TStimonies: transforming pornographies into historiographies
Testimonies are held up as exemplar forms of live that have resisted or transcended the strong arm of domination.
George Yudice
What happens when porn becomes political discourse? Which mechanisms transform footage into spaces of resistance, belonging, and community? Who are the groups that have taken pornography to another level, registering it as their own site of struggle and social recognition? Once published, whatever path taken by a singular individual is transformed into paradigm inside – and out – the group they belong to. The technical reproducibility of modernity, aligned with an emergence of testimony as a genre of discourse, cast light on social actors who are now protagonist of their own history, albeit once silenced by normative social regulations such as alterity. In Postcolonial times, the Other is in me. And in this forged identity of subaltern and excluded groups, social and economic structures are being transformed.
In a society in which the post-utopic is distopic, marginalized groups must rely on alliances with mainstream and alternative media to attempt at the eradication of stereotypes and prejudices. Their condition as citizens is in itself the questioning of the process of construction of their own identities: to be accepted as social subject, the marginalized must promote a self-displacement that generates a radical change in society’s perspective in order to claim any rights on the construction of their identities. Thus, the creation of an autobiographical discourse must follow strict protocol to be regarded as contemporary testimonies of historic realities. However, when such realities have been written on the body, a shift in strategy must come into action: bodies are now modifiable, generating possibilities of new identity constructions. This new body, in constant mutation, now represents what Stuart Hall dubbed a “mobile celebration” (HALL, 1987): it refutes fixed, essential, permanent identities, being formed and transformed continuously in relation to the ways in which we are represented or challenged in the cultural systems that surround us.
Political contemporary identities are essentially constructed based on gender matters (KRAUSE, 1996). When gender is liquid, it becomes impossible to be contained in one or two receptacles, giving birth to new identities which are as fluid as they are interchangeable. Since a neoliberal politics aiming at inclusive societies would be a contradiction, as the differences which defy the universalization of consumption patterns constitute one of neoliberalism’s most dreaded nightmares, such identities pose as a threat to the maximization of profit, creating new groups of consumption directed at the ratification of such newborn identities. In other words, what Ruth Benedict foresaw becomes reality: the market depends on marginalized groups to form new area of consumption which, by their turn, will demand new products aimed at what they expect to be an inclusive social tool, at the same time that said products solidifies the marginal aspect of such groups and demands.
Nevertheless, some “outcast” groups have found in pornography a way through which they can challenge social stigmas, such as compulsory heterosexualization and binary gender dichotomy. Having operated for ages on the assumption of the existence of two genders and multiple sexualities, the porn industry now faces a plurality of genders being presented not as complementary or secondary identities, but as the core for a large amount of groups and consumers without any hint of the system of punishment and reward expected to be found in stereotypes which are reproduced and repeated. No longer does being “different” mean remaining unknown, secluded, made mute by normative expectations; nor is it to be celebrated as a “positive” mark of difference which, nonetheless, still keeps the different at bay . On the contrary, it is to be dealt with as if there was no difference at all. This identitarian normatization happens not as a result of mainstream oppression, but as a true form of inclusion: by eradicating differentiation strategies, it has become possible to promote “alternative” gender identifications inside the pornographic industry and market it not as different, but as same. The neoliberal dilemma, thus, is solved: these new fluid identities have found a loop hole in the system, and returned to society a product which society is unable to refute as marginal.
And it is under this light that works of artists such as Buck Angel, Nica Noelle’s TransRomantic studio, Loren Rex Cameron, to name a few, have found space inside the pornographic industry to exist without being excluded. Ironically, it was the suppression of the mark which distinguished one group from all others what originated a new space of resistance, inclusion, and valorization of such identities. Not only the porn industry has a lot to gain – and to learn – from the newcomers: society as a whole must understand that different means equal, after all.
- Published June 30, 2012