Debating pornography: The symbolic dimensions

C. MacKinnon,Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1987), 146. M. Foucault,The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1 (London: Allen Lane, 1979). See also M. Cousins & C. Hussain,Michel Foucault, chs.8 and 9 (London: Macmillan, 1984). A. Soble,Pornography: Marxism, Feminis and the Future of Sexuality (New Havan and London: Yale University Press, 1986), 108. A. Carter,The Sadean Woman and the Ideology of Pornography (New York:Pantheon, 1978). S. Griffin,Pornography and Silence: Culture's Revenge against Nature (New York: Harper & Row, 1981). “The Wolfenden Report”,Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution (Cmnd.247, 1957). ‘Representation’ is admittedly a slightly inept name for this position given its critique of the specific meaning of representation as representation of the real. S. Kappeler,The Pornography of Representation (Cambridge: Polity, 1986), 103. K. Millett,Sexual Politics (London: Virago, 1977, first published 1970). See “Francis Biddle's Sister”, in C. MacKinnon,supra note 1, at 176., 146. P. Califia, “Feminism and Sadomasochism”,Heresies 3/4 (1981), 32. See T. Adorno, “Juliette or Enlightenment Morality”, inDialectic of Enlightenment (New York: Seabury Press, 1972). This is not to deny that feminists have used such designations themselves. See P. Rush, review of D. Lacombe inInternational Journal of the Sociology of Law 17 (1989), 103–108. See B. Brown, “A Feminist Interest in Pornography: Some Modest Proposals”,m/f 5/6 (1981), 5–17, where this argument is explored more fully. R. Rich, “Anti-Porn: Soft Issue, Hard World”, inThe Village Voice 20 (July 1982). See J. Donzelot,The Policing of Families (London: Hutchinson, 1979), ch.3; and K. Tribe,Land, Labour and Economic Discourse (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), ch.3. K. Millett,supra note 9, at 33. C. Gilligan,In a Different Voice (Cambridge, Mass, and London: Harvard University Press, 1982). J.R. Gusfield,Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement (Urbana, Ill: University of Illinois Press, 1972), 20. See, for example, N. Elias,The Civilising Process (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), Vol. I, and F. Braudel,Capitalism and Material Life, 1400–1800 (London: Weidenfeld, 1973). P. Devlin,The Enforcement of Morals (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1965); and H. L. A. Hart,Law, Liberty and Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963). An understanding of Devlin for which I have to thank my colleague Dr. John Cairns. D. N. MacCormick,Legal Right and Social Democracy (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 34. T. O'Hagan,The End of Law (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), 111–113. See G. Postema,Bentham and the Common Law Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), ch.1; and A.W.B. Simpson, “The Common Law and Legal Theory”, inOxford Essays in Jurisprudence, Second Series (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973), 77–99. J.R. Gusfield,supra note 19, at 11., See, for example, K. O'Donovan,Sexual Divisions in Law (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985). R. v. Sedley (1663) 1 Sid. 168. G. Robertson,Obscenity (London: Weidenfeld, 1979), 22. R. v. Curl (1727) 2 Stra. 788; 1 Barn. K.B. 29; 93 E.R. 849, which overturnedR. v. Read (1708) 11 Mod. Rep. 142; on the use ofSedley (see Robertson,ibid.,Obscenity (London: Weidenfeld, 1979), 22, 22–23). Chief Justice Cockburn inR. v. Hicklin (1868) L.R. 3 Q.B. at 371. A.W.B. Simpson, “Obscenity and the Law”, in M.A. Stewart, ed.,Law, Morality and Rights (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983), 228. Simpson argues that this has produced problems because it is inappropriate to build a legislative notion of the effects of acts as a class into the definition of a crime. Joel Feinberg dismisses any such attempt to understand feminist concerns in terms of defamation on the grounds that it would be impraticable and also that the specifics of defamation, as currently defined, cannot convincingly be attached to pornography, viz.: (1) intention (2) specifying ‘interest in the reputation’. He also raises doubts about the sense of group insult, asking rhetorically, “Are Jews defamed by the characterisation of Shylock? —Offense to Others (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 147–149. Apart from the fact that many would not accept the implied ‘no’ to the last question, his analysis strikes me as inappropriate to the issues raised here, first, because it is too dominated by the concerns of expediency in terms of finding a remedy and, second, because it is too focused on modern defamation law. Yet, to take a slightly different instance, seditious libel, Feinberg has himself outlined the considerable changes that have taken place in the definition of this crime — ‘Limits to the Free Expression of Opinion”, in J. Feinberg and H. Gross, eds.,Philosophy of Law (Encino and Belmont, California: Dickenson, 1975), 147–48. S. Hall in National Deviancy Conference (ed.),Permissiveness and Control: The Fate of the Sixties Legislation (London: Macmillan, 1980). Donzelot,supra note 16. at 231–32; see also P.Q. Hirst's account of Donzelot, “The Genesis of the Social”, inPolitics and Power 3 (1981), 77. The connections between feminism, objections to pornography and calls for the charge of blasphemous libel to be used against Rushdie have been explored in an interesting paper by Susan Mendus, “The Tigers of Wrath and the Horses of Instruction”, given as a seminar at Edinburgh University, 8 February 1990. J. Gallop,Feminism and Psychoanalysis: The Daughter's Seduction (London: Macmillan, 1982), 93.