Sociology of the electronic flesh. Digital culture and the imaginary of the obscene

Abstract

Contrary to the initial emphasis that was given on aspects related to intelligence and knowledge, we are finding that the web is increasingly becoming a platform welcoming aesthetic and ethic forms marked by senses, emotions and voluptuousness in pleasure as much as in its darker side. Previously, pornography was a hidden, obscure and marginal dimension of collective life. Nowadays, digital culture favors the advent of porn culture, where porn tends to become a symbolic matrix, an ordinary code, an atmosphere. In this visual and sensitive context, the obscene gets closer to the truth and the truth appears as an obscene. What imaginary presides over this mutation at work?