I’m doing a paper entitled ‘You Can Do More, You Can Actually Change the Productivity’: Affective Labour in Queer/ Feminist Porn Cultures, on Friday 11 February, at 4.45-6.15PM  in the panel ‘Performing an Erotic Room G4′ at the Revolting: Bodies, Politics & Genders, 18th Annual Lesbian Lives Conference Brighton 11-12 February 2011

Abstract:

‘You can do more, you can actually change the productivity’: Affective labour in queer/ feminist porn cultures.

This paper examines emerging digital visual cultures which generate and distribute queer/ feminist pornographic material. Using examples from FTM, gender-queer and online feminist pornography, it illustrates how the re-organisation of capitalist modes of production has moved to the site of intimacy. At the same time, the circulation of content and the quest for pleasure can be thought as a form of entitlement and belonging.

The analysis uses the framework of affective labour in order to understand what is being capitalised in queer/ feminist porn cultures, and to speculate their political potential. In particular, it focuses on discourses of ‘real bodies’, processes of self-surveillance and the production of commodifiable bodies and connections. The paper argues that, far from being liberatory spaces or gift economies, visual cultures of queer/ feminist porn are part of new digital economies which generate corporate profit from desire, sociability and life itself.

Keywords: affective labour, digital cultures, postporn, queer/ feminism

The 2011 Lesbian Lives Conference will be hosted by the University of Brighton LGBT and Queer Life Research Hub, in conjunction with the Women’s Studies Centre, University College Dublin.

UPDATE: My article entitled ‘Remediating queer politics in online porn: Brand(ed) new sexualities and real bodies’, will be published in the special issue ‘Revolting Bodies: Desiring Lesbians’, in the Journal of Lesbian Studies (Forthcoming).