The Dubious Index: Moral Citizenship and West African Pornography
Presenter Title/Affiliation
University of California, Berkeley
Start Date
22-5-2021 1:30 PM
Event Name
Panel discussion
Panel Number
14
Panel Chair Name
David Peterson
Zoom URL to Join
https://ciis.zoom.us/j/92114068937
Zoom Meeting ID
921 1406 8937
Abstract
This paper explores interpretive frameworks for moral selfhood and national belonging that emerge through orientations to pornographic images. I focus on Senegalese sex workers’ interactions with Senegal’s first porn website. The site deploys nationality “tags” – Ivoirian, Senegalese, Nigerian – to index videos that purportedly feature actors of the corresponding nationality. My interlocutors are deeply invested in these indexical relationships. Within the Senegalese ethic of sutura (discretion or modesty), both moral personhood and national belonging depend on the projection and management of a boundary between “public” and “intimate” life. By conspicuously blending intimate and impersonal address, semiotic modalities classed as porno transgress sutura, and in turn, jeopardize performers’ claims to moral and national belonging. Nevertheless, some Senegalese women who participate in sex work weigh the economic opportunities of porn performance against its risks to moral citizenship. As they research online porn content, they look for both linguistic and bodily signifiers of nationality. In this paper, I interpret the website’s interplay of image and text alongside my interlocutors, exploring the semiotic practices that both naturalize nationalist interpretation frameworks for illicit images and also enregister linkages between particular classes of images and forms of (im)moral personhood. Next, I explore the instability of these interpretive frameworks. Some interlocutors contend that tags’ indexical linkages cannot be trusted; the site, they suggest, manipulates viewers through linguistic and visual cues that misrepresent some Senegalese actors as foreign. Within the rubric of sutura, non-citizens are indiscreet, more “hardcore,” and better clickbait. This paper explores the semiotic processes through which nationality-based interpretation frameworks for illicit images are naturalized and undermined. I argue that these interpretive practices undergird emerging forms of intimate citizenship.
Presenter Contact
jgfriend@berkeley.edu
The Dubious Index: Moral Citizenship and West African Pornography
This paper explores interpretive frameworks for moral selfhood and national belonging that emerge through orientations to pornographic images. I focus on Senegalese sex workers’ interactions with Senegal’s first porn website. The site deploys nationality “tags” – Ivoirian, Senegalese, Nigerian – to index videos that purportedly feature actors of the corresponding nationality. My interlocutors are deeply invested in these indexical relationships. Within the Senegalese ethic of sutura (discretion or modesty), both moral personhood and national belonging depend on the projection and management of a boundary between “public” and “intimate” life. By conspicuously blending intimate and impersonal address, semiotic modalities classed as porno transgress sutura, and in turn, jeopardize performers’ claims to moral and national belonging. Nevertheless, some Senegalese women who participate in sex work weigh the economic opportunities of porn performance against its risks to moral citizenship. As they research online porn content, they look for both linguistic and bodily signifiers of nationality. In this paper, I interpret the website’s interplay of image and text alongside my interlocutors, exploring the semiotic practices that both naturalize nationalist interpretation frameworks for illicit images and also enregister linkages between particular classes of images and forms of (im)moral personhood. Next, I explore the instability of these interpretive frameworks. Some interlocutors contend that tags’ indexical linkages cannot be trusted; the site, they suggest, manipulates viewers through linguistic and visual cues that misrepresent some Senegalese actors as foreign. Within the rubric of sutura, non-citizens are indiscreet, more “hardcore,” and better clickbait. This paper explores the semiotic processes through which nationality-based interpretation frameworks for illicit images are naturalized and undermined. I argue that these interpretive practices undergird emerging forms of intimate citizenship.
https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/lavlang/2021/saturday/24
