Obscenity for Queer Interventions
An Expedition to the Grim World of Censorship in Visual Arts
“Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can’t vent any anger against them. I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere, in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence. They were only taught to look one way when many ways exist.”
From ancient times in Greece, Rome, China, Egypt, and Ottoman Empire to Soviet Russia, Hitler’s Germany, Mao’s Cultural Revolution, to Iran, to the United Kingdom, to Turkey, to the United States, to Vietnam and to Japan, censorship, in many times and places is applied as a form of social, political control, as moments of oppression, conditioning and silencing in order to protect and preserve the functioning system of values by means of regulating, affirming, excluding, reiterating, appropriating and disciplining the mechanisms of the hegemonic political, cultural, sexual, and economic regimes. For instance, Socrates’ execution in 399 BC for “refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state,” and “corrupting the youth” perhaps has been one of the earliest and known silencing cases. George Anastaplo, a professor of Law, Philosophy and Political Science who notes the earliest application of ‘censor’ in Rome 443 BC when the office of ‘censor’ is established to conduct the census, to regulate the morals of citizens (Encyclopædia Britannica, 2017). From this etymological point of view, the act of censor was applied singlehandedly by the state and its apparatus not only as an operational power to protect the dominant moral values, but also as a constitutive power to shape ideal citizens, and as a regulating force of the public and private spheres. Then in a very broad term, the act of censor as an ideological apparatus is imposed by the state aims to protect, and sustain and preserve the dominant codes of thought, behavior, and moral values, thus, maintaining the legitimacy of its power, as well as it aims to determine the boundaries of private and public spheres in which citizens can act, perform and social conduct takes place.
State and its agencies, however, around the 19th century lost its position as the only exerciser of the power of act, of control, and as the regulator of the political, social, and private spheres. The notion of power is laid out in more complex terms as interlacing systems of domination and resistance. Whereas conventional approaches on censorship and general public attention tend to focus on state-controlled acts of repression and prohibitions that are carried out by the discrete or isolated authority. With the emergence of postmodernism, in particular Foucauldian analysis of power/knowledge structure, the discussions surround censorship has reached a point where the state and institution cannot be regarded as the genuine monopolizer and the exerciser of power but only as one of the apparatus of a broader power system. Foucault argues the notion of power not in terms of a centralized force that is constant and steady but as omnipresent, both/either externalized and internalized complex relations of techniques and tactics of domination. Power, indeed, is perceived in sets of relations in fluctuation and as decentralized, dispersed, as well as a constitutive force in which moments of fragments, domination, and of resistance take place. (Bunn, 37) From this perspective of power, censorship is too perceived as diffused and pervasive and the scholars of censorship are turned their focus on the constitutive power of censorship.
For many the legacy of Foucault is established at the same time around his groundbreaking and game-changer theory of The History of Sexuality is established. In The History of Sexuality (1978), Foucault by tracing the genealogy of the relationship between sex, power, and knowledge argues how 19th-century anxiety on sexuality constituted in the production of scientific knowledge, disciplines, and norms. He argues that despite the common belief that the Victorian Regime marked sex as a private, sacred, and reproductive entity in which not the gratification of the sexual desire but the procreation of copulating bodies, in other words, heterosexuality, aimed did not result in total repression and expulsion of sexuality but in fact result in the proliferation of discourse on sexuality. The focal point of his volumes length study derives from the discursive power of discourse and the ways in which certain discourse forms and gives meaning to what constitutes as real, true, decent, moral, rational, natural, normal, proper, and what constitutes as un-real, unnatural, immoral, irrational, deviant, abnormal and docile entities.
In the 18th century instrumentalization of sex as a subject of governing and as a mechanism of a governing Foucault says has been one of the turning points in the ways in which techniques of power is applied on flesh, on the body: “The emergence of "population" as an economic and political problem: population as wealth, the population as manpower or labor capacity, population balanced between its own growth and the resources it commanded. Governments perceived that they were not dealing simply with subjects, or even with a "people," but with a "population," with its specific phenomena and its peculiar variables: birth and death rates, life expectancy, fertility, state of health, frequency of illnesses, patterns of diet and habitation.”(23-24) Body, sex, and sexuality, indeed, become a fundamental matter in controlling and governing the society and the identity, thus it became curial too to understand, to define, to specify, categorize it in every possible way. In other words, power eventually happened to rely on the production of knowledge for its legitimacy, legitimacy of certain acts, facts, realities, values, codes of behavior, thinking and desiring, and at the same time power is perceived as a function of knowledge for enabling one to speak of.
