Bulletin of the Comediantes

THE CREATION of a new field of inquiry may often constitute the academic equivalent of extreme sports, and that is certainly the case when it takes place in the arena of medieval and early modern Hispanic Studies. The mere act of not specifying the exact rules of that intersection within such broad an area is still met in some circles with a resistance that is not surprising given the traditionally strict divisions that have dominated the Hispanic humanities. Hispanic literature is one of the disciplines where tradition has wielded greater power, making novel approaches seem more transgressive than they would probably appear in other disciplines. In this context, what editors Nicholas R. Jones and Chad Leahy propose in Pornographic Sensibilities falls beyond the transgressive into the downright subversive, and it does so in the best possible way. The editors propose a dialogue between medieval and early modern Hispanic Studies and Porn Studies as a productive critical approach to a vast corpus of writings where the body and its most intimate aspects feature in openly graphic and uninhibited ways. Although sex encompasses most of these representations, more extreme manifestations like disease and violence complete the continuum of problematic and uncomfortable subject matter that has challenged those who have tried to present the canon of Hispanic cultural production as aseptic and respectable. These are cultural products that resist being neatly packaged into the usual categories and critical molds required to fit the rigid canonical standards of traditional publication, both academic and commercial. Therein lies the value of this volume, in the opening of an interdisciplinary space where, instead of being classified and described, these texts and other cultural artifacts become party to a larger conversation that touches on some of the most current and interesting lines of intellectual inquiry across a wide variety of disciplines. [End Page 121]

Jones and Leahy are clearly aware of the many objections that arise from the use of the term pornography in the context of medieval and early modern Hispanic Studies; for instance, the historicist concerns with anachronism and the idea that pornography as a semantic field is inseparable from modernity. They recognize that even the most recent scholarship reveals its discomfort with the word in the preferred use of terms like erotic or obscene. Indeed, if the only purpose of using the word pornography was to add yet another label to the already copious taxonomy our field inherited from nineteenth-century philology, then many a reader would rather be spared. If the purpose, however, is to apply it to “what we study and how we study it,” as the editors suggest, the possibilities are enticing, and the breadth of the proposed new field appears quite promising for further expansion (3). In the introduction, Jones and Leahy state they asked the contributors to follow “the primary charge of Porn Studies: to place the category of obscenely fleshed iconography at the center of inquiry and to provide answers to how ‛pornography,’ as a mode both of representation and of critique, affects and has been affected by various social, political, and cultural institutions” (3). This is a very promising new lens through which to look at cultural production, and it responds to a dire need for the humanities in general to engage with a wider array of human experiences. The editors argue that the focus of Porn Studies in power dynamics makes it ideal as a methodology to study literary works and other texts with sexual content in an interdisciplinary context. It also adds another vantage point to interrogate our own methods of research and the motivations that underlie them. An approach where sensibilities are part of the premises of inquiry invites scholars to recognize that emotion and perception are not only topics for study but also primary influences in the way research is framed and validated. A focus on sensory and affective concerns...