Pornography and speech acts: Catharine MacKinnon's perspectiveKnowing the importance that debates about the pornographic issue have for historical and contemporary feminisms, we take the work Only Words (1993), by Catharine MacKinnon, as focus. Through interpretative analysis we seek to reconstruct the author's argument about the way pornography operates and what its consequences are for women's experiences in the real world. In our analysis, we emphasize the importance that John Austin's theory of speech acts has for the constitution of the author's thought. Finally, we seek to demonstrate that in some ways Austin's theory seems to guarantee the internal coherence of MacKinnon's ideas.
Keywords:
pornography; feminisms; speech acts; Catharine MacKinnon