Even in talking from the point of repression and prohibition, the formation of institutional discourse around the sex and sexual identity in the 19th century, what it is and it is not, what act is licit and what is illicit, what can bespeak of and cannot bespeak of, what is intelligible and what is not, as Foucault points out, produced and still continue to produce a great deal of corpus emerges from this cultural anxiety to know, to name and to form a relation to it. This simply one of the ways of showing that our innermost drives and desires are shaped by various forces, by the internal and external apparatus of power, by the very discourse that we come to speak about our identity in relation to anything that makes of our world. According to this schema of power/knowledge, there is no real essence of self or fixed structuring of identity beyond the discourse it emerges from. Both the formation of 19th-century identities and practices are related to or are a function of the historically specific discourse of Scientia Sexualis by which individuals and the social worlds they inhabit are themselves constituted by varying degrees of power to give meaning to and to give order to, to recognize and not to recognize it, to distribute, to include and to exclude it. Thus, the thinking of power that is marked by uniformity, stability, oppression and its capability of silencing has been drastically changed, power as multiplicity of forces is perceived in regards to the instances of domination and resistance “in which they operate and which constitute their own organization; as the process which, through ceaseless struggles and confrontations, transforms, strengthens, or reverses them; as the support which these force relations find in one another, thus forming a chain or a system, or on the contrary, the disjunctions and contradictions which isolate them from one another; and lastly, as the strategies in which they take effect, whose general design or institutional crystallization is embodied in the state apparatus, in the formulation of the law, in the various social hegemonies” (Foucault 92).
Power not only as a dominating force but also as the very constitutive force in our positioning and positioning of things in the world, what effect this kind of power bring into play in thinking of censorship? What does it mean to be a body, a gendered body, a desiring and political subject that is formed, identified, constituted, and came into a language by the very intersecting relations of power? What is the positioning of the ‘censoring subject’ to say to be the dominant force of that particular power structure and to be the censored, the dominated one, if power essentially refers to ever-changing structures of various power relations? What kinds of points of resistance and dominance can the act of censorship induce? The conventional understanding of censorship as Foucault argues lays emphasis on its prohibiting role in “affirming that such a thing is not permitted, preventing it from being said, denying that it exists” ( Foucault 82) but it must also be understood in the way in which it opens up new discourses, points of resistance creates and defines boundaries but also and opens up an instance of possibilities to unfix and destabilize the established meanings, and to reveal the ways in which at the certain time and in certain instances some discourses is instrumentalized to exclude, marginalize and oppress the formation of subversive identities. However, by drawing the lines between licit/illicit, private/public, moral/immoral, natural/unnatural, normal/abnormal, abled/disabled, functioning/ dysfunctioning, it also constitutes the very existence of it by means of bringing into a discourse.
Foucault by bringing the kind of power/knowledge analysis in which power does not only act upon the subjects but also acts within it, he points out the fact that “resistance is not only possible, but it is built into this model of power.” (Freshwater 12) The negation of censorship and its immediate connotation to an act of silencing, oppression, and exclusion does not only condition subjects to be in the position of silenced/dominated but also encloses the relations of power that is effective in its formation in doing so misses out the points of resistance. Thus, in the light of Foucault, new censorship theories set their sight on the constitutive power of censorship to analyze the ways in which new forms of discourse, new forms of speech, and new forms of mediums can and does emerge from the productive force of censorship. This results in centering their attention on the instances of struggle and resistance than on the instances of silencing.
However it is enabling and oddly revealing to think of censorship as a necessary operational and constituting force, it is indeed a force that is predominantly exercised by the hegemonic political, cultural, and sexual modes of thoughts. Therefore, thinking the act of censor in terms of the constant interplay of inward and outward forces, as far as I am concerned, might lead us to extenuate the impact of those acts of censors that are carried by the juridical and state forces. It is impossible to deny there has been a change in imagining the facet of power for it arrives in multiple forms and at multiple instances. In this demystifying sense, Foucauldian analysis of power, thus censorship too, falls into the danger of “oscillating between extreme abstraction and minute detail; the space between, where most people live most of their lives, was persistently and scrupulously effaced” (Post, 4) Censorship is indeed in most of the case passed as an act of “prohibition”, “suppression”, and of censoring practices and materials that are considered to be “obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security” (Oxford Dictionary). By means of its meaning not of a theory, censorship, if not aims to eradicate, it aims to obscure, to suspend, to mark its subject/material not to be seen, to bespeak of, and not to be acceptable.
