This is a companion post (of sorts) to my one from a week ago entitled ‘Smart People Saying Stupid Things‘. That one concerned smart but non-kinky people being stupid about kink. This one features a smart but non-kinky person being insightful and observant. Like that last post, the linked text is lengthy and non-erotic, so if you’re simply looking for visual stimulation I’d suggest skipping to the picture at the bottom.
The smart person in question is Camille Paglia and the article that caught my eye is called ‘Scholars in Bondage‘. It’s a critique of three recent academic books on kink and BDSM by Margot Weiss, Staci Newmahr and Danielle J. Lindemann. All three generated a fair amount of online discussion, particularly the one by Margot Weiss. I think it’d be fair to say that Paglia is less than impressed with them, and her criticisms really resonated for me.
Primarily she attacks their tendency to bury their subjects under ‘a sludge of opaque theorizing’. They start with a fascinating subject, but rather than use the evidence they’ve gathered to illuminate it, they obfuscate it. They write defensively, for the benefit of their academic peers and the theoretical frameworks they’ve been taught, rather than to push our understanding of the subject forward. This is a common tendency in these kind of studies and it always annoys the hell out of me.
Her other major criticism is that they lack historical background. They’re so caught up in the theories of modern gender studies that the cultural context is entirely omitted. From early religious iconography, through Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, up to Helmut Newton and Robert Mapplethorpe, there’s a rich and important cultural background to understand.
Finally, I particularly liked her closing thoughts on what S&M actually is.
My conclusion … was that sadomasochism is an archaic ritual form that descends from prehistoric nature cults and that erupts in sophisticated “late” phases of culture
Sadomasochism’s punitive hierarchical structure is ultimately a religious longing for order, marked by ceremonies of penance and absolution. Its rhythmic abuse of the body … is paradoxically a reinvigoration, a trancelike magical realignment with natural energies
I’m a non-religious person. I don’t ‘get’ religion and it makes no sense to me. But this remark did resonate. On the surface BDSM play seems sexual and hedonistic, a world away from the purity of religious penance and absolution. Yet, I wonder if the underlying psychology is actually quite similar. A great BDSM scene both focuses and energizes the self, but also liberates from a sense of self. The submissive/sinner is both the center of attention but also the least important person. They are reinvigorated through surrender and acquiescence.
This image is by the Italian photographer Alessio Delfino. It’s from a series entitled Tarots and is called La Papesse. I originally found it on the Femdom Style Counsel tumblr.
Amusingly, when doing a reverse image search to track down the source for the image, I came across this modified version of it. I’m all for people exploring their kinks and creating their own porn, but this is a real WTF. I’m not sure what’s the idea behind combining that image with the additional surreal text (apparently she’s a financial adviser who likes baked oatmeal) and profane text (she likes peeing, shitting and spitting on slaves), but I think it sprained my brain.
I like Paglia a lot. She’s awesomely smart and well-read, and I admire the way in which she rattles the bars of the smug and the up-tight wherever she finds them.
However, I take issue with statements like:
“My conclusion … was that sadomasochism is an archaic ritual form…”
I actually think it’s impossible to say what BDSM ‘is’ because it ‘is’ and means different things to different people.
If BDSM ‘is’ anything, it’s Protean in nature, shifting its shape, its rituals, its utterances and its meanings according to who is playing and the script that they have developed for the sexual drama that they have agreed to play out for mutual pleaure and ecstasy.
Similarly when she says:
“Sadomasochism’s punitive hierarchical structure is ultimately a religious longing for order”
I think she’s partly missing the point here. Religious longing is not just a longing for order, but a longing for transcendence – the desire to get out of our dreary false selves and be bound indissolubly to something greater and better.
What is this greater and better thing? I’d say it’s our inner Proteus, the free spirit, the dionysiac anarchist that we’ve had to repress in order to be civilised.
This sounds a bit high-falutin’ I guess, but the etymology is revealing: the Latin re-ligere. from which we get the noun religio means to bind again, or to bind more tightly.
Muslims, for example, are bound to, and submit to the phallocentric, obviously male, patriarchal Allah (the word ‘Islam’ means submission).
Me? I’d much rather submit to the eternal feminine, and cock a snook at patriarchy in the process.
Your first point ties in very closely to something I was originally trying to work into the post. It ended up on the cutting room floor, as the post was just getting too long and unwieldy. I’m always trying to balance between writing what I want to say and writing what will keep people reading.
I agree that BDSM is a complex and multifaceted thing. I generally shy away from simple definitions and attempts to reduce cause and effect to its most minimal components. There’s always a temptation in academia to do this (in history, psychology, sociology, etc.) because it leads to simpler conclusions. The reality is that what we define as one thing is typically many things, and our reasons for actions or behaviors are often a combination of things that can be difficult/impossible to untangle. I liked Paglia’s idea about S&M, but I certainly wouldn’t try and reduce S&M to simply that.
On your second I partially agree. I don’t think she misses the point, she just doesn’t emphasize the transcendence aspect of it as much. I think there is a longing for order and for transcendence in both. Religion often seems to be about control and order, much as BDSM is, whether it’s protocols in D/s or bondage and punishment in the S&M. People in religious groups often seem to look to a promise of freedom and nirvana while simultaneously sacrificing their choices in life. There’s a discovered freedom via a paradoxical relinquishing of control that both utilize.
-paltego
Thanks. You almost always provide very interesting and heady material. Your site is unique in providing a popular intellectual prospective. (Your selection of kinky images is also not bad.)
Appreciate the comment Mike. Interesting articles, heady material and a few good kinky images is exactly the recipe I strive for. I should make that the blog tag line 🙂
-paltego