornography feminist movement.

As an afterthought, it’s interesting to note that Nguyen respects the work of porn star Asia Carrera, so obviously not all Asian pornography is included in what she finds offensive.

And as for Cibo Matto, they do a great cover of Nirvana’s “About a Girl”, the heterosexual white male band of the 1990’s. Nguyen should do her homework before she dictates who is allowed to listen to what bands.

Dave
posted by Anonymous at 2:57 AM

Ellen

Foucault:
I am really intrigued by Foucault’s idea that by creating multiple discourses/ institutions with which to contain sex, desire, and confessions that simultaneously compels society to begin, "speaking of it ad infinitum." (35) The need to qualify and quantify sexual habits as legitimate, aberrant, or even outside the species seems not only to belong to a medical, civil, or religious discourse, but rather in constructed intersections among them. Also, the authority with which one can speak about sex becomes a "qualified" position and the material of discussion is highly "coded contents." (29) To me, qualifying yourself as a proper site for talking about sex could produce a slew of possible individuals that disseminate arbitrary advice and knowledge about sex. Seriously, a nun leading a sex ed class? Or a straight person solely trying to lead a group of homosexuals in a discussion about gay sex?
Foucault’s thoughts on the modification of desire itself and also the techniques of power that become involved with sex tie in with some questions I have about pornography. As a feminist who is not pro-censorship, I have a hard time talking about pornography. On the one hand, I feel like erotica is a positive part of sexuality and sexual relationships. I believe strongly in the first amendment and an adult’s right to consume pornography. On the other hand, I often feel representations of men and women can be debasing, violent, and dangerous at times. Though no conclusive studies have proven that pornography can lead to violence against women, many pornographic situations depict the routine degradation of women. Since masturbation often coincides with the viewing of porn, does not ejaculation and the pleasure associated with these images almost train the masturbating party to be turned on by violence? Does porn sometimes teach men and women that exotification is all right? Is the message that rape is something the victim enjoys conveyed through some films? I have a hard time discussing these issues calmly which is a problem for analytically approaching pornography and questions of consumption.
Additionally, the question that plagues obscenity legislation: who am I decide what is offensive? As Williams says, "I know it when I see it…" is not a sufficient bar of measurement. One person’s pornography is another’s erotica. The standard eludes me and many others.
In all this, I have to return to Foucault’s notion that society collectively has made sex a sin. Have we sinned against sex in doing so? Hmmm.
Sorry, it's a minute or so late...couldn't remember my username! Goo!
posted by Anonymous at 12:02 AM

So it seems to me that all these journalists and psychologists who continue to interview and question Jenni and her motives are all looking at the wrong side of the IP connection. All I could really think about while reading the Burgin piece was ‘what about the people who log onto this site on a regular basis?’ I think it’s very interesting to analyze Jenni’s exhibitionistic tendencies through Freudian or Lacanian methods, but let’s take a serious look at the voyeuristic side of the equation (which seems to have been left out for the most part). Why do people have the compulsion to watch these predominantly uninteresting snapshots of a random woman’s daily life? I would bet that a common answer to that question would be something to the effect of ‘because it’s real.’ That statement immediately links in my mind to the current obsession with reality TV: i.e. Survivor, Fear Factor, Temptation Island, etc. It seems very possible that due to the overwhelming amount of fictional, character-based worlds we encounter through modern media, a “real”-world situation to peek in on would be all the more exciting (after all, a car crash on the news is infinitely more emotive than one in a movie theatre). And hence, the reality show grabs the audience. But we smart, aloof students of media automatically say, bah- these things aren’t real, they’re mediated and over-produced far past the bounds of anything even resembling reality. The Jennicam is different, the Jennicam is really real. So, reality can be boring sometimes- at least it’s not mediated by a studio or a director; the things that happen are raw and unscripted; Jenni is unpredictable; Jenni isn’t a star; Jenni is a person like you and me. Do these things explain the attraction? More importantly, are they even true?
Television works off some of the same basic principles of film theory. The spectator is placed in a position of power. That position is one of supposed omniscience and omnipotence. But the glance of TV is opposed to the gaze of the film, and as such the power balance is skewed a bit. The spectator is much more aware of his given environment, and as such is much more prone to distraction—a phenomenon reflected in the televisual form. The internet spectator follows the line of the television spectator more closely than that of the filmic. The added element of interactivity with the medium changes this balance once again, but ads a type of spectator mediation unseen in either film or TV. It is that mediation which sets the Jennicam apart from people-watching in central park. Jenni still is in a mediated reality—a reality which is mediated by you. You can maximize and minimize that little window to your heart’s content. You can choose your commercial breaks and surf as many channels as you want. The control of the viewing situation on the internet is virtually limitless. Our obsession is not with “the real.” It is with being able to turn on and off “the real” at our own discretion. You can open and close a book whenever you want in order to visit a fictional realm. Jennicam allows us to open and close a window to a supposed reality. Who wants to control something that isn’t even real?
-Jamie

