War & Pleasure in Pornutopia

[The] Common­wealth [is] the mother of Peace....
- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan ⁵⁴

[T]he domain of eroticism is the domain of violence, of violation.
Georges Bataille, Eroticism ⁵⁵

The state of pornotopia is like no other. Sex is pleasure. Sex is war. War is pleasure. Politics is paradox.

Thomas Hobbes, the father of the modern state, imagined a political order in which pleasure might co­exist with civic peace. Hedonism, properly understood, is the foundation upon which civil society can be erected. Life­sustaining pleasure is a common good, and politics should preserve the conditions for its pursuit. Indeed, mortal passions and appetites spawn the very notion of individual rights. The greatest of these passions­­self­preservation and comfort­­might be harnessed by the sovereign state to overpower the monstrous forces of uncivilized men in the state of nature. ⁵⁶ Taking them out of that hostile state, speech assists in both the formation and the peaceful perpetuation of the commonwealth. Hobbes's momentous contribution to political discourse is that he "instil[led] the spirit of political idealism into the hedonistic tradition." ⁵⁷ As the first modern political theorist, he "liberated hedonism [from] its previously hidden, private or apolitical character, and transformed it into a political doctrine." ⁵⁸

A bastardized Hobbes is the father of the pornographic state. The new Leviathan, like its 1651 predecessor, still celebrates lively hedonism as the foundation of society­­but it is an eroticized selfishness. The new Leviathan still secures the greatest of human passions­­but they are sexual passions too often untempered by the specter of death. The new Leviathan still promotes individual rights­­but they are rights at civil war with the old commonweal. The new Leviathan still cherishes speech­­but it no longer concedes a difference between use and abuse where erotic expression is at stake. In the pornographic state, the animating principle is the pursuit of pleasure over and above all else, including the fear of death.