“Postporno” by Valentine aka Fluida Wolf was one of those books I got on an impulse in Italy - and it was worth it. It’s short, to be read in an afternoon, and takes you on a personal/political journey of discovery of the world of postporn. It’s hard to pin down and craft a definition (just like the word “queer”, it escapes it) but from what I understand it, it’s a political and social practice of taking back your own body. It doesn’t necessary aim to provide an erotic experience for the viewer (as mainstream porn does, whose intended viewer is usually a cishetero man), but rather show and experiment with diverse bodies, moreso bodies that have not been represented previously as sexual.
Postporn works against expectations, using irony, breaking the subject/object binary, bringing to the public what is considered private, denouncing the medicalization of bodies and refusing distinctions between high/low culture (as explained in pg 25, in a quote from Rachele Borghi). As opposed to mainstream porn, which is usually a very exploitative industry rooted in patriarchal domination, postporn is usually autonomously produced in anarchist/punk/art spaces, without intending to break into the industry. It is different from the more commonly known feminist/alternative/ethical porn, whose aim is not only to craft feminist narratives of pleasure, but provide good labour conditions to sex workers. Postporn, ultimately, I think, is a sort of space of political and artistic experimentation with sexual bodies - this is what I got from this introductory little book which, all in all, I think is very charming.