1. Inside the Sexuality Assemblage From pornified bodies to the re-sexualisation of everything Nick J Fox, Pam Alldred https://www.academia.edu/15031642

2. Introduction New materialism and sexualities. The sexuality assemblage. Sexuality and aggregations. Dis-aggregating sexualities. Example: pornography and sexualisation. Re-enchanting sexualities.

3. New materialism: concepts Bodies are not prior entities with distinct attributes. Focus upon events, as assemblages of relations (bodies, things, ideas, social institutions). Within an assemblage, relations affect and are affected by other relations. (Affect = capacity to affect or be affected). Flows of affect in assemblages produce specific capacities in bodies, collectivities and things. Affects may aggregate bodies and capacities, e.g. into a particular sexuality, sexual practice or preference.

4. The sexuality-assemblage A sexual event (e.g. a kiss, a date) is an assemblage comprising a multiplicity of physical, biological, cultural, social and abstract materialities. Sexuality is the flow of affects between these material relations within a sexuality-assemblage (Fox and Alldred, 2013). This flow produces sexual (and other) capacities in bodies, and hence manifestations of ‘the sexual’. Human sexuality is consequently infinitely variable. However, it is typically constrained by aggregative forces.

5. Assemblage micropolitics Affects in assemblages can be: Aggregating (affecting many bodies in the same way). Example: a gendered code of sexual conduct affecting boys’ and girls’ sexual behaviour. Singular (affecting only one body). Example: a caress or smile from a stranger that produces a response. Singular affects can be dis-aggregating, producing a line of flight into new possibilities.

6. Aggregative affects in the sexuality-assemblage Cultural values and norms: e.g. monogamy, sexual etiquette, fetishes. Social institutions and practices: e.g. age of consent, marriage, ‘courting’ and ‘dating’, gender roles. Biology: e.g. bodily attractions and desires. Economic and political: e.g. markets, patriarchy. Things and spaces: e.g. pubs and clubs, alcohol, Internet. Psychological: e.g. memories, cognitions, arousal. Emotional: e.g. love, jealousy, embarrassment. Ideas: e.g. celibacy, promiscuity, purity, ‘the erotic’.

7. Dis-aggregating sexualities What a ‘sexual body’ can do depends upon entirely upon its affective relations in a sexuality-assemblage. Dis-aggregation of the sexuality-assemblage can produce unknown and unpredictable manifestations of sexuality. Aggregating affects can be: Removed from the assemblage; Countered by powerful singular/disaggregating forces. What does this mean in practice, when contemporary culture’s aggregating forces are so pervasive and powerful?

8. An example: ‘sexualisation’ Realist analysis: pornography and sexualised media produce an inappropriate sexualisation of young people (Bailey, 2011; Papadopoulos, 2010). Constructionist response: these concerns/panics about sexualisation reflect broader contemporary sexual discourses concerning female sexuality, sexual corruption, and the innocence of the child (e.g. Duschinsky, 2013; Egan, 2013). These discourses sustain gender inequity and sexual double standards (Ringrose et al, 2013).

9. A new materialist analysis 1 Affects in the sexualisation-assemblages of young people: peers, friends, family, schools, media, pornography, Internet, alcohol, social events, social norms, values and codes, and a range of singular affects (Fox and Bale, in preparation). These affects variously aggregate and dis- aggregate sexual capacities and sexualities in multiple and complex ways.

10. A new materialist analysis 2 The repetitive and formulaic sexual practices portrayed in pornography and sexualised media aggregate bodies into circumscribed and narrow sexual capacities. These aggregations reproduce and reinforce misogyny and sexual objectification, and constrain sexual diversity. Singular affects (e.g. physical, emotional, cognitive interactions; ideas, novel practices) may counter these aggregations.

11. Re-sexualisation? The affects in the sexualisation assemblage produce capacities in all bodies, young or old. Porn is not good for some and bad for others, it is a pernicious assemblage of bodies, body parts, social norms, money and markets that aggregate bodies into circumscribed sexualities. What is needed is not a de-sexualisation of the young but a re-sexualisation of all our capacities and of bodily intensifications not usually considered ‘sexual’.

12. Re-enchanting the sexual body We have all been groomed into a narrow, genital, individualised sexuality. We need to identify and resist the social, cultural and economic forces that impoverish sexualities. To see beyond these limits, we need to re-think sexualities - as not individual, not even human; but as a source of becoming. Sexualities can break free from its constraints, to embrace a breadth of embodied and collective intensifications.

13. Inside the Sexuality Assemblage From pornified bodies to the re-sexualisation of everything https://www.academia.edu/15031642