Masochism and Disembowelment: Parody, Shock, and the Drawing of Blood

While the title is pretty awful, I'm glad I finally wrote something that isn't purely dialectical.

Masochism and Disembowelment:

Parody, Shock, and the Drawing of Blood

I. Introduction

The dialectical transformation of elements into their opposites, the bursting-forth of identity from within a system of differences, is always a shock. Perhaps, then, the pure form of such a transformation is the absolute shock of reversal encountered in masochism, that from pain to pleasure. Transposed from the realm of the conceptual, and even of the experiential, we have in masochism pure shock, simultaneously immaculate and sordid, lofty and base, utterly contradictory: “There is something in pleasure’s satisfaction that is distinctly unpleasant” (Phillips 36). Such are the stakes of the masochistic event, though perhaps only at first pass. In other words, pain and pleasure may seem to be the primary opposing pair, but in their very opposition, since so strong, they show themselves to be in fact the same thing, so that perhaps instead of pain and pleasure the fundamental (or at least the more interesting) pair might be feeling and unfeeling.

Indeed, the shock of feeling, or more particularly of touching, may be all that there is. In any case, the relational aspect of masochism must be stressed—it is always a touching, a sharing, and the shock is not restricted to the submissive: “To be doted upon beyond reason tends to produce the reaction of loathing in the object of devotion… They [masochists or otherwise unrequited lovers] arouse in us a feeling of contempt, of scorn, as if slugs were crawling on our flesh” (Phillips 81). The classic example would be Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs, wherein Severin's Domme, Wanda, continually drives her servant away in disgust towards his groveling self-debasement until his final emotional self-destruction. Masochism is never a solitary endeavor.

First then: a disclaimer as well as a brief checklist for a masochistic encounter. The masochism here analyzed, since it comes from Sacher-Masoch himself, is primarily that between a male masochist and a female dominant, or “woman torturer”. While this is not necessary, I was able to utilize previous scholarship on this setup due to its literary presence in such writers as Masoch, Swinburne, and others. In any case, besides the two participants, a masochistic encounter may involve humiliation (both verbal and through action), a series of commands, erotic bondage, punishment of various kinds, and flagellation. For all this to occur smoothly and with consent, a contract is usually drawn up, either written or verbal, in which the particularities, especially the limits, of the encounter are laid out. In more extreme cases, this contract confers extra-legal (read: illegal) powers upon the dominant, such as complete control over the masochist for an unspecified period—Masoch's real-life contract with Wanda was of this type, a long-term “slave” contract as opposed to an encounter-only model. Regardless, the contract and also the states of mind of the subjects involved are what clearly differentiate masochism from torture as such.

In the first section, entitled “Masochism & Agony”, I will take a dialectical approach to the masochistic subject and his relation to experience, the senses, the woman torturer, and of course himself. From the work of Walter Benjamin (and indirectly also from Georg Simmel), I will draw a theory of the defensive ego in the face of shocks, as well as the importance of anxiety (which concept, however, I will discipline with that of “parody”). To this I will also apply Catherine Malabou's theory of the plastic self-determination of substance, in order to better understand the relation between the masochistically-let-in shock and the subject, how they might interact. In this regard it would be impossible not to cite Hegel, and therefore I will take a closer look at several sections from the Phenomenology of Spirit, particularly “Sense Certainty” and the Master-Slave dialectic. Next, I will return to parody in the wake of these discussions and continue to elaborate the relation of masochism to the dialectic of sense certainty and the possible undoing thereof. Finally, I will examine the character of “the Greek” in Sacher-Masoch's work and show that the gaze is impotent even when a third party is added to the masochistic encounter.

