Dissertation defence (Media Studies): MA Ihsan Can Asman
Time
22.11.2024 at 11.00 - 15.00
MA Ihsan Can Asman defends the dissertation in Media Studies titled “Intimate Happenings: Uses of porn and other sexual media in Turkey” at the University of Turku on 22 November 2024 at 11.00 (University of Turku, Calonia, CAL1, Caloniankuja 3, Turku).
Opponent: Professor Rebecca Sullivan (University of Calgary, Canada)
Custos: Professor Susanna Paasonen (The University of Turku)
The audience can participate in the defence by remote access: https://echo360.org.uk/section/a442dc16-181f-4280-9c6e-802a91bef2b9/public
Doctoral Dissertation at UTUPub: https://www.utupub.fi/handle/10024/179298
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Summary of the Doctoral Dissertation:
As of 2024, porn studies have become a more and more established inquiry. However, studies on porn audiences in non-Western contexts remain limited. To address this theoretical gap, this article-based dissertation studies the uses of porn in Turkey, while further exploring the Turkish context through a historical lens. The study inquiries the ways how to understand normativity and pleasure connecting to porn and other sexual media in Turkey. It demonstrates the different ways of using porn as a spectator, which oscillate between pleasure and normativity in the Turkish context.
The dissertation mainly focuses on the interviews made with the eighteen study participants, who were open about their spectatorship; as well as the different historical periods in the late Ottoman period and modern Turkey. The analyses of the interviews reveal that the uses of porn in Turkey are multifaceted, echoing the results of the recent scholarship on the mismatches between identity categories and desires, for example, why a gay man would watch mainstream heterosexist porn. The study also reveals the intensification of desires even when faced with negative and dark feelings and emotions, like shame, humiliation, disgust, and so on. The dissertation also is interested in particular networks that reinforce the norms or weaken them. To that end, for instance, it shows how technology can frustrate the pleasures of watching porn. As mentioned, the dissertation also explores the different historical periods like the late Ottoman Empire when various sexual materials were available, or the 70s “notorious” sex influx, which presents the peculiar and original dimensions of the Turkish context to the reader while being a case, which illuminates the gender inequality that spans the last forty-fifty years of Turkey.
The findings of the study favor approaching online porn as a toy-like phenomenon and show the instances consuming porn is often for the sake of pleasure that can be intensified and/or blocked by different norms. Therefore, the study concludes that online porn spectatorship is not a dull consumption, but an imaginative, interpretive but also haptic and empathetic experience that can lead to further sexual exploration, while it can become dark and not fun. The dissertation also challenges some orientalist simplifications around the so-called place of Turkey in the Islamic world and the Justice and Development Party’s governance of sexualities and sexual media. In these senses, the study contributes to porn studies, sexuality studies and to an extent to Turkish studies as well.
Opponent: Professor Rebecca Sullivan (University of Calgary, Canada)
Custos: Professor Susanna Paasonen (The University of Turku)
The audience can participate in the defence by remote access: https://echo360.org.uk/section/a442dc16-181f-4280-9c6e-802a91bef2b9/public
Doctoral Dissertation at UTUPub: https://www.utupub.fi/handle/10024/179298
***
Summary of the Doctoral Dissertation:
As of 2024, porn studies have become a more and more established inquiry. However, studies on porn audiences in non-Western contexts remain limited. To address this theoretical gap, this article-based dissertation studies the uses of porn in Turkey, while further exploring the Turkish context through a historical lens. The study inquiries the ways how to understand normativity and pleasure connecting to porn and other sexual media in Turkey. It demonstrates the different ways of using porn as a spectator, which oscillate between pleasure and normativity in the Turkish context.
The dissertation mainly focuses on the interviews made with the eighteen study participants, who were open about their spectatorship; as well as the different historical periods in the late Ottoman period and modern Turkey. The analyses of the interviews reveal that the uses of porn in Turkey are multifaceted, echoing the results of the recent scholarship on the mismatches between identity categories and desires, for example, why a gay man would watch mainstream heterosexist porn. The study also reveals the intensification of desires even when faced with negative and dark feelings and emotions, like shame, humiliation, disgust, and so on. The dissertation also is interested in particular networks that reinforce the norms or weaken them. To that end, for instance, it shows how technology can frustrate the pleasures of watching porn. As mentioned, the dissertation also explores the different historical periods like the late Ottoman Empire when various sexual materials were available, or the 70s “notorious” sex influx, which presents the peculiar and original dimensions of the Turkish context to the reader while being a case, which illuminates the gender inequality that spans the last forty-fifty years of Turkey.
The findings of the study favor approaching online porn as a toy-like phenomenon and show the instances consuming porn is often for the sake of pleasure that can be intensified and/or blocked by different norms. Therefore, the study concludes that online porn spectatorship is not a dull consumption, but an imaginative, interpretive but also haptic and empathetic experience that can lead to further sexual exploration, while it can become dark and not fun. The dissertation also challenges some orientalist simplifications around the so-called place of Turkey in the Islamic world and the Justice and Development Party’s governance of sexualities and sexual media. In these senses, the study contributes to porn studies, sexuality studies and to an extent to Turkish studies as well.
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