A library of fantasies: Norm-critical prefiguration of consent in feminist audio pornography

Intimate relations remain under-studied in alternative organization research, which has traditionally focused on socioeconomic transformation while overlooking counter-hegemonic efforts in the private and reproductive sphere. In this paper, we explore how Erotic Stories, a provider of feminist audio pornography, prefigures sexual emancipation by providing alternative sexual scripts focusing on consensual sex. Drawing on conceptual prefiguration, we trace how consent is imagined and actualized and what divergences between the two reveal about the norms being (re)produced. Our contributions are threefold: First, we expand the scope of alternative organizing to include prefiguration of intimate relations; second, we show how conceptual prefiguration operationalizes the organizational commitment to staying unfinished; and third, we develop norm-critical prefiguration as a processual and reflexive approach to alternative organizing. Norm-critical prefiguration offers a mechanism for alternative organizing to continuously reflect and revise the norms produced, thereby avoiding alternative norms to ossify into new hegemonies. We conclude that to prefigure intimate relations in less hegemonic ways, organizations must diversify the voices that shape the imaginary and continuously expand it, so that striving for utopia remains open, expansive, and generative of ongoing social transformation.