This article introduces a dialectic of pornographic enlightenment through a reading of diaries written by the German avant-garde poet R. D. Brinkmann, and unfolds this basic pattern of modernity both systematically and historically with reference to Adorno and Horkheimer and the history of pornography. The framing of societal negotiations of pornography as a ceaseless shifting between the promise of liberation of and through sexuality and the fear of desensitization and loss of intimacy results in some comments on everyday life in "on/scenity" (Williams) and young people's identity politics ("Generation Porno") in pornographied pop cultures.