SOURCE: "The Art of Confrontation," in Without Apology: Andrea Dworkin's Art and Politics, Westview Press, 1998, pp. 78-93.

In the following essay, Jenefsky and Russo examine Dworkin's political methods and rhetorical discourse as an antipornography activist. According to the critics, Dworkin's approach centers upon strategies of "concretization" and "de/centering," by which she draws attention to the real-life implications of pornography while undermining familiar constitutional arguments in its favor.

Dworkin's advocacy against pornography is shaped by her commitment to confrontational politics as "the essence of social change." "The way that you destabilize male power," she says, "is basically not by seduction, and not by begging, and not by any of the female stratagems that [women] are essentially taught should be the basis of our politics…. The places where society has moved, it has been because of confrontation." Accordingly, Dworkin rejects all "female stratagems" as ineffective political methods and expressly...