‘Bodies’ acquire meanings through their signification within historic- ally specific discourses and the era of contemporary consumer culture offers only limited and reductionistic patterns of meaning in reference to ‘bodies’.
The ‘consuming self’ of contemporary society is a representational being, permanently engaged in the construction of ‘body image’. The sense of ‘self’ in consumer societies is thus in danger of being reduced to the ‘body-image’: “... it is the body-image that plays the determining role in the evaluation of the self in the public arena” (Turner in Falk 1994: xiii).
As shown in Chapter 3 within the consensual ‘SM’-Scene in London this relationship is reversed as the individual abilities of ‘tops’ and ‘bot- toms’ are evaluated and compared, thus ‘body-images’ are relevant only as a means to enhance experiences of ‘lived bodies’. The dominance-dis- play of most ‘tops’ is not reducible to ‘body-images’, it depends far more on emotional, cognitive and technological skills and the development of empathy. The same holds true for the ‘bottoms’, as their most cru- cial attribute is the optional willingness to be open to experiences and experimentations with sensations as well as their responsiveness. These attributes of ‘tops’ and ‘bottoms’ can be associated with notions of attune- ment and/or a form of thinking “through the affective field of the other” (Diprose 2002: 143).
These ‘bodily practices’ thus provide a way beyond the tendency of human beings to become “culturally enmired subjects” (Butler 1990) by means of alterations of the ‘body’. The domain of the ‘ugly’ as well as the domain of age are revalorized within the Scene which poses a challenge to the preva- lent ‘technological beauty imperative’ (Morgan in Welton 1998) and the ableist as well as ageist dimensions of consumerist ideology.
The collective subordination of ‘lived bodies’ to current ideals of ‘beauty’- ideals involve prescriptive strategies of ‘body’-control and in the realms of elective cosmetic surgery this control is even mediated by technology and the ‘authorized’ experts. In consensual ‘SM’ ‘bodily interventions’ and ‘transformations’ are a joint creative, imaginative and
9780230_522107_06_cha05.indd 166
idiosyncratically meaningful undertaking of consenting individuals. The Scene in London offers its members as well as ‘drifting members’ pos- sibilities of exploration in terms of alternatives to conventional ‘body usage’ and ‘bodily practices’. As such especially the ‘new Scene’ can be read as representing possible moments of community in a celebration of the ‘lived body’ as opposed to the ‘normalizing’ concern with ‘body- images’. The ‘paradigm of plasticity’ (Bordo 1993) fosters ‘body practices’ like ‘body-sculpting’ (e.g. body building, dieting) and elective cosmetic surgery procedures, thus promoting the achievement of normalizing and homogenizing ‘body images’.
The Scene in contrast to this reductionism, promotes experimentation and exploration: “... somebody may start off in the Scene as a dominant or submissive in everybody elses eyes but we’re all finding where we are in things. It’s only ever by doing things that you can find out what works for you” (Interview-file E.: 12). The ‘new’ Scene of consensual ‘SM’ offers the practitioners disordered/deregulated spaces for the display, interaction and experiencing of ‘lived bodies’. The creative use of ‘lived bodies’ is encour- aged and thus stands in deep contrast to the reductionistic and alienating contemporary notion of the ‘body plastic’ (Bordo 1993).
The psychiatrist Favazza who worked on the wide area of the social phe- nomenon of self-mutilation and body modification, also mentioned the possibility of individual ‘bodies’ consenting to mutilation/modification by other bodies in a non-pathologizing way. Concerning the motivation for these ‘body practices’ Favazza noted: “... it provides temporary relief from a host of painful symptoms such as anxiety, depersonalization, and desperation. ... it also touches upon the very profound human experiences of salvation, healing, and orderliness” (Favazza 1996: xix). It appears though that specific contextualized and consensual ‘harms’ generate so many benefits that it becomes problematic to talk of ‘harm’. Favazza also considered the social phenomenon of body piercing, a form of body modi- fication that has found many devotees as well as fashion-‘victims’ within the last decades. Fakir Musafar whom Favazza describes as ‘the guru phil- osopher of the ‘modern primitives’ movement’, that encompasses diverse ‘body-practitioners’ as well as consensual ‘SM’-practitioners, outlined the deeper motivation for ‘body play’: “... we had all rejected the Western cul- tural biases about ownership and use of the body” (Musafar in Favazza 1996: 326). The ‘Modern Primitive movement’ promotes experimenta- tion with the experiences of ‘body’, for example as a means of expression or a ‘reclaiming’ of the ‘body’ (often after abuse experiences)and as a means of self-exploration. These are aims that are shared by many prac- titioners of consensual ‘SM’ and thus might explain some of the interest in these ‘bodily practices’. Fakir Musafar termed this the “... search and experiment with the previously forbidden ‘body side’ of life” (Musafar in Favazza 1996: 327).
9780230_522107_06_cha05.indd 167
The primacy of sensations and experience as opposed to mere ‘body- image’ find expression in the ‘spectacles of bodily practices’ of consensual ‘SM’ which bring the tactile and existential dimensions of social existence to the foreground and indirectly invite for participation. This sensual atti- tude prevalent in the Scene-clubs, among Scene-members as well as ‘drift- ing members’, could be termed ‘dionysiac’ (Maffesoli 1996) and thus be interpreted as a break with the representational distance created through the cult of ‘body image’. Although the ‘bodily practices’ of consensual ‘SM’ involve the use of representations, these function as a strategical tool to facili- tate pleasure and help to enable people to enter into more experiental and intense communication and as illustrated (see Chapters 3 and 6), they can on occasion create the possibilities for collective experiences. “The spec- tacle, in various forms, assumes the function of communion” (Maffesoli 1996: 77).
