Reading for "Thick Desire" in Young People's Pornography Narratives

• In Event: 64.028 - Transational Cartographies of Place, Space, and Desire

Abstract

Drawing on Fine and McClelland’s (2014) concept of “thick desire”, this paper will use thematic narrative analysis (Riessman, 2008) to read excerpts taken from focus groups with undergraduate students at a Canadian university around their experiences with pornography and sex education as reflecting their many-faceted desires for, and anxieties around, living well under conditions of white, hetero-patriarchal capitalism. To the extent that discussions around pornography provoke the expression of such “thick desires”, this paper will suggest that “pornography” as a prompt opens possibilities for sexualities educators to move their pedagogies beyond the limitations of a “risks and dangers” approach to sex education to account for the structural and relational aspects of sexuality as well.

Author

• Alanna Goldstein, York University