posted by Anonymous at 11:22 PM

Exposure Responses
24 February 2002
Shawn E Greenlee

Foucault’s closing statement in “The Perverse Implantation” (p.49 History Of Sexuality), “It is said that no society has been more prudish; never have the agencies of power taken such care to feign ignorance of the thing they prohibited, as they were determined to have nothing to do with it. But it is the opposite that has become apparent, at least after a general review of the facts: never have there existed more centers of power; never more attention manifested and verbalized; never more circular contacts and linkages; never more sites where the intensity of pleasures and the persistency of power catch hold, only to spread elsewhere.” In this statement, there seems to be a resonance with the Communications Decency Act proceedings and a parallel that can be drawn directly to the Internet using Foucault’s description…”never more sites where the intensity of pleasures and the persistency of power catch hold, only to spread elsewhere.” In the CDA proceedings, the Internet is described as a network of networks that is a “decentralized, global medium of communications”. It is stated that the “receiver can and does become the content provider, and vice-versa” because when one enters cyberspace, they become a part of the dialogue that is the Internet. By entering cyberspace, one becomes the target. The Time magazine article clearly states there is an assumption that children will be subjected to pornographic images when they go online. But is this notion of subjection in contrast to the receiver-as-content -provider? Mary Veed, mother of three young boys states in the Time article that “They could bombarded with X-rated porn, and I wouldn’t have any idea.” Does Mary Veed acknowledge that her boys may be seeking the porn, and that by virtue of the fact that when they enter cyberspace, they become the content providers because they are the viewers/listeners/readers? She acknowledges the fact that the porn is prevalent, therefore is she feigning ignorance about her sons’ desires and curiosities with regard to sex? The CDA proceedings would have us understand that we subject ourselves to content on the Internet, and thus we can implement means to prevent our ‘accidental’ discovery of the indecent through censoring software or by limiting access to the medium in the first place. (Parents should also monitor what their children watch on TV, yes?) Parental Surveillance.

On the topic of marketing through search engines: In the toys search, a link to a sex shop appeared. To what extent are the marketing forces at work seeking to hit the ‘unintended targets’ (children or any children’s toy shopper) and to encourage/influence their discovery/rediscovery of sexuality, and thus broaden their customer-base in the present or create consumers for the future?


posted by Anonymous at 10:50 PM

I did all of the searches that we were supposed to do for this week’s screening, but I also got a little addicted to the whole process and seeing what different kinds of permutations would find. In general, I was surprised, perhaps because the reading for this week focused so heavily on sex, sexuality and internet pornography, at how little porn these searches produced. True, there was a decent amount of it, and true, I did get caught in the labyrinth more than a few times, but many of the searches produced what I thought were relatively innocuous, often informational or even empowering sites. The search for women + black, for example, produced, as its first result, a link to distinguishedwomen.com. The search for Asian + women produced more pornography, but generally more sites that played off of the exotification fantasy of online personal services and mail order brides. When I continued and did searches for Asian + men and black + men, I actually found more hard-core pornography. For instance, women + black produced two links to porn sites on the first response page, while men + black produced three. What I found most intriguing was that searches for both white + women and white + men produced no racist hate-pages, nor did it call up any wonderbread porn sites. The majority of links in these searches were for consumer goods like a men’s white t-shirt or women’s white ruffled socks. This isn’t exactly a scientific sampling, but it’s a little less extreme than the statistic given in the Time article that 83.5 % of digitized images stored on Usenet newsgroups are pornographic.

