Overview
The book comprises seven essays that posit sadomasochism as a world model and seek to unfold from its diverse practices a coherent sensibility connecting eroticism to human choice and the meaning of performance. By tracing links through a broad spectrum of material--including novels, short stories, plays, erotic memoirs, leather mags, and online s/m sites--I seek to demonstrate that s/m can be used as a lens through which to examine the elusive significance of the word 'real,' especially in the context of erotic and theatrical play. The author who emerges as a throughline in this exploration is Jean Genet, whose work shares with the culture of s/m a visceral economy of power--and the built-in relationship of sex, dominance, and tribute. Across this collection of essays, I demonstrate how anomalies in Genet's work are brought into coherence through this underlying sensibility, and how a focus on the idioms and meanings of s/m yield new perspectives on his plays in performance.
1. Playing for Real
Introduction: overview of the critical literature on performance, sadomasochism and Genet, addressing the limits of Judith Butler's performance/performativity distinction when applied to Genet in particular or sexual performance generally.
2. Blood, Sperm, Tears
Blood, sperm, and tears are Genet's holy trinity, the hard currency of self. This chapter examines the performance stakes of erotic dance in Genet's work, and through comparison with memoirs of actual erotic dancers, draws out the connections between dance, power, and personal purpose. Special attention is paid to dance and eroticism as the means by which, outside of heteronormative structures, self-standing systems of coherence are forged. Texts include: Elisabeth Eaves, Bare, Lily Burana, Strip City., Jean Genet, Chant d'Amour, and Martin Duberman, Stonewall.
3. Choice and Coherence
This chapter explores two central topics. 1) the fear of turning sexual fantasy into reality and 2) the search for coherence through contracts. The striving for contract in s/m is equally a striving for realization, a way of limiting possibility and resolving ambivalence. The characters in the works examined here take their personal symbols to the rails, compelling one another to hold form and believe in the reality of action. Texts include: Joan Kelly, The Pleasure's All Mine: Memoir of a Professional Submissive, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs, and Jean Genet, The Maids.
A figure holding a knife, or a figure who divides the landscape like a knife, is an image that crystallizes the moment of personal choice. By extension, for Genet, to disarm a man from his knife is tantamount to dividing him from the source of his erotic force. The chapter looks at the power of the blade in sadomasochistic knife play, and examines the implications of replacing real knives with theatrical ones, in s/m and beyond. The discussion extends to the use of duty gear in erotic play. Texts include: Pat Califia, "Calyx of Isis," Jack Fritscher, "THE ACADEMY! INCARCERATION FOR PLEASURE" (for Drummer magazine), and Jean Genet, "Child Criminal," Querelle of Brest, and The Balcony.
5. Cruelty and Representation
The chapter addresses the sadistic implication of masks, in particular the exquisite psychic cruelty of using a mask to conceal compressed suffering. Mask functions as a peculiar instance of representation, one which imposes declaration and resonant meaning on the person wearing it. At the same time a mask, and by extension, hood, gag, or bit limit the range of expression, this imposed limit corresponds, in sadomasochistic sensibility, to an eroticization of the boundary between wearer and world, self and other. Texts include: Franz Fanon, White Skin, Black Masks, Eric Stanton, The Art of Eric Stanton, and Jean Genet, The Blacks.
6. Without Prophylactics
Prophylactics introduce a separation between what might have been versus what will never be; between what is irreversible and what, through the insertion of the prophylactic layer, becomes reversible. This chapter extends the meaning of prophylactics beyond the obvious sexual context to include other kinds of layers, illusions, tissues, and representations, and shows how sadomasochistic sensibility seeks to break through the layers that separate us from reality. Texts include: Pat Califia, "Surprise Party," Patricia Bosworth, Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art, and Jean Genet, "What Remains of a Rembrandt Torn Into Four Equal Pieces and Flushed Down the Toilet" and The Screens.
7. Forever
A personal coda in which the author describes her experience teaching courses in sadomasochism and specifically, through performing a scene from The Changeling, steering students toward a reevaluation of control. The concept of control as an expression of love without coercion is further explored with regard to chastity fiction and the fantasy of being permanently trapped in a chastity belt. Texts include Thomas Middleton, The Changeling, Lethr, "Stiletto Trap" and "The Outfit," and Corrie Russell's reconstructed chastity site.