My name is Matteo Stocchetti and I am research fellow at the Institute of Arcada University of Applied Science in Helsinki, Finland.
My interest in the conference is more on the “politics” than the “art” side. More specifically, I am interested in the politics of netporn as an arena in which sexuality is “problematised” (in the Foucault sense, cf. History of Sexuality)in societies. The focus is on issues of power in general and symbolic power in particular (this is Bourdieu, cf.Symbolic power). Since one of the major problem in this, as in other, domains of social studies is the lack of reliable empirical research, me and my colleagues at the Institute
try to address our topics of interest with a critical eye to methodological aspects (e.g. the operational definitions of the key concepts in our study).
My presentation at the conference will be on the effects of metaphors in affecting the social experiencing of netporn and “mediated” sexuality more broadly. An important assumption in this perspective is that netporn is very much what people make of it. Metaphors, however, are powerful tools to influence the collective notion of what is appropriate or inappropriate behaviour often beyond awareness and rationality. The representation of netporn fruition as “deviant”, “addictive”, “dangerous” or “emancipatory” behaviour depends very much on these and other communicative devices used in the narrativization of the collective experience of netporn.
This work is part of a larger project on metacultural intelligibility in broadcasting. At the conference I would expecially like to discuss the possibility for a comparative research on netporn fruition in non-Western cultures. Anybody interested?