In the second section, entitled “Masochism & Skin”, I will turn primarily to Niklaus Largier's In Praise of the Whip: A Cultural History of Arousal and to Gilles Deleuze's Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty in Venus in Furs. Here, I will show that perhaps the previous psychoanalytic reading was followed a bit too hastily. First, the focus will be on masochistic anticipation as a state rather than an instance. Second, touching will be examined in its relation to the masochistic contract. Third, I will discuss Deleuze's concepts of disavowal and waiting, and show that they are important supplementary concepts. Finally, I will discuss the liberatory potential of masochism as an imaginative enterprise, drawing on Deleuze's theory of masochism as the rewriting, or rather the re-staging, of the oedipal myth. Strictly speaking, this is also a “psychoanalytic” reading, but it is one that is instated by the masochistic participants in a radical act of self-creation, and therefore its implications are vastly different.

In the third section, entitled “Masochism & Entrails”, I will attempt to lay out a theory of the masochistic event itself, specifically in its effects on the subject. To this end I am struck by Niklaus Largier's statement: “Flagellation is also a radical affirmation and negation of all images of finitude, all forms of radical spiritualism and radical materialism” (Largier 31). I will thus describe the death and rebirth of the subject with reference to the Crucifixion and to Aztec human sacrifice, with a special emphasis on the immanent spreading-out of one's entrails. This is masochism at its most orgiastic, its most anarchic, but also therefore at its most terrifying and deadly. Therefore, I will attempt to convey something of that experience and present a conclusion bringing together the insights of the preceding sections.

II. Masochism & Agony

Pain, both physical and mental, is an absolutely essential part of masochism. The polarization of pleasure and pain is what allows for the complexity of the masochistic experience, for the subtle and delicate preparation of the erotic contract. This setup, this difference of the two concepts held apart, however, is deconstructed in the course of the encounter, and the manner in which that deconstruction occurs is of prime importance. In other words, it is indispensable that the masochist in some sense regulate the flow of experience, that incoming stimuli are subjected to a filtering process. It is perhaps counter-intuitive, then, that the masochistic ego is to be conceived as an opening. Masochism is a letting-in of experience before it is a regulation thereof. Fundamentally, masochism is the opening-up of the ego in the face of the world brought to a particular level of intensity.

It is in this manner that masochism works against the senses. The senses are—and this is of course strange to think about—primarily tools of regulation and rejection, keeping out vast amounts of information the processing of which would surely drive us mad: “In Freud's view, consciousness... has another important function: protection against stimuli” (Benjamin 161). . Though it may sound absurd, the senses work against sense. They are gateways, wardens whose sole effort is concentrated on the insurmountable task of shutting us off from the outside world.

Thankfully, the senses are helped in their task by another, impossibly strong force: anxiety. Anxiety is the ever-vigilant state of preparation for shock, the premeditation of possibilities that allows for their handling by the ego: “The more readily consciousness registers these shocks, the less likely are they to have a traumatic effect” (Benjamin 161). One cannot truly be shocked when one has been sufficiently anxious, and indeed the ego-shattering shock might just as well be called a surprise. Always worrying about the future, the anxious ego is able to stave off the vast majority of possible injuries by disconnectedly prejudging them. The problem—and what a problem it is!—is that too much anxiety is poor medicine, and by its self-reinforcing nature it is most assuredly always too much. Indeed, the affliction of our age might be said to be anxiety or otherwise anxious disorders. Indeed, the struggle against this unholy extension of the senses is the very definition of the artistic endeavor: “...the mystery of art begins right there, where the senses cease to be of any use” (Huysmans 17). It is for this reason that Sacher-Masoch's “supersensualism” should be interpreted as “beyond” or even “without” the senses rather than indicating an abundance of sense experience.

But certainly anxiety and anxious sensualism are not the only forces at work here. This brings us back to masochism, the controlled opening of the floodgates of sense. According to Anita Phillips:

"Sexual arousal happens when a stimulus is so perturbing, so intolerable, that one's sense of a controlling self breaks down. Masochism is the ground of sexuality, not an individual aberration: what we seek in it is a kind of ecstatic pain, a bodice-ripping, an overwhelming physical sensation" (43).

