The new pornographies

<p>The turn of the twenty-first century has witnessed the striking advance of pornography into the Western cultural mainstream. Symptomatic of this development has been the use by writers artists and film-makers of the imagery and aesthetics of pornography in works which have often on this basis achieved considerable international success. Amongst these artists are a number of French authors and directors - such as Michel Houellebecq Catherine Breillat Virginie Despentes or Catherine Millet - whose work has often been dismissed as trashy or exploitative but whose use of pornographic material may in fact be indicative of important contemporary concerns.<br><br>In this study of a very significant trend the authors explore how the reference to pornography encodes diverse political cultural and existential questions including relations between the sexes the collapse of avant-garde politics gay sexualities in the time of AIDS the anti-feminist backlash the relation to the body and illness the place of fantasy and the sexualisation of children. <br><br>It will be of interest to undergraduates graduates and researchers in the fields of French culture gender film and media studies.</p>