"I am the sweeping tapestry of my sensory and bodily perceptions. I am their linguistic reduction and abstraction, delayed and deferred till they form a wholly different order, called my thought. I am, at the behest and prompting of all these, my memory which forms still another order. I am the emotions that hold them together. Webbing the four, and finally, I am the flux and filigree of desire around them all.
Perhaps, though, I am only the interpretation of all of them that I call reality. (Do I write with my pen? Does another daemon hold the pen and write with it?) Am I the sexual surge and ebb that cannot quite be covered by any of the above, but that impinge on all the others and often drown them? What of the bodily apparati in general, as they fall, pleasingly or painfully, into the net of myself? I am always an animal excess to the intellectual system that tries to construct me. I am always a conscious sensibility in excess of the animal construction that is I. And that is why I am another, why my identity is always other than I."
Samuel R. Delany Longer Views: Extended Essays. Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1996. p. 150
Friday, March 11, 2011
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
WILL THIS BE THE LAST IMAGE?
"Delay and Deferral: Body and Interface
[. . .]
It is important to note that a substantial difference between being a "member" of a pay porn site and simply surfing for porn on the Web; and regardless of the growth and gross income of porn sites, many (if not most) people who look at porn on-line are not members of pay sites. Thus, from the perspective of the average viewer, a primary experience of looking for, and eventually at, cyberporn is precisely one of frustration and waiting.[6] The premise of cyberporn is one of immediate gratification, yet the technological systems of the Internet, as well as the interfaces of cyberporn sites, necessitate delay: the delay of logging on, the delay of finding a site, the delay of "signing through" the initial contract, the delay of having the thumbnails load, and then, finally, the delay of waiting for the selected image, sequence of images, or video segment to appear. A high-speed connection may decrease this delay, but cyberporn constantly pushes the boundaries of bandwidth; as soon as the technology can immediately deliver full-frame images,
streaming video comes on offer, with slower load times. Even with a high-speed connection, there is still often delay on the side of the site delivering the content. The technologic of the computer forces these sequential acts of waiting and looking and waiting to become habit, and in so doing, it inscribes repetition and delay as pleasures of a different order. On some level, there is indeed a limit to what the viewer will willingly put up with in order to get what he or she wants, and as such, delay can become frustration. But Web surfing a telling term, offers its own pleasures, regardless of the frustration porn sites both understand and provoke; the structure of many porn sites seems to both direct and cater to the viewer's desires for delay and deferral by allowing the process of searching exist under the aegis of the goal of "getting what they want," but in excess of it. Specifically, the floods of images and the enormous range of selection on any given pay site are there for a reason , and the reason seems to be precisely this process.
One might see this delay as intensifying the pleasure of the eventual visibility of the object by causing the object to acquire an illusory inaccessibility. But it makes more sense to see the satisfaction as taking place in the deferral of satisfaction itself. Seen in this light, the goal exists in part to allow the subject, or a portion of the subject, to rationalize the pleasure of surfing. To imagine the goal, then, is to project into a moment of perfect satisfaction - and the obtaining of a perfect image, one completely adequate to the subject's desire. But in comparison to this imagined perfect image, every image will always remain inadequate, and so the "search" continues. Psychoanalysis generally, and Jacques Lacan's particular articulation of the impossibility of fulfilling one's desire [7],' articulates this point and its implications for subjectivity at some length. But common sense tells us that part of the pleasure in Web surfing is the pleasure of motion and movement either toward an unknown object or away from a boring desk job. The nearly perfect image,the one that comes closest to approximating one's desire - the group-sex shot with the not-too-busty redhead bent over in the front, perhaps still only offers momentary satisfaction; in fact, images close to one's desire can provoke anxiety because they might cause the end of Web surfing. The subject is faced with a choice-will this be the last image? Even if the viewer knows he or she is unlikely to find one better, he will often continue on, forgoing the pleasures of the known for the pleasures (often through frustration) of the unknown. The user constantly shifts on to new images-and in the process, new delays-in an endless slippage of desire in which part of the pleasure derives from habitual repetition and habitual deferral.[8]" (109-110)
from "Going On-line:Consuming Pornography in the Digital Era" by Zabet Patterson in Porn Studies. Ed Linda Williams. Durham, London: Duke University Press, 2004. 104-123
I totally agree with the author of this as to the common experience of pornography-viewing phenomenology, including the inevitable yet slick commercialization of psychoanalytical implications of fetish and pixelization of desire. I've never experienced the gritty adventurousness of porn theaters which inevitably failed as anything beyond secret, mostly befouled, homo-eroticism (or at least that's what chronicles tell me) and were the closest we came to the cultural pornographic guerrilla. I'd speak ill of the clean, insulating masturbatization of sexual imagery in home video screenings aimed solely at solitary gratification (which is how most people experience pornography and think about pornography). At its best, masturbation involves the ultimate fantasies of interpersonal freedom and "construction of . . . self"/ves[1], but prevailingly it's just that - purely physiological, manic tension release. Still, there is something wickedly subversive about the socially-revolutionary-satirical origins of pornography and how it has been turned into enslaving desire machine. Pornography, like all images, should feed appetites and prompt experimentation and this, unlike screen violence, does not presume imitative aggression, but in most cases imitative pleasure. It is in-between of those moments of deferral that should ascertain the productivity of our fantasies and sexual intrapsychic scripting. I don't see why women would desire pure eroticism and men pure gratified fantasy. I don't see why nobody would want communal rituals of sex images and pornographic shamanism.
