Pornography and Colonialism: systemic sexualised
misappropriations of the Racial Other
Course Tutor Professor Marcus Wood
This course confronts how the invention of Western pornography is intimately
connected to processes of colonial sexual domination and to the rise of racism.
For a period of more than five hundred years works of art focused on sexuality
produced in Asia, India, Africa and pre-Columbian America have been subjected
to ruthless and concerted processes of misconstruction, obscene misreading and
physical abuse by European artists, intellectuals and social scientists. This
imposition of pornographic ways of seeing and reading the art of the racial other
should be set against a related and equally sinister cultural agenda. The
processes of enslavement, exploitation and sexual depravity upon which Atlantic
Slavery and Imperial expansion were based have also been intimately linked
with the production of writing and art which have deliberately used
pornography to both disguise and justify the behaviour of the oppressor towards
the oppressed. Pornography has been cunningly used in order to racially
sexualise and objectify the bodies of its colonial victims. European colonialism
has worked hand in glove with a prolonged process whereby the erotic cultural
production of civilisations outside those of Europe and the West has been
perverted. Pornography entered the colonial market place in many forms.
Abolition atrocity literature, travel literature and anthropology were all
publishing spaces which could be used to smuggle racist pornography in below
the moral radar. Pornography as it is consumed and understood in Europe and
America today is, overwhelmingly, an invention made by the white Western Male
for the white Western Male. The invention of pornographic systems of
interpretation based in the imposition of a power centred male scopophilic gaze
is not, however, confined to the production of pornographic material based in
the sexualised abuse of power for elite white male readerships. It is above all the
ways in which Europeans have blinded themselves to the true values and
beauties of the erotic arts of other cultures that will be a primary focus of this
course.
Learning Outcomes
Students will emerge from this course with the following:
An understanding of the shifting definitions of pornography and the
pornographic.
An understanding of what differentiates pornography from sexology and
erotology.
An understanding of how pornography is interconnected with art, anthropology
and travel writing.
A knowledge of the definitional limits of the pornographic in the context of
Empire.
An understanding of how the development and racist discourse within European
art and culture relates to the evolution of pornography as an industry.
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1 Karma Sutra and Crazy Sexual Constructions of Indian Erotology
The first seminar will look at the European misunderstanding of Indian
erotology. We will consider Sir Richard Burton’s construction of the fictitious
Karma Shastra society in order to disseminate translations of the classic Hindu
texts of the Karma Sutra and the Ananga Ranga as mainstream Victorian porn.
We will also consider how tantric art an ancient religious hindu temple sculpture
have been similarly perverted by the Western pornographic obsession.
Key texts:
Kama Sutra of Vatsyamana, translated R. Burton, F. F. Arbuthnot (Jakhai
Publishing, Bangalore)
Ananga Ranga Stage of the Bodiless One, translated R. Burton F. F. Arbuthnot
(Medical Press of New York, 1964)
The Kama Sutra ed. Wendy Doninger (Oxford World’s Classic, 2009)
Francis Lesson, Kama Shilpa A Study of Indian Sculpture Depicting Love in Action
(D. B. Tarapervala and Sons, Bombay 1962).
Phillip S. Rawson, The Art of Tantra (Thames and Hudson, 1978)
Tantra (exhibition catalogue, Arts Council of Great Britain, 1971) and plates from
illustrated editions of the Kama Sutra and Indian love manuals.
2 ‘Dirty Arabs’ - mistaking Arab Erotology
Arab erotic and sexological texts have been subjected to processes of cultural
mistranslation analogous to Hindu texts. This week we will examine Burton’s
marketing of his mammoth translation of The Arabian Nights, and his translation
of the The Perfumed Garden. We will also consider the relation of Western
homosexual pornography in terms of its construction of Arab male same sex
relations.
Key Texts
Burton, Richard, The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night (17 vols. Kama
Shastra Society, 1895, multiple reprints)
Burton, Richard, The Perfumed Garden of Shaykh Nefzawi (Guild Publishing,
1988)
T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom A Triumph (Penguin Classic, 2009)
3 Pornographic Constructions of the White Slave
White Slaves and Harem scenarios in Western high and low art. We will be
looking at the European obsession with the harem, the eunuch and the odalisque
as sites for interracial pornography.
Key Texts
Selections from John Newton, Autobiographical Writings
Anon, The Lustful Turk (Wordsworth Erotic Classics, 1996).
Honour Hugh, Image of the Black in Western Art vol. 4 part 2 (Harvard, 2010)
4 Pro Slavery Pornography as Pseudo Historico-Ethnographics
The slave power in Europe and America had a good deal invested in exploiting
pornographic stereotypes disguised as sociology and history. We shall look at
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extracts from some extreme examples from the late eighteenth to the early
twentieth centuries.
Key texts
James Grainger, The Sugar Cane
Brian Edwards, A History of Jamaica
Thomas Dixon Junior, The Clansman, The Leopard’s Spots.
5 Trauma and Torture Propagandas and Anti Slavery Propagandas 1
Popular prints and poetry of the Abolition movement, and their relation to the
rise of Sadistic pornography.
Key texts:
Bartolomeo de las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (Penguin
Classic, 1990)
John Stedman, Account of a five years Expedition Against the Revolted Slaves of
Surinam
Satiric Prints by James Gillray, George Cruikshank, in Wood, Marcus, Slavery
Empathy and Pornography (Oxford University Press, 2003)
Wood, Marcus, Blind Memory Slavery and Visual Representation in England and
America (Manchester 2000).
