Pornography: ‘the feminal body’, and ‘Signifiance’

Pornography becomes a commercial object par excellence, which has penetrated into every nook and cranny of our daily lives. However, it is a mistake to think that we can explain the attraction of pornography from the view point of the pleasure principle. Pleasure is one thing and “jouissance” is another. Pornography should be understood in terms of jouissance, which is oriented toward not pleasure in general, but pleasure strictly prohibited. Pornography operates through the process of “signifiance”, which represents and signifinies the female body. But such an operation is destined to fail, leaving the drive behind it. The process of signifying feminal body is composed of three stages. The first is the representation of the “Thing,” that is the lost object and the “imago” of the mother as the object of sublimation and worship. The second is the figuration of the “abject” with the double value of fascination and of terror. The subject tries to destroy and to separate himself from this abject. The third is a type of fetish, which is supposed to supplement the lack in the human subject. The fetish assures the subject his sense of being alive by covering the “néancité” of being and demonstrating the drive. Pornography cannot revive sexual reality, but it veils only sexual lacks through fantasy by revealing the impossible femimal body through the process of signifiance. In effect, there is no sexual relationship.