Or, according to Leo Bersani, “Sexuality would be that which is intolerable to the structured self” (38). In this sense, masochism (which is, according to the line we are developing here, synonymous with sexuality itself) is transgressive. Instead of transgressing a pre-given (or rather pre-implied) limit, as occurs in the writings of the Marquis de Sade, masochism plays with the very notion of the limit and lowers it through parody to the point where the superego itself is an impossibility. In this sense, masochism's operation is quite different from that of transgression—and this mirrors the literary techniques of Sacher-Masoch, who never describes obscenities and whose characters are always clothed. As Deleuze notes, “The body of the victim remains in a strange state of indeterminacy except where it receives the blows” (24). Compare this with Sade, whom Bataille takes as the paragon of transgression.¹ In any case, the complexity and seeming absurdity of the stipulations of the masochistic contract serve this very function, that of destroying and reconstituting the limit so that failure and hence punishment are utterly assured.

But what allows masochism this strange power to trump anxiety? In a word: parody. It is only mockery, twisted self-debasement, humiliation and self-parody that can weaken the ego to the extent necessary to experience a shock. In this way, conscious manipulation can be utilized, awareness can be turned against itself, for awareness is nothing but a compressed point of anxiety: “Masochism protects you from your engulfing fear of the entire universe by encouraging one part of it to invade you and ravish you” (Phillips 63). The ego may be too strong initially, a reified extra-subjective thing, but through parody it can be loosened and made plastic, pliant to the whip. Parody, specifically masochistic self-parody, is the absurd over-extension of disciplinary structure.

In the face of such power, the submissive trembles. This utter power can be taken to stand in for death itself, as evidenced from Sacher-Masoch's real-life contract with Wanda: “...I [Wanda] have the power and the right to torture you [Masoch] to death by the most horrible methods imaginable” (qtd. in Deleuze 235). But this is not the case of the sadist bearing down on a victim—rather, the staged, theatrical nature of the parody is essential.

The aforementioned contract also reminds us that it is not just torture: “You have nothing save me; for you I am everything, your life, your future, your happiness, your unhappiness, your torment and your joy” (qtd. in Deleuze 235-236). It is thus as an imitation, particularly of courtly love, that masochism debases the masochist through his self-othering, through the over-extension of his own feelings, his far-too-passionate love. It is not a simple humiliation as one might encounter in a schoolroom, but is a movement-from, a flowing-forth, a radically self-originated and even self-originating act, where “self” is quite distinct from the anxious ego. Most importantly, it induces a state of nearly absolute vulnerability which alone could lead to masochist's goal: “One could deduce that the diminishing of the ego in masochism is a prelude to its annihilation during the sexual act” (Phillips 105). This is only our first encounter with parody, the full and relevant meaning of which will be successively elaborated.

In a more general sense, we might say that masochistic parody is a making-plastic, the process of plasticity, to use Catherine Malabou's terminology. It is activity done in preparation, an attempt to see what is coming, an anticipation, while at the same time what occurs during climax (not necessarily, and indeed not even usually the genital sexual kind) is utterly unpredictable. Here we must draw attention to two apparently competing images of plastic—that of the plastic arts and that of plastic explosives. Even the latter must be carefully and conceptually manufactured. In the context of masochism, perhaps we would do well to focus on this latter determination, without on that account discounting the former. Under this conception, climax is the Event, the zero-point of madness, the eternally-proclaimed apocalypse, and parody is the millenarian devotion thereto, all the more disturbing for its seeming lack of sincerity. This metaphor of apocalypse and preparation captures the liberatory potential of masochism quite nicely: it is not merely a matter of the deferral of Absolute Knowledge or the end of history, but rather it structures all activity and exists in the present not as a conceptual possibility but as anticipation, as a tense state of being. In parody, everything is at stake for the masochist, and hence his every muscle is taught. Contrary to anxiety, however, this preparation is effected not through contraction but through over-extension, not through a mental rehearsal of possibilities but through stretching the very concept of possibility. Such an activity could not fail to leave its mark on the body.