The theories of censorship as vast and broad as it is, can be observed and analyzed from multiple points such as juridical, political, pedagogical, sociological, psychological, humanistic points of view with an excessive scholarship in each discipline. It seems essential for the aim of this project to narrow down my scope and layout my departure point in thinking of censorship and its far-reaching impacts as an instrument of oppression, of othering, of disciplining as well as an instrument of production of new discourses, of thinking, and of other ways of doing, and acting. My essential concern in thinking of censorship in terms of ‘obscenity’ within the frame of visual art, more precisely, within the frame of ‘obscene arts’ is to discuss the ways in which charges of obscenity are instrumentalized to operate, reiterate and reaffirm the normative identities and sexualities. From another side of the story, to examine the ways in which the mechanisms of censorships within the frame of obscenity is used to erase public visibility, formations of communities that do not correspond to the concurrent consensus on morality, identity, and social conduct, and etc. However, on the other hand, it is crucial to investigate how the discourse of obscenity and obscene art can play and does play a constitutive role in broadening our understanding of the material presence of the body other than its naturalized, normalized, subjugated formation. And moreover, obscenity as a discursive field what possibilities can offer upon the obliteration of the boundaries, be they social, psychological, political and biological, or, in and between our bodies and our lives and what upon on the queering obscenity as a category.
Holy Obscenity: Queer Intervention
“Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy!
Everything is holy! everybody’s holy! everywhere is holy! every day is in eternity! Everyman’s an angel!
The bum’s as holy as the seraphim! the madman is holy as you my soul are holy!
The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!
Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cassady holy the unknown buggered and suffering beggars holy the hideous human angels!
Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks of the grandfathers of Kansas!
Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana hipsters peace peyote pipes & drums!
Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the mysterious rivers of tears under the streets!
Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of the middle class! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebellion! Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!
Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria & Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy Moscow Holy Istanbul!
Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch!
Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucinations holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the abyss!
Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours! bodies! suffering! magnanimity!
Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul!”
Berkeley 1955
(Ginsberg, Allen. Footnote to Howl)
Linda Williams (2004) in her introduction to Porn Studies pins the term obscene down on to Greek term ob skene which literally means off-stage as violent acts in Greek theatre were committed away from the eyes of the audience, off-stage, behind the scenes (3). From this etymological point of view, the term ob skene then refers to the division and regulation of acts that can be performed within borders of onstage based upon the provisions of acts that are presumed to be proper in public, for the public. In the 15th century Western world, the regulation of acts within the public space is expanded beyond the stage with the division of public and private spheres that in turn, the word obscene become to refer to something “should be kept out of public view” such as defecation, sexual intercourse, violence, and urination (Mey, 6). From the 19th century on, however, its referents occasionally have changed in time, in place, and in context, the term obscenity is used to refer to things that are deemed “abhorrent to morality or virtue ”, “ taboo”, “offensive”, “repulsive”, disgusting ,and corrupting. (Merriam Webster). Its emphasis on something that is not meant to be seen did not gradually fade away but it became unrecognizable or if not unrecognizable, justifiable with its emphasis on the value-based adherents. The role of marking the genealogy of obscenity is crucial for the aim of this paper, first of all, to discuss obscenity not only as a term that is marked by filth, corruption, abomination, disgust, and lack (of morality, of artistic expression for instance) but also obscenity as an obscure signifier that calls the addressee to vanish, not to be seen and not be acknowledged of its own presence, body, desire, and sexuality. Second of all, it is essential because obscenity as a discursive field determines, and regulates those agents, acts, and materials that can be, cannot be, should not be in the public sphere, therefore, forbid the obscene object/subject/ expression/ body/ art from taking part in the formation of public space.
Thinking of obscenity within the intersection of censorship, whether internal or external, calls attention to the ways in which its juridical operation has been carried and applied in certain instances. Obscenity is categorized as a form of speech that is not protected under the First Amendment which makes it very interesting and enlightening to talk within the frame of censorship in order to uncover what and who is unprotected, what and who is seen as not worth to protect, and why is that. The 18th and 19th centuries have an imminent role in our understanding of obscene and the ways in which we can discuss today because of the records of trials that are in the archives. It comes as no surprise that one of the earliest bans in 1873 on the distribution of obscene materials includes information on sexuality, reproduction, and birth control along with erotic art and literature.(Heins 19) It comes as no surprise because in the 19th century the Western political, social and economic structure was radically reoriented through the rise of scientific discourse, and as Foucault lays out sex and sexuality became the concern in the regulation of private/public, domestic/political spaces and more precisely in the regulation of female sexuality. The emergence of the capitalist economy, thus, accumulation of wealth, and capital required a revision in the regulation of private/public space and indeed all of its components. The relations of power have altered, and actors have changed; Church lost its dominant position, and space is taken by sciences thus by the knowledge it has produced. The body and sexuality are regulated and monitored through new public discourses under the rule of scientific truth to reorganize and impose a form of sexuality in support of a functioning social system based on the patriarchal, heteronormative, misogynist values and, homosexual anxiety. On the other hand, it enabled the subject the speak of his/her innermost experience as a living body of knowledge in order to uncover the truths of flesh.
