PISANUS FRAXI
23
itself as a story, as something made up. Pornography tries precisely to
subdue or extinguish this consciousness; it typically undertakes to
represent itself not as a story or fantasy but as something which
"really" happened-which serves to indicate at what a primitive level
of fantasy it exists. In the degree that one accepts this combination of
confusion and deception, in that degree is one involved in the porno–
graphic fantasy itself. Ashbee, we can see, is fairly deeply involved.
Another sign of his involvement can be made out in a further
intellectual error which the passage I have quoted commits. What
Ashbee has done in it is to assimilate the entire category of obscene
or pornographic fiction to the few exceptions within it, to those few
works which tend to rise above the genre, or pretend to do so. This is
to confuse critical judgment with phenomenological analysis; in addi–
tion, as we shall see, most of these exceptions are not exceptions at all
but still operate within the conventions and standards of the genre
from which they arise, and continue to refer to it more than they do
to the novel or to anything else. We can conclude, therefore, that the
justification of the study of pornography on the grounds of its im–
portance or utility as social history is a slender and flimsy support
indeed. Intellectually it almost involves more difficulties than it is
worth.
Other arguments of differing merit may be advanced, and Ash–
bee resorts to most of them. He maintains, for example, that "no
production of the human brain should be ignored, entirely disre–
garded, or allowed to become utterly lost"; the thought of taking this
injunction literally staggers the mind, but one must grant to it a
certain kind of ideal truth. Then there is what may be called the
argumentum pro bibliomania:
to the "real lover of books for their
own sake, these unknown and outcast volumes ... are infinitely more
interesting than their better known and more universally cherished
fellows, and acquire additional value for him
in
proportion to the
persecution they have suffered, their scarcity, and the difficulty he
experiences in acquiring them." We may take it as a working rule
that such statements act as rationalizations for behavior harmless
enough in itself but at the same time troubling enough to require
distancing; and that they serve as screens for other motives. No great
ingenuity is demanded to discover what these motives are, and Ash–
bee himself is intermittently capable of revealing them. "The desire