It is here that the opening section of Hegel's Phenomenology, that on sense-certainty, might be of use. There, it was shown that even the concepts of “here” and “now”, seemingly immediate, contain within them in implicit form the greatest heights of abstraction and even the greatest denial of immanent being. Once the dialectic is started, it is hard to go back because, as Malabou notes, cultural assimilation is a sped-up traversing of these very dialectical ruts (146-152). That is to say, discourse itself creates and accelerates dialectical simplification. This simplification, however, while unavoidable, need not be a strait-jacket, as so many have supposed. Rather, masochism is that process which “reverses” the dialectic and makes it plastic once more.

Masochism's aforementioned play with limits, its infliction of true bodily pain on the masochist, and its overextension of both tender love and cruelest discipline, push back dialectical development to a ground-state or zero-point, though distinct from sexual climax. This shock creates fertile ground for an alternate development where before there was a stagnant identity. Thus at this level masochism works against the dialectic. However, this is not the whole of its action, for it is not only a shock that interrupts the structured self. It is also a creative restructuring of that self. In other words, masochism is not just a pain that destroys structure, for this would only open it up to be re-assimilated. Rather, and this cannot be stressed enough, the contract confers what may be considered a premeditated structure on the post-masochistic self—it is the herald not of anarchy but of self-creation; the fact that the resulting self, due to the properly traumatic nature of the event, is unpredictable is of no consequence, and should not surprise us. This aspect is simply another modality of Malabou's “to see (what is) coming”.

Of perhaps even more obvious application is the Phenomenology chapter on master and slave, but this obviousness may turn out to be seriously misleading. There, Hegel lays out a dialectic of recognition, often represented as that of the gaze. Perfect mutual recognition thus becomes the basis of absolute self-consciousness. While it might be tempting to equate the master with the Domme, and the masochist with the slave, this is unfruitful to say the least. First, it is the masochist who is in control, not in the sense that he has a superior potential for self-consciousness, but in that he controls and structures the masochistic encounter as far as possible, which only then becomes the basis for changes in consciousness; the order is the reverse of that found in Hegel. Second, the gaze plays almost no part in masochism per se, the focus being rather on touching, a mutual interaction of quite a different order (we will return to this later). Third, while both masochist and slave experience abstract negativity, which makes the both of them tremble, its effects in each case remain to the other relatively incommensurable. For the slave, there exists a world of positivities that are cleaved by the negative power of thought which first gained potency through the abstract negativity of death. The standing or perpetual negation of the slave's subject is a testament to such an experience. For the masochist, on the other hand, the de-structuring of the self (a type of abstract negativity) confronts something already negative. In other words, for the masochist there already exists his negative self, which has however hardened into dialectical modes of discourse. The masochistic event serves to de-structure that self, through trembling (a type of negativity), which however utilizes and makes reference to a positive basis, that of rebirth. For the masochist, and we will return to this in the final section, the problem is not to enact a dialectic onto a positive plane, but rather first to undo that dialectic, the only safe passage between the twin rocks of life and death (as opposed to living and dying).

Thus the function of parody is of utmost importance, as it is the precondition for this safe passage. Again, this is not an activity of the gaze. Parody is theatrical insofar as it is role-play, and not insofar as it relies on an audience or spectator. Even the staging between the dominant and the masochist is not predicated on seeing or even on recognition: “Masochistic love is very much interested in the person of the other, but not all that much in the other as a person” (Phillips 58). There are, however, certain types of sexual exhibitionism or polyamory employed in masochistic fantasy, the most important of which is undoubtedly the appearance of “the Greek” in Sacher-Masoch's fiction.

