Presented in the course subject of Aesthetic Philosophy at DLSU Manila.

1. Aesthetic Derogation:
Hate Speech, Pornography,
Aesthetic Contexts
Lynne Tirrell
by:
Jaybee Cabañeros

2. HATE SPEECH
&
PORNOGRAPHY
I. The Absolutist and the
Reclaimer: Words
II. Social Practices and Harms
III. The Inferential Role Theory of
Meaning
IV. Some Implications and
Applications
V. Content and Point of View:
Image Absolutism

3. “How ‘Bigger’
Was Born”
Richard Wright

5. Pornography?
- Aesthetic Contexts?
- Censorship?
- Normalize?

6. Complicating matters when issues are raised in
aesthetic contexts is the fact that our society
operates with a confused and internally incoherent
conception of the nature of art.
On the one hand, we often think that art is extremely
powerful, that it has an immense capacity to control
our perceptions and beliefs, and that there is little
corrective once this power is exercised. Proponents
of this view often hold that art is a cultural staple
that ought to serve the social, political, or moral
needs of the people.

7. I. The Absolutist and the Reclaimer: Words
• Aesthetic
•Subspecies of the Linguistic
•Artistic Acts and Creations
•Species of Expression
• Declarative Speech
Paradigmatic Forum of Expression

8. Derogatory Forms
• Racist
• Sexist
• Ethnic Epithets
Absolutist Reclaimer
Liable in Civil Criminal Court Have a history that must be
remembered
Making terms taboo grants them
certain power.
to disarm the power of these terms
and images by internal
reorganization
– by affecting semantic change.

9. II. Social Practices and Harms
Derogatory Terms = Hate Speech
Racist Language LAWS
Discriminatory practices To stop the linguistic
Social Isolation behavior or at least
Economic Discrimination to punish it.
Harassment
Violence

10. Absolutist
• Sees derogatory terms as inextricably tied to stereotypes, which are
themselves notoriously resistant to correction.
• Words have the power to make a concept seem like something that
exists in the world.
ex. Nigger Us
crystalizes these beliefs into a concept
or prototype that has a sense concrete
reality to those who use the term.

11. Derogatory Terms have the power to
shape our social ontology because
they are broadly prescriptive, giving
people a proclaimed reality to live
down to.

12. Ontological Power of Language
•Subordinating discourse is but one factor, the
subordinating images are another; together.
•They are very potent, very volatile combination.

13. III. Inferential Role Theory of Meaning
Social Problems
Linguistic Problems
Inferential Role
Theory of Meaning
Derogatory Terms view makes good sense of the
social & political dimensions of
the discourse while making clear
their connection to its basic
linguistic & cognitive structure.

14. The Inferential Theory
• It emphasizes the place of the expression in relation to its context and
emphasizes the significance of the relation of that context to other
contexts (similar & dissimilar).
• The meaning of a sentence is a matter of its place
• In a pattern of inferences
• And the meaning or a word or expression is a matter of its various actual and
possible sentential roles.

15. Whenever one speaks, one simultaneously undertakes
commitments (of one’s own) and issues licenses to
one’s audience.
ex. “Mary is the dyke who went to the meeting.”

16. Content & Point of View : Image Absolutism
Art
• is a complex set of context – dependent practices
• expressive medium is always an issue at least to the artist
• whatever the medium or genre – who speaks = question
Absolutist
Derogatory Terms & Pornography
argues that their restriction is not justified solely on grounds of the
content of the expression, but because of the point of view expressed.
advocates or endorses the subordination
of one group of people to another.

17. Anti- Hate Speech Activists
• Have tended to emphasize the content…
• CONTENT
CANNOT BE SEPARATED
“THICK TERMS”
• POINT OF VIEW

18. Either Hate Speech & Pornography
Has aesthetic value.
No reason to hold that this is no distinction between content and point of
view, either generally or in particular.
CONTEXT CONTENT POINT OF VIEW
Long played role in a feminist definitions of pornography.

