TY - JOUR
T1 - 'Censorship = mission impossible?'
T2 - a postcolonial same sex erotic discourse on Hong Kong porn law
AU - Chiu, Man Chung
PY - 2004
Y1 - 2004
N2 - Hong Kong mainstream anti-porn activists adopt the Anglo-American radical feminist perspective on pornography, and support the establishment of censorship mechanism. The ideology, which assumes an essential textual interpretation of pornographic materials, is, however, politicized and destablized by postmodern strategy of multiple reading which emphasizes the significance of the interaction between reader's subjectivities and 'discourses'. By embedding the 'anti-porn vs. anti-censor' debate within the particular socio-legal-historical context of Hong Kong, where (Han-)Chinese paradigm on sexuality is still influential, the author argues that legal definition of 'obscenity/pornography' was/is not an indigenous (Han-) Chinese cultural product and it is in this context where censorship marginalizes and pathologizes local traditions on sexuality and thus (re)engineer and reinstate legal postcolonialism. The author further uses (Han-)Chinese conventional opposite/same sex erotic literature as illustrations to elaborate why pornography cannot be viewed as a monolithic and universal concept, and in what ways resistances against heterosexist patriarchal hegemony can be developed within the discourse of 'pornography'. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
AB - Hong Kong mainstream anti-porn activists adopt the Anglo-American radical feminist perspective on pornography, and support the establishment of censorship mechanism. The ideology, which assumes an essential textual interpretation of pornographic materials, is, however, politicized and destablized by postmodern strategy of multiple reading which emphasizes the significance of the interaction between reader's subjectivities and 'discourses'. By embedding the 'anti-porn vs. anti-censor' debate within the particular socio-legal-historical context of Hong Kong, where (Han-)Chinese paradigm on sexuality is still influential, the author argues that legal definition of 'obscenity/pornography' was/is not an indigenous (Han-) Chinese cultural product and it is in this context where censorship marginalizes and pathologizes local traditions on sexuality and thus (re)engineer and reinstate legal postcolonialism. The author further uses (Han-)Chinese conventional opposite/same sex erotic literature as illustrations to elaborate why pornography cannot be viewed as a monolithic and universal concept, and in what ways resistances against heterosexist patriarchal hegemony can be developed within the discourse of 'pornography'. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
KW - pornography
KW - (han-)chinese culture
KW - yin-yang
KW - li
KW - fa/law
KW - same-sex eroticism
U2 - 10.1016/j.ijsl.2004.02.001
DO - 10.1016/j.ijsl.2004.02.001
M3 - Comment/debate
VL - 32
SP - 39
EP - 63
JO - International Journal of the Sociology of Law
JF - International Journal of the Sociology of Law
SN - 0194-6595
IS - 1
ER -