Some differences are playful; some are poles of world historical systems of domination. ‘Epistemology’ is about knowing the difference.
Donna Harraway, The Cyborg Manifesto
May 092008
Dec 262007
I’m zeroing in on the nexus of slavery, sensibility and the nascent sadomasochistic subculture, sometime around 1800. I think this is when the master-slave terminology and imagery entered the culture. There was flagellation and the like prior to that, but I don’t think the master-slave jargon was a part of it.
I think you need a certain historical and/or geographical distance to enable the fantasy of something like slavery. Munby and Cullwick, I theorize, absorbed slavery images and literature in their childhood and youth, through books, stage plays, minstrel street performances and other media. However, in early 19th century England and other European nations, real slavery was “back then” (i.e. something in the barbaric past, practiced by “primitive” nations) and “over there” (i.e. the tropics, Africa and North America) not in the here and now. Even contemporary texts, like Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1850), were comfortably “over there” for Europeans.
Jul 152007
Hughes, Kathryn. The Short Life & Long Times of Mrs. Beeton Fourth Estate, London, 2005
I’ve read about the fetishist correspondence in mid- and late-Victorian magazines in several sources. These were the 19th century precursors of Penthouse Forum letters, people apparently writing in about their personal experiences and/or fantasies. I take the position that most of these letters were genuine, in that they were not fabricated in-house, but came in from outside.
The question is, however, why were these letters published in such mainstream, middle-class publications?
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May 182007
Brissenden, R.F. Virtue in Distress MacMillan, 1974
My readings on slavery and sympathy brought me to the concept of sensibility. This is a key concept in how we think about human nature, and I think will prove to be a key issue in the history of BDSM.
We’re used to thinking of reason and emotion as being opposing forces in the human mind. In the late 18th century, however, thinkers like Rousseau and Locke developed the idea of sensibility, which is part of a related cluster of related words with shifting meanings, including “sense” (both as in “the five senses” and as in “common sense”), “sentient”, “sensation”, “sentiment” and “sentimentality.”
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May 102007
Burkert, Walter. Ancient Mystery Cults Harvard College, 1987.
The Villa of the Mysteries, and the mural sketched above, is an increasingly important part of the origins of BDSM, and I’m even thinking of using it for the cover illustration (should there ever be a cover.) But what is it? Was it religion or pornography or something else?
Apr 252007
Morgan, David. Visual Piety: A history and theory of popular religious images University of California Press, 1998
Since I started this project, I’ve thought that Christian religious art depicting Christ and saints in positions of torment was a key element in the story. But I’ve yet to find a good book on the subject that explains the why of these images.
Morgan’s book is a good start on this. He links the late medieval practice of depicting a beaten, bloody Christ to the psychological practice of empathy. In this case, the believer practices piety by looking at the image of Christ (or a saint) and imagining him or her self in the same situation. Humanity suffers along with Christ, and reaches the divine. The suffering body is a route to the divine, or put another way, we suffer to reach beyond ourselves. God suffers as humans do.
Apr 062007
Glucklich, Ariel. Sacred Pain: Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul. Oxford University Press, 2001.
Although this is a fairly academic read, Glucklich’s book has given me a lot of food for thought on the role of pain in human life and society. It’s a shame that Glucklich doesn’t discuss sadomasochism and instead confines himself to medical and religious contexts.
Mar 112007
Catholic World News has an interesting comment on modern-day mortification of the flesh.
Senator Paola Binetti, who is also a medical doctor, spoke out after another legislator, the homosexual activist Franco Grillini, made a reference to “sadomasochistic practices” of Opus Dei— specifically mentioning the cilice, a chain that is worn around the thigh, chafing and pricking the user’s skin.
Explaining why celibate members of Opus Dei wear the cilice for a few hours each day, Dr, Binetti told the Italian television audience that the practice is a small mortification, helping members to appreciate the value of sacrifice. “The cilice,” the lawmaker said, “causes us to reflect on the fatigue of daily life, such as the sacrifice of the mother who wakes during the night because her child is crying.”
I finally found a book with a thorough account of the flagellant movements of the 13th and 14th centuries, and the papal condemnation in 1349: Norman Cohn’s The Pursuit of the Millennium (Pimlico, 2004).
The flagellants were a populist movement who, apart from flogging themselves around churches, also advocated attacking the clergy and nobility, and claimed to be able to perform miracles. Their leaders, lay worshipers called Master or Father, took confession and offered absolution. The people treated them like living saints.
This was too threatening for the powers that be. Pope Clement VI had once authorized mass public flagellations in Avignon, but a year later in 1349 he flip-flopped and issued a papal bull banning flagellation. Religious and secular authorities colluded and effectively stamped out the movement with excommunication and executions, though it flared up every now and then until the 1480s.
The irony is that the Church maintained flagellation as an ascetic and monastic practice (not a sacrament as the flagellants had it) after the papal bull. Some former flagellants repented by being flogged by priests in St. Peter’s in Rome.
Opeus Dei still practices corporal mortification to this day, though it’s generally mild stuff like taking a cold shower, fasting, remaining silent for certain periods. This is practiced by numeraries (celibate lay worshipers).
It looks to me like the issue was about control. Flagellants were a populist movement, mainly comprised of peasants and artisans, who experienced their self-inflicted pain as an imitation of Christ and a personal experience of contact with the divine. This was in contrast to the Church’s monopoly on religious experience. If you want to touch God, you couldn’t do it on your own, or see someone else do it. It had to be sanctioned by the Church.
Perhaps that this is what drove flagellation and mortification out of religious life for the laity, and made it reappear in the low culture of brothels and broadsheets. A few centuries later, we have the modern BDSM culture in Western civilization.
Incidentally, I can’t help drawing comparisons between the flagellants and the Space Monkeys of Project Mayhem in Fight Club: salvation through self-inflicted violence, growing into a paramilitary organization, plus a populist critique of elites and an apocalyptic mentality.
Jan 172007
One thing I’d always hoped to witness, since I started to study sexuality seriously, was the birth of a new fetish. To me, that would like seeing a new species evolve right before your eyes.
I have yet to be the first to discover a fetish, but I’m always on the lookout for new ones. The closest I’ve come is coming across the web site, Tales of the Veils. This site is devoted to stories and images of veiled women. This is not about the cute little diaphanous veils worn by women in harem fantasies. This is about heavy, full-body covering garments worn by Muslim women living in strict purdah. I believe, though this is the kind of thing which can’t be proven, that veil fetishism has grown in the past few years. The site quotes from a Wikipedia article which seems to have disappeared:
Nov 262006
I’ve finished Victor Turner’s The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (next is his Dramas, Fields and Metaphors). As I stated before, Turner defines ritual as a three-part process: separation, liminality and aggregation. The neophyte is separated from his prior social status, enters a threshold or ambiguous state and is then re-integrated into society in a new social status.
