Grains of resonance – Affect, pornography and visual sensation

: Affect, pornography and visual sensation

: Paasonen Susanna

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

: 2013

: Somatechnics

: 2

: 3

: 2

: 351

: 368

: 18

: 2044-0146

In studies of pornography to date, feminist theorisations of looking have largely focused on issues of power, control and the gaze. Much, however, remains to be said of being impressed by images and sounds beyond conceptualisations of the gaze. This article investigates the possibilities of resonance as an analytical concept in and for addressing affective intensities in encounters with pornography and, with some reservations, with visual culture more generally. The article argues for the need of tactile concepts for tackling the force of images and our myriad ways of engaging with them – not as mere surfaces but as material entities that we are drawn to and impressed by. Rather than defining resonance as impersonal affective potentiality or force, the article addresses it as dynamic encounters between images, media technologies and the particular, historically layered sensoria of the viewing bodies. By doing so, the article explores both connections and differences between theorisations of affect and the methodological challenges that these distinctions pose.

Media and communications