The Theatre of Play: BDSM Race Play, Dividuality, and The Politics of Empathy

THEATRE OF PLAY
BDSM race play, dividuality, and the politics of empathy

(Roland Weissegger)
THE
Boka En
MSc Gender, Sexuality & Society University of London Birkbeck College Submission date: 28 September 2012
I certify that the work submitted herewith is my own and that I have duly acknowledged any quotation from the published or unpublished work of other persons.
Signature of Candidate: Date:
Abstract
In this dissertation, I will focus on debates around BDSM in general, and race play in particular, in order to highlight issues concerning the concepts of power, performativity and empathy in what I will call the theatre of play. I will discuss various interpretations of the meanings and meaning-makings behind BDSM practices and practitioners, including subversion, parody, therapy and a-/politicality. Building on this, I will use Foucauldian conceptions of power and performativity theory in combination with the volatility of meaning in an understanding of race play as performance to argue that the theatre of play can be seen as an epistemic location for engagement with constructed and embodied identities.Therefore, the theatre of play may be useful for a lived politics of empathy and affinity.
Contents
Introduction................................................................................................... 1 Terminology......................................................................................... 2 Situating myself..................................................................................... 3 Charting the Context..................................................................................... 6 Sick: BDSM as psychopathology........................................................... 7 Helpful: BDSM as therapy..................................................................... 8 Just a game: BDSM as a private matter................................................ 10 Collusion: BDSM as reproducing oppression....................................... 12 Mocking: BDSM as disrespect towards real oppression........................ 14 Exposed: BDSM as exposing power relations....................................... 16 The revolution will be sexualised: BDSM as transgression/subversion.. 18 It wasnt me: transgressive BDSM as alibi............................................. 20 Preliminary Summary......................................................................... 22 Subjectivities/Identities................................................................................. 25 Power................................................................................................. 26 Resistance........................................................................................... 30 Dividuality.......................................................................................... 33 The Theatre of Play...................................................................................... 40 Performance....................................................................................... 41 Education/Conversation..................................................................... 45 The Theatre of Play............................................................................ 50 Conclusion?.................................................................................................. 54 References.................................................................................................... 58
Introduction
In accordance with Butlers (2006 [1990], p.xix) suggestion that neither grammar nor style are politically neutral, I will use plural forms (of pronouns as well as verbs) to relate to persons throughout this text. There are two reasons for this: first, I want to avoid the dichotomising effect of gendered/gendering pronouns that neatly categorise people into male and female. Second, as we should see critically preconceived/received notions of unities in discourse (Foucault 2002 [1969], pp.23), I want to draw linguistic attention to the potential fracturedness and partiality of supposedly unitary personal identities (Haraway 1988, 1991), suggesting that we may be dividuals rather than individuals and therefore already pluralised (though singularising) in ourselves. I will consider this point in more depth in chapter 3. Furthermore, I will generally capitalise group/category labels (such as Black or Male or Lesbian or Dom) to highlight their potential to totalise group members.
Over the last few years and decades, there has been an increasing amount of research into BDSM practices and identities. This research has been focused on various aspects of these practices and identities, among them arguments suggesting that BDSM is pathological, that it is therapeutic, that it exposes social power
relations, that it reproduces social power relations, that it subverts social power relations, and that it reproduces social power relations by pretending to subvert them. My aim in this dissertation is to explore the political potentials and dangers of race play, which can be defined as any type of play that openly embraces and explores the (either real or assumed) racial identity of the players within the context of a BDSM scene (Williams in Plaid and Williams, 2009).1 Over the course of this dissertation, I will first review arguments in the politics of BDSM and race play to show how race play can be construed as politically beneficial and/or harmful. In chapter 3, I will introduce Foucauldian understandings of power and performativity theory and explain how they may be useful for conceptualising BDSM race play as a place of resistance against and within socially constituted identities and subjectivities. I will furthermore offer a conception of BDSM play as offering a space for exploring dividuality the fracturedness and partiality of subjectivities and identities. Finally, in chapter 4, I will link performativity, dividuality and race play to performance and an associated understanding of interpretations of race play as constituting its meanings. Based on this conception of race play as a performance in the theatre of play, I will then suggest that race play performances can be used to initiate accountable, educational conversations about social relations of power. 2
Terminology
The practices and identities that I will focus on in this dissertation are variously called S&M (sadism and masochism), SM (sadomasochism), BDSM (bondage &
1 Players are the people who engage in a BDSM scene, which, in turn, is a particular BDSM encounter (which can last from a few hours to a few days 24/7 relationships are not usually called scenes).