Shared sentiments as well as effective ties have a bonding function which is essential to any social existence. According to Bell, Durkheim understood religion as the consciousness of society: “And since social life in all its aspects is made possible only by a system of symbols, that consciousness becomes fixed upon some object which becomes sacred” (Bell 1975: 394). Within the Scene of consensual ‘SM’ the ‘body’ as experienced through a diversity of sensations, through for example, displaced traditional ‘body practices’ as well as the active exploration of innovative ones, is thus ‘ re-enchanted’ and achieves a ‘sacred’ character. Religion is the symbolization of the social bond which becomes expressed through communion and a ‘common tran- scendental voice’:
Durkheim argued that religion does not derive from a belief in the supernatural or in gods but from the division of the world – things, times, persons – into the sacred and profane. If religion is declining, it is because the realm of the sacred has been shrinking, because the shared sentiments and affective ties between men [sic] have become dif- fuse and weak. The primordial elements that provide men with common identification and affective reciprocity-family, synagogue and church, community-have become attenuated, and men have lost the capacity to maintain sustained relations with each other in both time and place. To say then that ‘God is dead’ is, in effect, to say that the social bonds have snapped and society is dead. (Bell 1975: 395)
Nietzsche’s advent of nihilism then can be seen as being ‘prevented’ when new bonds arise and temporary membership in diverse ‘tribes’ such as the Scene and, more specifically the ‘SM’-scene, allow the individual to regain the feeling of participation and ‘social bonding’. The potential spiritual aspects of the ‘bodily practices’ of consensual ‘SM’ will be further elabo- rated on in Chapter 6.
9780230_522107_06_cha05.indd 168
5.2.3 Consensual ‘SM’ as a ‘remapping of bodies’: The ‘desexualization’ of pleasure
Consensual ‘SM’ can be interpreted as disconnecting the fundamental philosophical pattern of the Western world which tied ‘sexuality’, ‘subject- ivity’ and ‘truth’ together and in turn shaped human beings relationship to themselves.
In ‘History of Sexuality’ (1990) Foucault suggested that the only way to go beyond an identification of ourselves with our ‘sex drive’ or ‘genital desire’ would be a return to ‘bodies and pleasures’. Foucault’s notion of ‘desexu- alization of pleasure’ which he saw represented by consensual ‘SM’ play, implies not a complete rejection of all acts that might be conceived as ‘sex- ual’ or genital but the detaching of ‘sexual’ pleasure from its institutional- ized genital dependence and thus its specifically constructed localization in the individual ‘body’. At this point it is helpful to refer to Bette’s ‘subjugated knowledges’ that in parts were already explored in 3.4.1.
According to Bette this is a crucial difference between ‘vanilla sex’ and consensual ‘SM’: “I think that part of the thing is the difference between intercourse and beating somebody, with intercourse, man having inter- course with a woman, there’s a very direct sexual path, there’s a very sexu- ally fixed pleasure. And therefore he has a motive for just getting what he wants. But if what he does is not directly genital or sexual. I mean it may give immense satisfaction but the satisfaction it will give will be in the com- munication with the other person. The fact to get it right with the other person” (Interview-file 4.: 5). The intense relationship that develops among the ‘players’ within the ‘scenes’ is thus the guiding motivation for many practitioners of these ‘bodily practices’ and might be another factor that could explain the rising interest in consensual ‘SM’.
After reading the ‘Hite report on male sexuality’, Bette was astonished: “It’s just so tragic in a way how limited, what they appear to enjoy is. And how lit- tle use, you know, they are just so genitally orientated. It’s just so terribly, ter- ribly sad. You just think, what they are missing out on. You haven’t explored your mind or other parts of the body. Have you not been taught about being fucked yourself or what about your nipples. I mean all you do is with your penises. It’s so sad. I mean putting your penis in isn’t much communication. And I mean sex doesn’t have to be like that. And being a man doesn’t have to be like that” (Interview-file 4: 7). This comment shows clear parallels to Michel Foucault’s criticism of the genital fixation of the concept of ‘sexu- ality’ which reduces pleasure to the genitals. In consensual ‘SM’ pleasure is coded quite differently, for the context of pornography it was suggested that: “In contrast to both heterosexual and homosexual pornographies, sexual identities and sexual pleasures are presented in this type of pornography as more a function of performance than of biology. It is this performance of perverse desires which do not follow the expected routes of sexual iden- tity (hetero or homo) or gender (male or female) that keeps both viewer and
9780230_522107_06_cha05.indd 169
protagonists guessing about desires and pleasures that take surprising twists and turns” (Snitow et al. 1983: 250/251).
As consensual ‘SM’ often involves the use of the genital zones for other purposes than the reaching of orgasm and as it also eroticizes regions of the ‘body’ formerly not considered to be worth stimulating, these ‘bodily practices’ symbolize also a ‘remapping’ of the individual ‘body’ and a redis- tribution of the sensations of the ‘body’. Changing social constructions of the ‘body’ are of an existential nature as they: “influence (.) not only how the body is treated but also how life is lived” (Synnott 1993: 37).
Consensual ‘SM’ might therefore be considered as potentially freeing the individual retrospectively from the internalized social constructions of ‘sexuality’ that were part of the individual’s past. In Ricoeur’s terms the (re)configuration of the past enables the individual to refigure the future (Ricoeur 1988). Through the creation of counter-narratives and ‘bodily prac- tices’ that reconstitute individuality, consensual ‘SM’-practice might be an important device in the individual reconfiguration of the past and innova- tive figuration of future.
5.2.4 Transcending dualisms – consensual ‘SM’ as a possibility