The ethics of shared embodiment in queer, feminist and lesbian pornography

This article discusses contemporary queer, feminist and lesbian porn film culture in Europe. I argue that this film culture invites a particular kind of embodiment, enabled by new media technologies, but also anchored in queer and feminist political and aesthetic legacies. Taking the Swedish short film collection Dirty Diaries: Twelve Shorts of feminist Porn, in which I myself participated as one of the filmmakers, as my main example and borrowing from film scholar Laura U. Marks, I propose that queer, feminist and lesbian porn calls forth an 'ethics of shared embodiment'. This is an ethics capable of accommodating heterogeneity and disagreements that he at the heart of the film culture. This ethics is not about leaving conflicts behind or reaching a fixed goal, such as a formula for what queer, feminist and lesbian porn is or should be. Borrowing from Jose Esteban Munoz, I instead claim that this ethics is about reaching out for and casting pictures of a goal. It is about trying out various paths while simultaneously being able to harbour difficulties and failures along the way.</p