Challenging Claims of a Non-violent Modernity

Abstract

The previous chapter, in analysing signifiers of the social constructions of ‘Sadomasochism’, demonstrated how these are intimately connected with power relationships and illustrated how public representations of ‘SM’ bodily practices contradict the ‘subjugated knowledges’ and ‘lived experiences’ of practitioners of consensual ‘SM’. These contradictions were evident in the examples presented and, in particular, in my discussion of the distinction between the practice of ‘torture’ within consensual ‘SM’ as opposed to how torture is conventionally understood and represented. In this chapter the broader social meanings of both the social censure of ‘Sadomasochism’ on an ideological-symbolical level as well as the socio-cultural meanings of the social phenomenon of consensual ‘SM’ ‘body practices’ are analysed. The chapter begins by discussing the concept of ‘civilization’, represented in its highest form by the ‘Enlightenment’ and its supplementary construction of ‘wilderness’, which serve as a point of departure for an explorative reflection on the socio-ideological operations of these constructed dualisms and their relation to the ‘bodily practices’ of consensual ‘Sadomasochism’. Inherent contradictions within these dualisms and within conventional interpretations of consensual ‘SM’ that are based on the modern ‘order of things’ (Foucault 1971) are noted and then compared to the ‘lived experiences’ of consensual ‘SM’ practitioners.