ON PORNOGRAPHY
207
V
The prominent characteristic of all products of the pornogra.phic
imagination is their energy and their absolutism.
The books generally called pornographic are books whose prima–
ry, exclusive and overriding preoccupation is with the depiction of
sexual "intentions" and "activities." One could also say "sexual "feel–
ings," except that the word seems redundant. For most of the per–
sonages deployed by the pornographic imagination, their "feelings" at
any given moment are either identical with their "behavior" or else
a preparatory phase, that of "intention," just about to break into
"behavior" unless physically thwarted. There is a small crude vocab–
ulary of feeling, all relating to the prospects of action. One feels
that one would like to act (lust). One feels that one would not like
to act (shame, fear). There are no gratuitous or nonfunctioning
feelings; no musings, whether speculative or imagistic, which are
irrelevant to the business at hand. Thus, the pornographic imagina–
tion inhabits a universe that is, however repetitive the incidents which
occur within it, incomparably economical. The strictest "possible
criterion of relevance applies: everything must somehow bear upon
the erotic situation.
The universe proposed by the pornographic imagination is a
total universe. It has the power to ingest and metamorphose" and
translate all concerns that are fed into it, reducing everything into
the one negotiable currency of the erotic imperative. All action is
conceived of as a set of sexual
exchanges.
Thus, the reason why
pornography refuses to make fixed distinctions between the sexes or
allow any kind of sexual preference or sexual taboo to endure can
be
explained "structurally." The bisexuality, the disregard for the
incest taboo and other similar features common to pornographic
narratives function to multiply the possibilities of exchange. Ideally,
it should be possible for everyone to have a sexual connection with
everyone else.
Of course the pornographic imagination is hardly the only
form of the imagination that proposes a total universe. Another ex–
ample is the type of imagination that has generated modern symbolic
logic. In the total universe proposed by the logician's imagination,
alI
statements can be broken down or chewed up to make it possible
to rerender them in the form of the logical language; those parts
of ordinary language that don't fit are simply lopped off. Certain of