This character functions as a third party privy to the interactions of the masochist and the Domme, and is in this regard even in league with the Domme against the masochist. Importantly, the Greek as archetype, while apparently sought out by Sacher-Masoch in his actual life (see Appendix III in Deleuze), causes Masoch's characters excruciating pain, and is even the reason for Severin's implosion at the end of Venus in Furs. The Greek, however, is not a spectator and indeed cannot be, for in Masoch the gaze (and following Hegel, this means language as well) has no power, its detached Logos utterly incompatible with the tirelessly sought shock: “Of course, language never succeeds in the incarnation of experience, but perhaps it is at its worst when attempting to describe pain” (Phillips 31). Deprived of the power of touch, especially that sanctioned by the masochistic contract, the Greek would be both powerless and useless, rather a pathetic voyeur than a (too) cruel instrument of humiliation.

III. Masochism & Skin

It seems that the conclusion to the previous section took us far and away from the activity of the ego that was our first axiom. There, we concluded that masochism could be conceived as a ritualized imitation or structuring, a mimetic rather than symbolic act which deals directly in the extremes of sense. Indeed, we must depart from Hegel for a while and continue our analysis on the level of the skin, where the playing-out of the drama of masochism takes place, namely, ritualized bodily space. It is here that we will come from a somewhat different (though of course related!) angle and perhaps refine several prior assumptions about the proper import of the masochistic experience. First, the tense state of being that is masochistic experience will be contrasted with a view of the event which is primarily focused on an instantaneous or sexually “normal” climax. Second, it will be seen that this state of being is incompatible with a representational or gaze-based account of masochism, and that the more democratic modality of touching is thus of prime importance. Third, the concept of parody will be supplemented with disavowal and waiting, two concepts suggested as relevant by Gilles Deleuze in his Masochism. Following in the same vein, I will discuss some implications of Deleuze's theory of masochism as the creative re-making of the oedipal myth.

Focusing on the ego, “One could deduce that the diminishing of the ego in masochism is a prelude to its annihilation during the sexual act” (Phillips 105). Replacing the “diminishing of the ego” with our tense state of being, we are left with masochism as a state of anticipation for a future conclusion, the sexual act, the orgasm-as-Event. Taken at face value, however, this completely misses the point of masochism: as both Largier and Phillips note, it often happens that in masochistic encounters there is no sexual climax, no orgasm, often no genital contact whatsoever (the English whipping-houses are a good example of this). Thus, the importance of the state of being, wherein the future is here and now, yet remaining distinct. The tenseness of this state applies to temporality itself—it takes the diffuseness of time and forcibly folds it into the body, creating disorder within the muscles and sinews of the masochist. In other words, the tense state of being is an anticipation of the here which therefore becomes the now. That anticipation is not achieved by a temporal differentiation wherein the present separates the future from itself (and thereby creates the conditions of anticipation), but by the exact reverse process: the projected future is merged with the here-and-now to create the conditions of being and therefore of experience. If one were to look for masochistic “climax” as for a point in time, the state thereof would be missed. This climax does not occur within a moment, but is instead a point of maximal contraction that thereby destroys the temporality that would label it as such.

It is in this sense a mimetic and not a representational-projectional state—there is no correspondence-between and therefore no discursive truth. Perhaps agreeing with this, Largier writes, in the context of self-flagellation in religious asceticism, “Against all expectations, there is no concealed truth at work here—no spiritual, animal, or legal depth of the body. Instead, there is an extroversion that stages the ungraspability of anything inward while also awakening anxiety, desire, or horror” (15). It is in this play, between the self who happens to suffer and the suffering-self, in other words between the accidental and the essential, that the masochistic event takes place. But this, while necessary, is not yet a sufficient condition for the event—above all, it requires not only the “none” of the masochist's self but the “two”, masochist and dominant.

In masochism, it is not the gaze that makes actual the sharing of sense, but touch, the contact of skin. In “normal” sexuality, this contact is that of skin on skin, a single plane of interaction. We can thus point to masochism as a reinterpretation of this touching, a pushing of that seemingly democratic action to its breaking point, its most sordid and vilified extreme. Here, there is enacted a hierarchical structure, a power relation controlling who gets to touch who, where, and how, in a parodically over-ritualized manner. Masochistic touching is of course not driven by actual force, but by the democratic contract—perhaps it is this aspect that makes it so shocking. As when a dictator is voted into power, we are in masochism confronted with something that draws its greatest effect from the utter reversal of the supposed spirit of its own preconditions, but which nevertheless fulfills them and even brings them to a sort of perfection. The gaze, by contrast, is already too hierarchical to account for masochistic nuance.