6 Trauma Propagandas and Anti Slavery Propagandas 2
Freud recorded that the first sadistic sexual fantasies of several of his patients
happened whey they read flagellation scenes in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The book also
gave rise to an extraordinary volume of pornographic spin off publicity material.
We will be studying the text as sadomasochistic pornography.
Key Texts:
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin There are countless editions Norton
paperback is the best and is accompanied by a fine selection of critical materials.
Archie More or The White Slave
Wood, Marcus, Blind Memory Slavery and Visual Representation in England and
America (Manchester 2000) Chapter on Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
7 STUDY WEEK
8 Sexology, Ethnography and Pornography
In this seminar we will be thinking about how Social Anthropology and popular
travel literature have been exploited as spaces for the development of racist
pornography.
Malinowski, The Sexual Life of Savages (Routledge, 1932, there are numerous
modern reprints and print on demand edtions).
James Frasier, The Golden Bough a Study in Magic and Religion (Macmillan, 1965
and many reprints, abridged edition0
travel porn. From exotic post cards to National Geographic.
Alan Beukers, Exotic Potcards the Lure of Distant Lands (Thames and Hudson,
2007).
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9 Surrealism Symbolism and Racist Pornography
Much experimental early twentieth century French literature used exotic
colonial geographical settings, and conventions of travel literature in order to
develop violent racist hardcore pornographic fantasies.
Apollinaire, Guillaume, Eleven Thousand Rods (Solar Books, 2008)
Octave Mirbeau, The Torture Garden (Dedalus, 2004)
10 Plantation Pornographies and the Popular Market
We shall be considering how pornography infiltrated the market for popular
plantation fiction, and focus on the best sellers of Kyle Onstott. We shall also be
looking at the hugely successful Hollywood film adaptations of these works.
Key Texts
Onstott, Kyle, Mandingo (many trade paperback editions)
Onstott, Kyle, Drum (many trade paperback editions)
Mandingo, 1975, motion picture, dir. Richard Fleischer, screenplay Norman
Wexler, USA.
11 Slavery Torture Paradigms and Bondage Pornography
We shall be considering connections between the evolution of violent bondage
pornography and the methods of punishment and torture within Atlantic slavery
systems. We shall also be considering the power dynamic of the master slave
relationship in these comparative contexts.
De Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom
Pauline Reage, The Story of O
‘Conclusion’ to Wood, Marcus, Slavery Empathy and Pornography (Oxford
University Press, 2003)
12 Japanese Pornography and the Western Gaze
We shall be considering the Western construction of Japanese erotic texts from
to twentieth century hentai Manga.
Key Texts:
Shunga Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art (exhibition catalogue, British Museum
Publications, 2013)
Pilcher, Tim, Erotic Comics 2 A Graphic History from the Liberated 70s to the
Internet (Abrams 2008), especially chapter on Japanese Manga
The Honey Room
Bibliography
Key background texts
Apollinaire, Guillaume, Eleven Thousand Rods (Solar Books, 2008)
Dworkin, Andrea, Pornography: Men Possessing Women, London, Women’s Press,
1981.
Kappler, Susanne, The Pornography of Representation, University of Minnesota
Press, 1987.
Mudge, Bradford K., ed. When Flesh Becomes Word: An Anthology of early
eighteenth century Libertine Literature (Oxford University Press, 2004)
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O’Toole, Lawrence, Pornocopia, Porn Sex Technology and Desire (Serpent’s Tail,
1999)
Pilcher, Tim, Erotic Comics 2 A Graphic History from the Liberated 70s to the
Internet (Abrams 2008)
Richlin, Amy ed. Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (Oxford
University Press, 1992).
Shelton, Anthony, ed. Fetishism Visualising Power and Desire exhibition catalogue
(London, South Bank Centre and the Royal Pavilion Art Gallery and Museums,
Brighton, in association with Lund Humphries, 1995)
Suggested further reading
Halttunen, Karen, 'Humanitarianism and the Pornography of Pain in Anglo-American
Culture', American Historical Review, 100:2 (1995)
Hughes, Cassidy, Sex in Art: Pornography and Pleasure in the History of Art
(Publisher: Crescent Moon Publishing 2008)
Hunt, Lynn, ed., The Invention of Pornography Obscenity and the Origins of
Modernity, 1500-1800, (New York, Zone Books, 1993)
Hunt, Lynn, ed., Eroticism and the Body Politic, (Johns Hopkins University Press,
1991).
Krafft-Ebing, Richard von, Psychopathia Sexualis, London, Velvet Publications,
1996.
Krips, Henry, Fetish and Erotics of Culture, (Cornell University Press, 1999).
McClintock, Anne, Imperial Leather, Race Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial
Contest, (London and New York, Routledge, 1995).
Pearsall, Ronald, The Worm in the Bud: The World of Victorian Sexuality, (London,
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969).
Phillips, Kim M., Barry Reay (Eds.) Sexualities in History: A Reader (Routledge,
2001)
Steele, Valerie, Fetish Fashion Sex and Power, (New York, Oxford University Press,
1996).
Steinem, Gloria, ‘Erotica and Pornography: A Clear and Present Difference’, in Laura
Lederer (ed), Take Back the Night Women on Pornography, London, Bantam, 1982
Turner, James Grantham (Editor) Sexuality and Gender in Early Modern Europe:
Institutions, Texts, Images (Cambridge, 1993).
Wallis Marina, Martin Kemp eds., Seduced Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now
exhibition catalogue, (Merrell, London and New York)
Wood, Marcus, Slavery Empathy and Pornography (Oxford University Press,
2003)
Wood, Marcus, Blind Memory Slavery and Visual Representation in England and
America (Manchester 2000).