[1]William Simon quoting Burke and Ferenczi, among others in Postmodern Sexualities. London and NY: Routledge, 1996. p.83
[. . .]
It is important to note that a substantial difference between being a "member" of a pay porn site and simply surfing for porn on the Web; and regardless of the growth and gross income of porn sites, many (if not most) people who look at porn on-line are not members of pay sites. Thus, from the perspective of the average viewer, a primary experience of looking for, and eventually at, cyberporn is precisely one of frustration and waiting.[6] The premise of cyberporn is one of immediate gratification, yet the technological systems of the Internet, as well as the interfaces of cyberporn sites, necessitate delay: the delay of logging on, the delay of finding a site, the delay of "signing through" the initial contract, the delay of having the thumbnails load, and then, finally, the delay of waiting for the selected image, sequence of images, or video segment to appear. A high-speed connection may decrease this delay, but cyberporn constantly pushes the boundaries of bandwidth; as soon as the technology can immediately deliver full-frame images,
streaming video comes on offer, with slower load times. Even with a high-speed connection, there is still often delay on the side of the site delivering the content. The technologic of the computer forces these sequential acts of waiting and looking and waiting to become habit, and in so doing, it inscribes repetition and delay as pleasures of a different order. On some level, there is indeed a limit to what the viewer will willingly put up with in order to get what he or she wants, and as such, delay can become frustration. But Web surfing a telling term, offers its own pleasures, regardless of the frustration porn sites both understand and provoke; the structure of many porn sites seems to both direct and cater to the viewer's desires for delay and deferral by allowing the process of searching exist under the aegis of the goal of "getting what they want," but in excess of it. Specifically, the floods of images and the enormous range of selection on any given pay site are there for a reason , and the reason seems to be precisely this process.
One might see this delay as intensifying the pleasure of the eventual visibility of the object by causing the object to acquire an illusory inaccessibility. But it makes more sense to see the satisfaction as taking place in the deferral of satisfaction itself. Seen in this light, the goal exists in part to allow the subject, or a portion of the subject, to rationalize the pleasure of surfing. To imagine the goal, then, is to project into a moment of perfect satisfaction - and the obtaining of a perfect image, one completely adequate to the subject's desire. But in comparison to this imagined perfect image, every image will always remain inadequate, and so the "search" continues. Psychoanalysis generally, and Jacques Lacan's particular articulation of the impossibility of fulfilling one's desire [7],' articulates this point and its implications for subjectivity at some length. But common sense tells us that part of the pleasure in Web surfing is the pleasure of motion and movement either toward an unknown object or away from a boring desk job. The nearly perfect image,the one that comes closest to approximating one's desire - the group-sex shot with the not-too-busty redhead bent over in the front, perhaps still only offers momentary satisfaction; in fact, images close to one's desire can provoke anxiety because they might cause the end of Web surfing. The subject is faced with a choice-will this be the last image? Even if the viewer knows he or she is unlikely to find one better, he will often continue on, forgoing the pleasures of the known for the pleasures (often through frustration) of the unknown. The user constantly shifts on to new images-and in the process, new delays-in an endless slippage of desire in which part of the pleasure derives from habitual repetition and habitual deferral.[8]" (109-110)
from "Going On-line:Consuming Pornography in the Digital Era" by Zabet Patterson in Porn Studies. Ed Linda Williams. Durham, London: Duke University Press, 2004. 104-123
I totally agree with the author of this as to the common experience of pornography-viewing phenomenology, including the inevitable yet slick commercialization of psychoanalytical implications of fetish and pixelization of desire. I've never experienced the gritty adventurousness of porn theaters which inevitably failed as anything beyond secret, mostly befouled, homo-eroticism (or at least that's what chronicles tell me) and were the closest we came to the cultural pornographic guerrilla. I'd speak ill of the clean, insulating masturbatization of sexual imagery in home video screenings aimed solely at solitary gratification (which is how most people experience pornography and think about pornography). At its best, masturbation involves the ultimate fantasies of interpersonal freedom and "construction of . . . self"/ves[1], but prevailingly it's just that - purely physiological, manic tension release. Still, there is something wickedly subversive about the socially-revolutionary-satirical origins of pornography and how it has been turned into enslaving desire machine. Pornography, like all images, should feed appetites and prompt experimentation and this, unlike screen violence, does not presume imitative aggression, but in most cases imitative pleasure. It is in-between of those moments of deferral that should ascertain the productivity of our fantasies and sexual intrapsychic scripting. I don't see why women would desire pure eroticism and men pure gratified fantasy. I don't see why nobody would want communal rituals of sex images and pornographic shamanism.
[1]William Simon quoting Burke and Ferenczi, among others in Postmodern Sexualities. London and NY: Routledge, 1996. p.83
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