Desistance

by Peter Sotos

In this prismatic and obliquely appreciative study of Antoine D’Agata’s photography, Peter Sotos arraigns the fraught vocabulary of gallery apologists — and of D’Agata himself — to locate a “finer definition of pornography” beneath the exigent demands of desire, transgression, and art.

From the text:

Not an argument with Antoine. What he says makes sense to me. Antoine can try. To articulate the lives, or his. Not enough like mine or how one should learn by now to mope. My choice to reduce his vague, perfectly desperate responses to even less isn’t done to pinpoint prurience or laud the banality of contradictions and intellectualized sexual honesty. I think he should be placed in art rather than pornography, since, honestly, one has to choose, label, sell, mutter. Having a place to go where the level isn’t boastful but conciliatory is a better place to have. The arguments are most often with those that need to blame the offer; who usually opt for the same slimy conclusion as me. Important to them to find expansion, humanity, a lean reason instead of bulk obsession. Failure, shrug-marketing and limp frightened objects performing jobs. Sex is tacky, central, but mysterious as long as the mystery is highlighted. Condemn the pain on one side while indulging it on the other. Pick bravery and introspection rather than impulsive divestiture and repetition. Point to the pain, reference a cause, track back but don’t return. Don’t progress unless it’s to be overwhelmed.

From the text:

Some will misunderstand it as pornography, yes? Reduce your introspection to their dogging level. The forum is sick, the conversation corrupted by the audience, the need for contextual references, the historical over the esthetic, diminished by lifeless answer rather than stiff ignorance. This, sucker, is where you become as lousy, easy, as the pornographers you seek to sound less like. Your tolerance, coming before your sale, is defensive. Your bravery given to you inconveniently by those who call you a coward. A rule of thumb, easily employed, only ever silently, my darling, is to substitute the word “adult” over every catcall of “coward.” “Thought” over every “need.” Repulsively, “product” over “art.” And it’ll help you to insist on “desistance” over “desire.”

From the text:

I like to think that the work I’ve done has forced me to look forward as an old dying man from the very first time I saw it. From when I was younger, not that I would have wanted to stay there. Drippy nostalgia, grief, that I have. But the questions, for example, that Antoine D’Agata bats off, come from him first. He convinces them before they open their selling robot french mouths. Might think they’re asking questions they’ve thought up. And you start talking about progress. The lack of it. The medication to escape. The desire to have desires that don’t lose yourself in desire. That’s for him. I don’t think the art stands up to the complimentary mock attacks but you don’t turn around and say that you just want to be happy. Or even learn to enjoy the pain.

214 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2014

About the author

Peter Sotos (born April 17, 1960) is a Chicago-born writer who has contributed an unprecedented examination of the peculiar motivations of sadistic sexual criminals. His works are often cited as conveying an uncanny understanding of myriad aspects of pornography. Most of his writings have focused on sexually violent pornography, particularly of that involving children. His writings are also considered by many to be social criticism often commenting on the hypocritical way media handles these issues.

In 1984, while attending The Art Institute of Chicago, Sotos began producing a self-published newsletter or "fanzine" named Pure, notable as the first zine dedicated to serial killer lore. Much of the text and pictures in Pure were photocopied images from major newspapers and other print media. Sotos also used a photocopy from a magazine of child pornography as the cover of issue#2 of Pure. In 1986 this cover led to his arrest and charges of obscenity and possession of child pornography. The charges of obscenity were dropped, but Sotos eventually pled guilty to the possession charge and received a suspended sentence. Sotos was the first person in the United States ever to be charged for owning child pornography.

Sotos' writings explore sadistic and pedophilic sexual impulses in their many, often hidden, guises. Often using first person narratives, his prose takes on the point of view of the sexual predator. Despite his early legal troubles, and the seemingly fatal stigma of falsely being labeled a pedophile, Sotos continues to garner support for his ideas and literary output.

He was until 2003 a seminal member of the industrial noise band Whitehouse.

Reviews

[Doug Brunell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sotos is not for everyone. In fact, he is for very few. To be willing to read a Sotos work, you have to be willing to have your boundaries pushed. You have to be willing to be taken to some very dark, dismal and often disgusting places.

Through the years Sotos has been looking at pornography and crime of all sorts (often combined) and their effects on the viewer, including himself. Here he examines the photographs of Antoine D'Agata and what they mean to him and the average viewer. Pornography, crime, glory holes ... one would say it is typical Sotos, but there is something else here. More of a feel that this the latter part of a journey that has been going on for years, where the anger has softened and that makes it more dangerous.

Again, Sotos is an acquired taste, but he causes a reaction like few writers alive are capable of doing. For the rest of you, there's Danielle Steele.