Cyberporn,Sexuality,and the Net Apparatus

Abstract

This article presents theoretical considerations based on cultural analysis approaches to studying pornography and sexuality as a means of starting to suggest new areas of cyberporn research. By bringing to the forefront concepts of how subjectivity and sexuality are produced within the computer/internet apparatus, I hope to diversify the focus in cyberporn research away from social science approaches and pre-Foucauldian assumptions of the subject that obscure understandings of new media and cyberporn use. Through a summary of visual culture studies and reception studies of pornography, I argue that cyberporn must be understood as contingent within the encoding and decoding processes and discourses of sexuality in which it is produced and consumed. My focus here is the home office/terminal as the site of reception/cyberporn use. While there is potential for a great variety of critical cultural approaches to the study of new media, pornography, and sexuality, I end with specific suggestions for researching cyberporn reception.