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From the invention of obscenity as a category of censorship in the early nineteenth century to the first moral crusades against the democratization of pornography at the century’s end, new relationships between knowledge and power emerged around the effects of pornography on the bodies and behavior of supposedly vulnerable audiences. Retracing the emergence of this system of regulation of images and bodies sheds light in turn on contemporary developments: how do these knowledge and power relationships evolve into their modern configurations at times of moral panic over cases involving gang rape or “sex addicts”?