Rather than parody, Deleuze suggests the concepts of waiting and disavowal to describe the masochistic event. In contrast to the negation of discursive reason (as found in the work of the Marquis de Sade), masochism utilizes a suspenseful disavowal in the imaginary order (see Leopold von Sacher-Masoch). Deleuze's explication of disavowal is worth quoting at length:

It might seem that a disavowal is, generally speaking, much more superficial than a negation or even a partial destruction. But this is not so, for it represents and entirely different operation. Disavowal should perhaps be understood as the point of departure of an operation that consists neither in negating nor even destroying, but rather in radically contesting the validity of that which is: it suspends belief in and neutralizes the given in such a way that a new horizon opens up beyond the given and in place of it. (28)

It is in this sense that masochism is connected to creation and creativity for Deleuze. The masochistic encounter does not destroy or negate the conditions in which it was framed (the contract), but rather allows for the playing-out of possibilities, up to and perhaps beyond the radical dissolution of even the appearance of the subject, that which could enter into the contract in the first place. Masochistic disavowal, and in particular the coldness of the interactions between dominant and masochist, “is not the negation of feeling but rather the disavowal of sensuality” (Deleuze 46).

Such disavowal must be combined with waiting (for this is the dramatic suspension), which we have previously indicated with the designation “tense state of being”. However, Deleuze here points to two types of waiting, or rather two moments contained in masochistic pure waiting: the first is “essentially tardy, always late and always postponed”, and the second is that “on which depends the speeding up of the awaited object” (63). The first is thus, more concretely, the lack of genital climax; the second is the compression of future into the now which manifests itself to the masochist as an acceleration—this is thus revealed as a justification of our previous use of “anticipation”.

Disavowal and parody thus come together: “Disavowal is a reaction of the imagination, as negation is an operation of the intellect or of thought” (Deleuze 110). Imagination is the tie that binds together the “theatrics” and the “experience” of masochism, that reveals play as theater and vice versa. There is no need of a spectator, but rather the two actors, performing for themselves and each for the other. The performance is not necessarily one for the gaze, but for the imagination, for imaginative creativity. While appearing to approximate its ideal, it might be better said that masochism is its own ideal, in that the masochistic encounter is not a representation or even an instantiation of the abstract form of overextended courtly love. Rather, the event must be held in tension by both parody and disavowal: parody, because it is in the enactment of an exaltation taken too far that allows the mind as much as the body to be cut; disavowal, because it is only in the dramatic suspension of the given that this exaltation can take place on the plane of the imagination. And how else could a real parody function but by disavowal? Through disavowal, the primary function of parody changes from (irreverent) approximation of an ideal type to a creative actualization.

We now turn to Deleuze's theory of masochism as a creative remaking, through disavowal, of the Oedipus myth. Here we will focus on the literary case of male masochism as narrated in Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs, though the implications could easily be applied elsewhere. There, masochism is an incestuous fantasy wherein the father has no place. First, the woman torturer is imbued with the symbolic power of the father or of the superego, and thereby does she punish the masochist—it is not, however, the ego of the masochist that takes the beating but the likeness of the father (Deleuze 58). Thus, the masochist imagines (and experiences!) a world without the father, through whose symbolic death (in the act of punishment) the masochist is reborn: “The masochist practices three forms of disavowal at once: the first magnifies the mother by attributing to her the phallus instrumental to rebirth; the second excludes the father, since he has no part in this rebirth; and the third relates to sexual pleasure, which is interrupted, deprived of its genitality and transformed into the pleasure of being reborn” (Deleuze 87). The first is the giving of absolute power to the woman torturer (the mother), the second is the punishing of the father in the masochist, and the third explains the lack of genital sexuality in masochistic encounters.

