Tom Waugh, Hard to Imagine, and porn studies: a dossier of critical reflections

Conal McStravick, John Mercer*, Peter Rehberg

*Corresponding author for this work

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    Abstract

    For the anniversary of Porn Studies we are critically engaging with foundational figures in our discipline area, and in this collection of reflections we focus on Canadian film theorist and activist Tom Waugh. Waugh sits alongside a generation of activists and thinkers ranging from Vito Russo and Leo Bersani to Richard Dyer who traced the contours of what was to become the study of gay male culture and identity. We present a diversity of perspectives here as a way into reckoning with Waugh’s seminal text Hard to Imagine and why Waugh’s interventions matter for porn studies. We consider the affective encounters of scholarship and how the routes through a field are shaped by them. Peter Rehberg thinks about the relationship between Waugh’s writing about sex and the development of queer theory during the 1990s. Finally, Conal McStravick traces his own route through the field of porn studies via his doctoral research into the artist, curator, and activist Stuart Marshall (1948–1993), who was a contemporary of Waugh’s, and the resonances between their work.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)1-18
    Number of pages18
    JournalPorn Studies
    Early online date21 Nov 2024
    DOIs
    Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 21 Nov 2024

    Keywords

    • History
    • gay porn
    • activism
    • AIDS

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