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Pornography and Speech

 

The Royal Institute of Philosophy presents:

Pornography and Speech, Dr Kathleen Stock
 
Abstract:
 
In this talk I’ll seek to dismiss two views:
 
a) that pornography never counts as speech; 
b) that it always does.
 
Is pornography inevitably a speech act, as Rae Langton argues? Or is it the case that pornography is not and cannot be a speech act, as it is argued on the other side of the debate by philosophers such as Jennifer Hornsby, Jennifer Saul and Louise Anthony? An instructive comparison will be made with non-pornographic fiction, to show that in some cases pornography can correctly be said to deliberately convey a message, as speech does, but in other cases clearly does not.
 
About the speaker:
 
Kathleen Stock is a Reader in Philosophy at the University of Sussex. She mostly works on the philosophy of fiction and imagination. Her book Only Imagine: Fiction, Interpretation and Imagination is out now with Oxford University Press, and she blogs about fiction and imagination at thinkingaboutfiction.me
 
Free public lecture, everyone welcome.
 
Thursday 7 December 2017, 4.30pm - 7.00pm, MU306. 
Tea/coffee from 4.30pm