From another angle, we see the woman torturer invested with the myriad powers of the three Freudian mothers: oral, anal, and genital. If the woman torturer strays too far into any one of these territories, then she cannot be capable of fulfilling the masochistic contract. For example, at the beginning of Venus in Furs, Wanda is a purely hetaeric, pagan woman. In her own words:

I admire the serene sensuality of the Greeks—pleasure without pain... Nature admits of no stability in the relations between man and woman... Despite holy ceremonies, oaths and contracts, no permanence can ever be imposed on love; it is the most changeable element in our transient lives. (Sacher-Masoch, qtd. in Deleuze 131-134)

But on the other side, the sadistic anal mother is also dangerous and unfit for masochism. At the end of the story, Wanda has gone too far in this direction in her humiliation of Severin at the hands of the Greek. Thus, a stable medium must be found, so that the woman torturer is both the strict and punishing anal mother and the wild and sensual pagan—this is the function of the imaginatively-created all-encompassing oral mother, in whom are subsumed the other two. Such an integration is obviously very difficult, and it is this difficulty that thwarts Severin's wishes time and time again.

In any case, “The threefold division of the mother [anal, oral, genital] literally expels the father from the masochistic universe” (Deleuze 56). The mother is everything, and the father nothing. This imaginative vision is nothing short of the vision or rather the symbolic enactment of a new society. As Deleuze rather beautifully puts it:

 

"Masochistic coldness represents the freezing point, the point of dialectical transmutation, a divine latency corresponding to the catastrophe of the Ice Age. But under the cold remains a supersensual sentimentality buried under the ice and protected by fur; this sentimentality radiates in turn through the ice as the generative principle of a new order, a specific wrath and a specific cruelty" (46).

What these psychoanalytic considerations teach us is not that the masochistic event must follow this structure, but rather that the specific techniques of masochism allow for such creative remaking of what were previously supposed to be solid and unchangeable psychical facts, namely the Oedipal fantasy. Indeed, “There is no specifically masochistic phantasy, but rather a masochistic art of phantasy” (Deleuze 64). This imaginative capacity is, in the last analysis, the most important and defining aspect of masochism, what separates it from all other forms of truly erotic sexuality: “Masochism is both relieved and fulfilled by death, and to stop the play of representations perhaps condemns fantasy to the climatic and suicidal pleasure of mere self-annulment” (Bersani 46).

IV. Masochism & Entrails

We now have a relatively developed constellation of concepts at our disposal, some newly tempered and some borrowed: parody, disavowal, waiting/anticipation, touching, contract, imagination, climax. We are now in a position to describe, as thoroughly as possible, the masochistic event itself, the radical implications of an existence framed by masochism. In order to do this, we must reference the subject (and its dissolution), if only because it is a peculiar state of the subject that distinguishes masochism from torture or sadism. Furthermore, it is in the play between sense and structure that the activity of masochism takes place. This relation between sense and structure, self and other, the experience of the masochist when confronted with a cruel and excruciating punishment, can be conceived as a disembowelment of the self in all its modalities.

Disembowelment is the violent making-outer of the inner, of what is vital inside the mental or bodily organism. In masochism, the subject is disemboweled, his inner experience cut out of him and spread out over the plane of immanent sense. In this offering of the self, there is a marked similarity to both the Aztecs and to Christ on the cross on which it is worth quoting at length:

"They [the Aztecs and others] believe that their gods will not be happy with the blood alone, but that it has to come from the heart, and that the heart itself has to be sacrificed. This, as well, has been shown by Christ. He was not content with the fact alone that he sacrificed his most holy blood for the sins of the world... but he wanted that they opened his breast and side after his death. There, in his side, lay hidden the most valuable part, that is, his most beloved, most tender, and most holy heart, which burned beyond measure in his love of mankind. He wished that even the last drop of blood in his heart should be spent. Thus he wished to show that he gave not only the blood in his body, the blood in his limbs and vessels, but the very blood of his own heart" (Diez and Vetter, qtd. in Largier 189-90).

