PhD Oral Exam - Shawn Suyong Yi Jones, Communication

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

This dissertation examines how queer East Asian men understand and engage with online pornography. It departs from dominant research approaches that have typically framed porn consumption as either shaped by social structures or individual agency. To move beyond this binary framing, I argue for a new materialist approach—one that draws specifically on affect theory and posthumanist practice theory. Through this new materialist lens, I conceptualize the act of consuming pornography as a carnal practice: an assemblage of the entangled and emergent sociocultural, material-discursive and affective relations involving human and nonhuman bodies centred around the affect of carnal resonance. This concept weaves together and expands on the theoretical contributions of Susanna Paasonen (carnal resonance), Margaret Wetherell (affective practice) and Wanda J. Orlikowski (sociomaterial practice) to explore the visceral, fleshy resonances and bodily responses that emerge from encounters with pornography. By analyzing how queer East Asian men enact carnal practice, I illustrate how the material conditions and discursive practices of identity shape and contour these resonances in distinct ways, from the platform interfaces to the search for “authentic” pornography. This analysis is based on affective ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Taiwan, South Korea, China, Japan and Canada, involving 48 semi-structured interviews and observational analysis of the physical and digital spaces where porn is present. Ultimately, this new materialist framework offers a more nuanced account of porn consumption, demonstrating that it emerges from the entanglement of individual bodies, technologies, sociocultural discourses and the affective resonances in relation to race, gender and sexuality.