In her excessive analysis of obscene art within the US and UK art scene, Kerstin Mey explains the obscene as a category that “ has been subject to political interest and instrumentalization for the purpose of maintaining or contesting social power and control by social ( and religious) groups, prompting and justifying the device and application of censorship measures” (8). If obscene means anything and if it means anything only within its specific conditions, then, how is it affected by the new power/knowledge equation?
In her article “The Obscene Body/Politic” Carole Schneeman (1991), feminist artist and published writer, argues the ways in which her works have been suppressed, excluded, dismissed during her years in Bard College from a student exhibition for submitting self nude portrait to her later work Fuses (1964) in which she documents herself and her then-boyfriend James Tenney during their sexual intercourse as a female image-maker, and as a female looking, and documenting female sexuality for the purpose of deflating patriarchal gender and sexual constructions. She lays out the censorship mechanisms that are imposed on her work, for instance, the police presence in her performance work “Meat Joy” in NY and the removal of some of her works from the Whitney Museum in 1977. Her works derive from an experience of her gendered presence, her female interiority, and the materiality and physicality of her sexuality and body. Although in the history of western art, female nudity has been nothing new as a genre but has been dominated by the male gaze in the way by which the female body is displaced from own sexuality and becomes an instrument of male sexuality, Schneeman’s artistic exploration of female sexuality has not been only a matter of controversy but also is exposed to punitive and disciplining actions by autonomous and multiple mechanisms of power. It is not a matter of nudity but it is the positioning of her female persona as the creator of a female representation of a sexual desire and sexuality within the rule of the phallus, that kept it away from the exhibitions, museums, film festivals, public displays and from the public eye. However, maybe most importantly, Schneeman by suspending the male-centered sexuality and identity politics in her work, reversed the discourse and gained its discursive power for distorting, and corrupting the dominant regime of morality and knowledge which situated female sexuality within the male body, within the male eye. Because of this corrupting force against the hegemonic norms of social and sexual conduct, Scheeeman’s works of art offend the naturalized, idealized, normalized gender norms, thus, it is referred to as ‘obscene’ in many cases. In other words, expression of female sexuality has seen as harmful, filthy, corrupting, defiling, and offensive.
Judgments on obscenity within the field of visual art, determine the potential exclusion of work from the spheres of high art and aesthetic, from legally permitted moreover, it expels the work as a body of knowledge, from what constitutes to political, social world. The extensive exclusion and denunciation of work have been justified by laws through references of public good and community standards which hasn’t been referred for the first time but legally framed in 1973 known as the “Miller Obscenity Test” in the US. From there on it has been applied to exclude, discipline, and punish the work of arts from public spaces thus rendering its visibility and condemning it as disgusting, immoral, non-art, corrupting, offensive, and lacking a value. The policing and disciplining mechanisms of ‘obscenity’ bounds the conventions of sexual identity and used to stigmatize and suppress queer sexualities, identities, desires, and acts. Furthermore, it helps to reify the heteronormative assumptions on deviant sexualities as sexual, sensual, political strangers and outlaws. The concept of obscenity by its very definition refers to things and acts that must stay hidden, unseen, unspeakable if not must be effaced from public sight in response to “oppressiveness of majority rule.” (Heins 23). It would be appropriate, then, to stop my analysis here and accept the invincibility of the heteronormative charges thus contribute to the reiteration of the hegemonic power structure and its evasive and invasive forces. Instead, here I propose the odd ambiguity of obscene indeed can act as a discursive force for uncovering the heterosexual, heterosexist, heteronormative, and any normative formation, in doing so, can play an active role in creating moments of resistance. By reappropriating the obscene/obscene art and body/desire from its negation with degradation, filth, and corruption, we can reclaim ‘obscene art’ as a queer space in which fluidity of sexuality and gender is appreciated.