Alastair BLANSHARD The Queer
Pornography of the Classical Imagination: An invitation
to view some etchings.
The fin de siècle is an
important time in the history of sexuality. It represents
a moment when protean sexual identities mingle, grapple,
and renegotiate themselves. It is a time that is fertile
with possibilities. It is within such an environment that
I wish to locate a reading of classical motifs in some
late 19th-century pornographic etchings that
circulated widely in Britain and the United States.
This paper focuses on a
collection of 20 pornographic images that circulated
under the title 'Metamorphoses of Venus'. There is
nothing 'straight' about any of these images. The
accompanying plates depict rampant heterosexual orgies,
bestiality, S&M sex, lesbians with strap-on dildoes,
and paedophilia. All these scenes are set in surroundings
that evoke classical antiquity. In their plurality of
extreme pleasures, these images resist the tendency of
pornography to create distinct and ever increasingly
specialised taxonomies of pleasure. Straight/gay,
vanilla/raunch are simultaneously satisfied and repulsed
by these images. The classical gives licence to queer
imagination.
In the economy of pornography, the
classical world turns out to be a very strange place
indeed. These images facilitate the destabilisation of a
number of dominant discourses. They overthrow notions of
classical restraint and purity. Moreover, they empower
their viewers by providing them with a vocabulary to
critique imperialising discourse. They provide an
alternate realm of pleasure in which to negotiate with
the classical past. In the games of power predicated on
who knows best the Greeks, the pornographic discourse
threatens to overturn established hierarchies. Knowledge
of sex becomes collocated with power. In conclusion,
these images provide an ideal opportunity to revisit and
explore the history of deviance and queer identity. They
locate the important role that classicism played in the
imaginary of sexual dissonance. They allow us a place to
explore the tangled relationships set up between
knowledge, power, history, science, sex and gender.