Ethnopornography as Methodology, Critique, and Play
This chapter discusses “ethnopornography,” the production and circulation of eroticized and racialized material regarding people deemed “racially” or “ethnically” different from the people expected to digest any piece of research. The chapter argues that ethnopornography exists as a method to perpetuate and/or excuse colonial and racial violence. Yet, ethnopornography can be repurposed to attend to the ethics and politics of representation, considering multiple gazes and epistemologies, in essence reconceptualizing the sexualized interaction between people deemed to be from different racial and ethnic groups. The chapter provides new examples of the ways in which researchers, artists, archivists, and the subjects of ethnopornography can interact to produce new knowledge to challenge the power dynamics involved in the racist and colonialist gaze.
