Viral Masculinities: Gay Porn, Porosity and the Promise of Inhuman Touch
João Florêncio

This lecture looks at the ways in which masculinity is (re)signified, performed, and mediated in contemporary gay porn videos that eroticize the exchange and accumulation of bodily fluids. Advancing the notion of porous self-intoxicating masculinities, the talk considers the role played by foreign matter and one’s openness to it in ‘bareback’ porn produced in so-called ‘post-AIDS’ contexts. It argues that the openness to foreign bodily fluids, HIV, antiretrovirals and/or recreational drugs, mediated and virally disseminated in porn, marks a refashioning of contemporary gay masculinities whereby hypermasculinity is posited as a function of heroic penetrability and exposure to toxicity. Building on that claim, the lecture points to both the emancipatory potential and biopolitical shortcomings of a masculine sexual ethics that promises a becoming-inhuman of the body through an embrace of virality and the pursuit of intoxicating modes of touch.

João Florêncio is a Lecturer in History of Modern and Contemporary Art and Visual Culture at the University of Exeter. His interdisciplinary research navigates the intersections of modern and contemporary visual culture and performance with queer theory, philosophy, and the posthumanities in an attempt to think inhuman forms of embodiment, ethics, and community. Florêncio is currently working on his monograph Bareback Porn, Porous Masculinities, Queer Futures: The Ethics of Becoming-Pig (Routledge, forthcoming) and on a documentary film project exploring performances of masculinity in ‘post-AIDS’ gay porn.