Eros & Thanatos

Some defenders of the modern liberal state may concede, "arguendo" or otherwise, that pornography represents male violence toward and subjugation of women. ⁶³ For them, however, even that concession is not sufficient to trump the right of erotic expression in the service of pleasure. Why? Because some Americans deplore pornography's violence and subjugation, while others celebrate pornography's representations. Hence, representations of sexual violence and subjugation, even those that, "arguendo," cause severe physical or psychological harms, are reduced to opinions about the desirability of such harms. Government, then, may not endorse one opinion or desire over another. Following this logic, Judge Frank Easterbrook warns the radical feminists that, in the eyes of his liberal state, there is no one correct view about the value of representations of sexual violence and subjugation: "This is thought control. It establishes an 'approved' view of women, of how they may react to sexual encounters, of how the sexes may relate to each other. Those who espouse the approved view may use sexual images; those who do not, may not." ⁶⁴ Such arguments border on the absurd for the radical feminists: "Behind [Easterbrook's] First Amendment facade, women were being transformed into ideas, [into] sexual traffic ... protected as if it were a discussion, the men uninhibited and robust, the women wide-open." ⁶⁵ Indeed, even Thomas Hobbes did not conceive of a hedonism so great as to question the desirability of physical security. As modern liberalism approaches the pornographic state, however, little but this hedonism is understandable.

Once unchecked hedonism is legitimated in the pornographic state, the violation of another inherent in sex and in its pornographic images becomes more understandable. Pornotopia knows no limits. In this state, Eros (the god of Love) and Thanatos (the god of Death) embrace each other. Eros yearns for life's ultimate passions even in the face of death. In modernity, Thomas Mann vividly portrayed these passions in his famous novella, Death in Venice. ⁶⁶ His self­disciplined hero Gustave von Aschenbach gradually loses himself as he pursues the beautiful lad Tadzio in an "immensity of richest expectation[s]" ⁶⁷ culminating in death. The champions of the pornographic state accept fully that erotic desire is a psychological quest to lose one's individuality in an uncivilized fusion with another. Georges Bataille, the philosopher of pornotopia, makes the point forcefully: "The whole business of eroticism is to destroy the self­contained character of the participators as they are in their normal lives." ⁶⁸ The heightened erotic within us is a transgressor of taboos, particularly moral and legal edicts against violating the lover. As it frames reality, pornography re/presents the "elemental violence [that] kindles every manifestation of eroticism." ⁶⁹ Hence, pornography represents the syllogism of primordial sex: Sex is pleasure. Sex is war. War is pleasure. As pornography violates Thomas Hobbes's rule of peace, pornotopia constitutes the new Leviathan.