19. Helen Longino defines pornography:
“Verbal or pictorial material which represents or describes sexual
behavior that is degrading or abusive to one or more of the participants
in such a way to endorse the degradation.”
CRUCIAL involves power relations with
a victim and victor
Gloria Steinem says pornography
“Its message is violence, dominance, and conquest. It is sex being used
to reinforce some inequality, or to create one, or to tell us that pain and
humiliation (our or someone’s else) are really the same as pleasure.”

20. Erotica
sexually explicit but does not depict and endorse the
degradation or abuse of anyone.
characterized by loving and caring gestures between peers:
erotica is nice.
images may be powerful but they are not about power.
PORNOGRAPHY EROTICA
• -acts of subordination
-humiliation

21. Pornography
contain depiction of degradation and abuse
different lies in its endorsement
Any film portrays a perspective which may endorse or protest what it
depicts; the less a film or image seems to have a perspective.
The Feminist taxonomy is not far from standard views or representing
in art.

22. “With a picture as with any other label, there are always two
questions.”
-Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art
- What it represents?
- What sort of representation (or description) it is?
Pornography
Represents? Representation?
- Would be act as - Liberating image or educating image
“sexual subordination”

23. Kurt Seligmann, Ultra-Furniture (1938).
“Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme,”
Galerie des Baeux-Arts, Paris.
Meret Oppenheim, Cannibal Feast (1959)

24. Rene Magritte, La Bouteille (n.d.) Magritte, L’evidence eternelle (1930)

25. Magritte, La Philosophie dans le boudoir (1947) Pornography as Art

26. Is porn safe?

27. Mackinnon
“Pornography is not just a picture of a
particular act that subordinates a particular
woman, but that pornography itself
subordinates.”
- considered as Absolutist about
pornographic images.
- every moment of its production-violence to
women.

28. Pornography
- considering the relation between ethics and
aesthetics.
- while generally not art ; are images that
many diverse members of our society take to be
worth fighting against.
- controlled or eradicated.

29. Pornographic images can be powerful
“an image is generally taken to have power if it somehow affects our
behavior.
“If the image makes you change your attitude toward someone or
something, and alters your behavior in that regard, the image has
power.”
said to have cause violence against women

30. Oppression is a matter of there being a systematic
barriers and penalties that keep one group
subordinate to another; oppression is about
power. It is about the power of the social system
and how that system grants power to members of
one group because they are members of that
group and denies it to those who are not
members of that group.

31. To see oppression, one must move from a
microscopic perspective to a macroscopic one.
The power of words and images to make things real
by naming them is the heart of the issue.

32. I. The Image of Pornography in the 21st Century and Censorship
II. Hate Speech as Manipulative and Persuasive Arts of Languages
III. A Modern Discourse among Filipino Youth: Fliptop Battle
(Derogation and its Aesthetic Contexts)

33. I. The Image of Pornography in the 21st
Century and Censorship
The image of Pornography is a humiliation and
violence to women. In the 21st century, it is still
hidden and has censorship on the face of the society
yet everyone knows about it. This paper focused on
the context of aestheticism.

34. II. Hate Speech as a kind of Rhetoric: Manipulative
and Persuasive Languages of Art

35. III. A Modern Discourse among Filipino Youth: Fliptop
Battle (Derogation and its Aesthetic Contexts)
Filipino is rich in a culture of languages. In the generation of the youth
today, we can consider the fliptop battle as “Makabagong Balagtasan.”
The art of a fliptop battle can be considered in a different way of
justification on the account of hate speech and liberalism.
But some argue that hate speech rules violate the important
liberal principle that any regulation of speech be viewpoint-neutral. But
other liberals see hate-speech regulation as a justifiable part of the
effort to help rid society of discrimination and subordination based on
such characteristics as race, religion, ethnicity, gender and sexual
preference.