In these symbolic acts, God or gods of some kind become corporeal: God becomes man through Christ as the Aztec gods become incarnated in ixiptlas. Subsequently, the incarnation is not just killed but radically opened up, so that its insides are exposed, or even, in the case of Aztec human sacrifice, torn out. Thus we have a perfect symbolic representation of the masochistic event: the masochistic subject is made vulnerable and then, neither destroyed nor negated, it is opened up and spread out. There is no sublation here, as if the progression were a dialectical synthesis. Rather, when the subject is spread out, the dialectic is undone (at least for a time). Again, this undoing does not result in infinite chaos, though it may partake of such a thing. Instead, the dead subject is reborn, just as Christ was resurrected. This rebirth is into a new order, though perhaps the pure pleasure in being thus reborn trumps any particularity thereof.

After Christ's death there occurred a series of shocking events, including earthquakes and the opening of tombs. At this Saint Longinus declared, “Truly this man was God's Son!” (Matthew 27:54). Experiencing the death of one's subject is an absurdity (like Christ's death, the fact that he “was” the son of God, has ceased to be so!) after which one might say, “Truly this my subject had to die, though I thought it impossible!” Without its entrails coloring all concepts and actions red with blood, the subject would be reduced to the gaze, the solipsistic God of pure transcendence. If one must truly touch everything, share sense with everything, even one's deepest insides must be unraveled from the body cavity and flattened into a massive gory antenna.

Materially speaking, it is the contract that structures this spreading-out and prevents the simple dispersion of the subject into momentary death, only to be reconstituted in just as joyless and powerless a self as before. The contract creates the conditions for parody, which thereby creates the conditions for death. The relation of this so-called death to discourse and structure is complex: “...Flagellation cannot and should not be narrated, but rather... the event itself and its power of arousal demand to be awakened by narrating them” (Largier 28). Though Largier speaks again with reference to ascetic flagellation, the same insight applies to masochistic flagellation, and masochism in general. In particular, the masochistic event is contained within the narrative structure of the parodic contract. Even though such an event at its most extreme is impossible to narrate or even to describe in language, the context of masochism does it anyway.

The liberatory potential lies in this, that the dead subject is (ideally) reborn in an order of his own choosing, if only symbolically and for a time: “One can certainly speak here [again, ascetic imitation of Christ] of a radical individualization” (Largier 57). It is not transcendent indeterminacy that marks the masochistic subject, but neither is it immanent determinacy. Rather, it is the art of self-creation, of fantasy, and, most importantly, the twin virtues of joy and knowledge found simultaneously in one's own death and rebirth: “For man to finally be revealed to himself he would have to die, but he would have to do so while living—while watching himself cease to be” (Bataille, qtd. in Derrida 257).

The deepest and most vital aspects of the masochist are thus forcibly expurgated by the violence of a world without dialectics. The brutal flagellation, the cruel humiliation, the ropes tied just barely too tight—all these together constitute a kind of symbolic death. For a time, only pain is real, and then after that only feeling. Then one opens one's eyes and sees one's shattered thought-forms beneath the boot of the Domme, and one trembles with the realization of Saint Longinus. It is only then that masochistic parody is completed, with the birth of a new self.

Works Cited

Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books, 2007. Print.

Deleuze, Gilles. Masochism: An Interpretation of Coldness and Cruelty, together with the entire text of Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. G. Braziller, 1971. Print.

Derrida, Jacques. Writing and Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Print.

Hegel, GWF. The Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. J. B. Baillie. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1967. Print.

Huysmans, J. K. La-Bas: A Journey Into the Self. Sawtry: Dedalus, 2001. Print.

Largier, Niklaus. In Praise of the Whip: A Cultural History of Arousal. New York: MIT Press, 2007. Print.

Malabou, Catherine. The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic. New York: Routledge, 2005. Print.

Phillips, Anita. A Defense of Masochism. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. Print. 

 

1See Bataille's Erotism