Wired Fingers, Sticky Keyboards: Techno-Embodiment in Online Pornography

Abstract

In my thesis “Wired Fingers, Sticky Keyboards: Techno-Embodiment in Online Pornography” I present an analysis of embodiment in online pornography by weaving together pornography studies, media theories of body-technology relation and posthumanist thought. Taking a step back from the analysis of the content of pornography and focusing on media-specific practices around it, I claim that phenomenon of online pornography invites to re-think the pro/anti and speech/discourse versus practice debates in pornography studies. Through the lens of phenomenological approaches to new media and a theoretical framework of "dispositif", I look at the free pornographic tube-websites and argue that through the complex intertwining of bodies and technologies in the consumption of online pornography, embodiment gets re-defined as techno-embodiment. Finally, I ask what kind of implications does this have to the kinds of modes of power that operate in the realm of online pornography, and what kind of spaces of constraint and potential do they open up for consumers and producers.