I mention all of that, in order to return to the kind of question that I asked last week: the discussion in both Williams’s and Foucualt fundamentally tied knowledge to the production of power. They both discussed this in relation to knowledge surrounding sex and sexuality, but that is scarcely the focus of all or even the majority of knowledge, even on the internet despite what popular stereotypes of it might suggest. The ideal of knowledge as liberating Enlightenment is clearly still with us, evidenced by the manifold references to free-speech as the cornerstone of the nation’s governmental and social systems found in the three judge’s rulings in the ACLU v. Reno case. Judge Dalzell quotes from Turner Broadcasting Sys, v. FCC that “our political system and cultural life rests upon this ideal,” and it is called “the keystone, the bulwark, the very heart of our democracy” by Judge Buckwalter. But where exactly does the line exist, if in fact it exists at all, that separates the beneficial public discourse that these judges celebrate from the reification of disciplinary power that keeps people subjugated?

Jennifer Ringley – the jennicam woman – tries to argue implicitly that the knowledge produced by seeing, by knowing, does not impact the way she lives her life. “Just because people can see me doesn’t mean it affects me” (Burgin, 78). Burgin tries to argue that her “exhibitionism” is a kind of coping mechanism for a young woman about to embark on her own life who wants public approbation of her life, but I think that it works differently than this: on her site, she has a pop-up menu that tells about herself, her friends and family that is labeled “the cast,” and her apartment is described as “the set.” Likewise, many of the pictures of Jenni and others in her apartment clearly seem staged, as she admits some of them are. “I occaisionally do ‘shows’” (Burgin, 78). There’s a shot of her belly-button ring that looks kind of fresh, like it’s still fighting infection, as though Jenni is telling us about big events in her life. Another shot has Jenni cupping her hands over her breasts, which, if the camera updates without any warning, as Burgin’s article tells us, is either extremely coincidental, or she stayed there for several minutes to ensure the right picture. The links to some of Jenni’s friends’ webcam pages make this performance even more obvious. Carlazone has multiple pictures of Carla mugging for the camera, and Carla seems to enjoy trading out props to be in front of the camera at any given time. Anacam actually has Ana explicitly performing art for the camera – one shot photographs a Hot Wheels car driving into her vagina. All of this performance, making life itself into a text, reminded me of Judith Butler’s ideas about performative gender. According to Butler, gender constructions can be undermined through emphasized performance – drag, for instance. Similarly, Jenni and her friends’ “performance” at life, might also work to challenge the basic power of knowledge that Foucault discusses because it understands all life as performance. The power that knowing produces is incomplete because what is known is a priori acknowledged as a text, a construction that is specifically untrue. If lies are all that are known, do they still produce the same disciplinary power as knowing “the truth”?

posted by Anonymous at 10:07 PM

Foucault – History of Sexuality

In History of Sexuality, Foucault relies heavily (as he himself acknowledges) on the Christian tradition and practice of confession. His scientia sexualis pivots on the idea of confession and truth, and the transformation of sex into discourse.

“For us, it is in the confession that truth and sex are joined, through the obligatory and exhaustive expression of an individual secret. But this time it is truth that serves as a medium for sex and its manifestations.” – p. 61

However, this stance depends on the formation of an “us” and an “other,” that is, “the societies – and they are numerous: China, Japan, India, Rome, the Arabo-Moslem societies – which endowed themselves with an ars erotica.” In ars erotica, he explains, it is not pleasure through knowledge, but knowledge through pleasure (because pleasure in this tradition is primarily in relation to and for the sake of itself). Foucault positions this “procedure” as that which Western tradition has stemmed away from (“…breaking with the traditions of the ars erotica, our society…” 67) through the construction of confession, and thus ars erotica assumes an originality or a primitiveness in the sense that it comes before confession and discourse.

This immediately forms (or depends on) the binary we/them, West/East (or rather, Christian/non-Christian? pagan?). It reinforces the idea of the exotic East, the idea of a primal, carnal sensuality which is somehow characteristic of these other societies, and it almost disregards Western non-Christian cultures. Because this institutional discourse (confession) doesn’t exist in other societies, truth is produced through experience of pleasure, not vice versa. (What then, of colonialism and the spread of the Christian church via missionaries?) This idea of the exotic East, according to my google searches, still holds true on the Internet, as the majority of links for “asian woman” are dating services, mail-order brides, and porn sites. In trying to unthink or reevaluate sex and power relations in “our” society, Foucault sets up a binary which further complicates them (not in a cause-effect relationship, but in his writings reflect these complications).

