The Vernacular of Pornography Part II: Our Pornographic Lives

Nota Bene: Before reading on, please click here to read “Part I: the Metaphysics of Porn“

This attitude of preferring the simulation of potentiality over the tactile heft of actuality has seeped into the world of things, and also the world of persons, where bodies are now caught up in the process of the abstracting power of the possible. In The Coming of the Body, the French essayist and consultant Herve Juvin spoke of the production of the endless variety of options that the human body can become as a result of the proliferation of medical technologies from cosmetics to accessories to surgical procedures. Magazines, meanwhile, showcase myriad things that bodies may become, through the bodies of the rich and famous, or more accurately, airbrushed versions of them. With the production of new products and procedures come new lines of possibility – possible choices, possible products, possible lifestyles – a kind of postmodern immortality worked onto the body. While we may like to think that this kind of immortality is a celebration of the body, it really is a celebration of the infinitely malleable body, where actual bodies are turned into the abstract potentialities, generated by minds that are in turn fed by computer generated images.  

Actual bodies themselves, meanwhile…

View full article on Truth and Love by Courage International