On why pornography is a difficult scholarly subject:

…It remains only to admit to a final difficulty: that which proceeds from the extraordinarily platitudinous nature of scholarly discourse when it is brought to bear on a commercial enterprise entirely dedicated to pleasure and enjoyment. Pornography and science are both products of a society that very clearly distinguishes and separates the activities of the body from those of the mind. Because sex, like sports, is an exemplary activity of the body, this separation leads one to say that people of great beauty and sexual attractiveness, like great athletes, must be somewhat stupid, while we attribute to geniuses very little sex and a great deal of ugliness. Intellectuals find themselves, therefore, in little-known territory, which is no doubt why most scholarly discourses on fun careen rapidly and habitually to the outer limits of what science can produce in the way of utter boredom.

Bernard Arcand, The Jaguar and the Anteater