Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 
 

Files

File List


On the Genealogy of Obscenity.pdf (288.57 KB)

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

On the Genealogy of Obscenity: Naked Lunch and The Death of Obscene Literature

Harrison, Luke
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1403008847

Abstract Details

2014, BA, Oberlin College, English.
First made available in the United States in 1962, William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch and those who ventured to sell the illicit book were brought before obscenity courts on three separate occasions within the book's first four years in print. Despite breaking a different law on each separate occasion, Naked Lunch was judged to be equally obscene in all three cases. However, as Allen Ginsberg's testimony during the 1966 Massachusetts State Supreme Court trial that eventually exonerated Naked Lunch from its prior obscenity convictions demonstrates, there exist multiple interpretations and functions of the term "obscene". The discrepancy of usage between Burroughs, Ginsberg and the Court demonstrates a fundamental characteristic of obscenity, its ambiguity. The difficulty in definitively articulating the obscene is best characterized by United States Supreme Court Justice, Potter Stewart, in his famous quote, "I shall not today attempt to further define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [pornographic]… But I know it when I see it." Despite the transparency and moral certitude Justice Potter assumes in his widely quoted remark, the inability of the Supreme Court to standardize or elucidate a description of the obscene beyond the subjective acts of 'knowing' and 'seeing' represents a serious lapse in an otherwise exacting mode of discourse. To understand the significance of this lapse and to begin to gauge its influence on the critical reception of Naked Lunch, it is first necessary to approach the legal origins of obscenity.
Harrod Suarez (Advisor)
Jeffery Pence (Committee Member)
Kelly Bezio (Committee Member)
47 p.
Legal Studies; Literature
Naked Lunch; William Burroughs; Obscenity; Law and Literature; Justice

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Harrison, L. (2014). On the Genealogy of Obscenity: Naked Lunch and The Death of Obscene Literature [Undergraduate thesis, Oberlin College]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1403008847

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Harrison, Luke. On the Genealogy of Obscenity: Naked Lunch and The Death of Obscene Literature. 2014. Oberlin College, Undergraduate thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1403008847.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Harrison, Luke. "On the Genealogy of Obscenity: Naked Lunch and The Death of Obscene Literature." Undergraduate thesis, Oberlin College, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1403008847

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

oberlin1403008847
491
© 2014, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License On the Genealogy of Obscenity: Naked Lunch and The Death of Obscene Literature by Luke Harrison is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by Oberlin College Honors Theses and OhioLINK.