Pornography's Many Meanings: A Reply to C.M. Concepcion

C.M. Conception's review of “Pornography: An Uncivil Liberty ¹ 1 See Steinem (1986, 250); discussed in Carse (1995, 175-76, n. 15).
” ( Carse 1995 ) fundamentally misconstrues the position defended in that article. This paper examines possible sources of this misconstrual, focusing critical attention on the narrowly crafted, morally loaded notion of “pornography” that figures centrally in the original argument under review. Pornography is not a category of speech that can be charaC' terized as having one crucial meaning or message, nor is the message of pornography easily identifiable in instances of pornographic speech. This raises the problem of interpretive privilege, which haunts many of the antipomography arguments being offered in the contemporary debate, including the author's own earlier argument.