posted by Anonymous at 6:48 PM

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Feb 24, 2002 comments

The Communications Deceny Act decision-

Ok, so this is clearly an exercise of Foucault’s “juridico-discursive” power. I was first struck by the discursive nature of the “Finding of Facts,” which attempted to exactly describe the Internet, in ways that sometimes seemed comical in their simplicity. The methods of communication are exactly identified. Each section is numbered, collecting each group of sentences into cite-able wholes. The document speaks of the need to “apprehend the legal questions” (II. Finding of Facts). Perhaps the use of “apprehend” is legal protocol, but it reveals the basic paradigm of the court’s action: to catch, seize, and isolate the essential “questions” that are at stake in that case, that ARE the case. The judges proceed to decide in favor of the plaintiffs by constantly comparing the CDA’s “indecency” and “patently offensive” with previous laws and court precedents-- the Law as the ultimately measure of all new laws.

The most fundamental Law that the justices take into consideration is the First Amendment. Given William’s conception of (hard-core) pornography as “the speaking sex”, this is certainly the proper amendment to apply. To the Government, “indecent” on-line material (not just classic pornography) is speaking to the wrong people: children. I am reminded of the history of onanism that Foucault discusses. Is the concern that children will see “indecency” just another “implantation of perversions”, a new discourse on sexuality? I think what Williams says about the Meese Commission report is applicable here, the point of the CDA (and perhaps onanism too) is “to assert sexual norms under the guise of protecting pornography’s victims” (19).” So the CDA acts to solidify a sexuality that is limited to adults and “decent” (?)

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I also can’t resists pointing out the humorous/significant use of the term “facial” to describe the plaintiffs’challenge and the parallel to the “facial” of pornography (ejaculation on the face). “A law that regulates the content of speech is facially invalid if it does not pass the “most exacting scrutiny” that we have described above, or if it would “penalize a substantial amount of speech that is constitutionally protected” (Dalzell, Introduction). If the face of a law, under close inspection, does not allow speech, it is facially invalid. If the face of a woman, under close “inspection” by a penis (and the camera), allows that penis to “speak”, it is a facial. Hmmmm...

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Another tidbit I noticed was the claim by the Government that search engines can return links to porn sites accidentally (Fact 84). The “search engine” is an interesting construct. The latest and greatest tool for the will to knowledge, an “engine” that produces knowledge through its functioning. The Web will confess its secrets to anyone who cares to ask. And the danger with porn is that it may slip into a confession unintentionally; Google may “overconfess”. Really, it always overconfesses, providing far more results than are needed. In some way, this “parapraxis” of the search engine reveals what is going on in the “subconscious” of the web. Except that the search engine does not know which “meaning” the user was looking for; maybe he was looking for porn when he asked about “toys”.

This reveals our inability to know precisely what we are “asking” a search engine to find us (though it is also generally true that we can’t “know what we are asking”). Google organizes its search based on connectivity (sites are hierarchized as “authorities” by the number of other sites that link to them, etc) (at least for now, apparently they are going to start taking money to increase ranking, which sucks. though I bet another un-biased service will arise soon). Any search is equivalent to asking the question “Which web sites that contain this word are most frequently referenced by other web sites?” or “What sites define the most common usage of this search query?” I was encouraged that I found no pornography on the first results page for all of the suggested searches on the syllabus. This is a testimony to the expansion/deepening of the “semantics” of the Internet. The meaning of “woman” is now approximately:
WOMAN MOTORIST car reviews, trucks, maintenance, safety, ...
Working Mother Magazine
WOMAN - die feministische Seite des Internet
Wired Woman Society
Journeywoman - An Online Travel Magazine Just For Women
Military Woman Home Page

according to Google. This is an example of how power has escaped the juridico-discursive mold and now operates more diffusely. The “definition” of a woman is determined by the total content of the Web, which no one authority can control. Our modern woman appears to be a motorist, a working mother, a German feminist, wired, travelling and in the military. Multiple individual points of power and resistance (individual websites and documents, in this case) create the overall strategic effects of power “immanent in force relationships.” (Foucault, 97). Ideological apparatuses can promote interpretations which many people may accept and promulgate on the Internet, but power is still built from below (Foucault, 94).

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posted by Anonymous at 2:24 PM