The Theatre of Play Introduction
discipline, dominance & submission, sadomasochism/sadism & masochism) and WIITWD (what it is that we do). I will use the term BDSM to avoid a terminological focus on pain while not dispelling connotations between the terms SM/ BDSM and various practices and identities. The positions and power dichotomies in BDSM play are usually called dom(inant)/sub(missive), top/bottom or master/slave (sometimes involving a capitalisation of the term for the person in power). As Mmaster/slave is problematic in the context of this dissertation because of its potential racial/ised/-ising associations with slavery, and top/bottom to me seems to imply a spatial hierarchy of power, I will mostly use Dom/Sub. 3
Situating myself
As my perspectives on this research and the world are influenced by my position in the world, I believe it to be important to situate myself. Because people arent punched out from demographic categories and because [s]trategic silences, such as when we present our research findings without our account of the political role we hope they will play, may be seen as politically and ethically legitimate, but in contexts of feminist debate and reflexivity we argue for making explicit the links between research, politics and ethics (Gillies and Alldred 2002, p.38), I will offer some details about my life and ideological convictions that I believe to be relevant for this study. I was born and brought up as a White Middle-class Boy in Austria. At some point, I discovered that I must have always been a Homosexual. I also somehow convinced myself that I wanted to be nice to other people and later adopted labels such as Feminist and Anti-racist. While xenophobia certainly is a horribly rel-
evant force in Austria, as far as I remember from school, Austria wasnt involved in much slave trading, which has probably influenced how I saw problems of race less in the context of slavery, more as contemporary xenophobia. During my years at university, I came into more and more contact with gender studies, queer theory, postcolonial studies and other impressive neologisms that infested my thinking and doing. So from being a Gay, I moved to being Queer and then doing queer, never fixed, constantly contingent. Over the last few years, I have engaged and continue to engage in practices that may be labelled BDSM by some or many, although I dont consider myself part of the BDSM community. I have increasingly tried to relate these practices to my personal/political goals: deconstructing and destabilising identities, moving from a conception of power roles as fluid yet stable to a mix and match approach rather than distinguishing between Dom and Sub persons/personas/practices, I try to explore the possibility of having both at the same time, and I believe the simple dichotomy between Dom and Sub to be insufficient in the first place. So far, I havent sexually interacted with people who identified or were identified as women and/or members of racialised minorities outside of sexual fantasies. As far as I remember (and it is of course possible that I have forgotten, suppressed or otherwise adapted my memories), in these fantasies, I havent fetishised racial/ -ised/-ising Otherness.The members of racialised minorities just happened to be members of racialised minorities. My ideological desires are a destabilisation and proliferation of possible subject positions while establishing as few normative expectations as possible except from the consequentialist suggestion of maximum overall happiness with as little unhappiness as possible, which I believe can only be reached in a dialogue with 4
those who could or should be happy (c. f. Birch and Miller 2002, p.94; Lee 1993, p.150). In this sense, I want to see this study as an explicitly political tool to be used strategically to make political interventions (Gillies and Alldred 2002, p.32). As you can see, I am multiply privileged. Even though I can claim a somewhat categorically diverse field of relationships (in terms of race, class, gender, sexuality) for my selves, I am and we are privileged in our shared deviance/-s which has enabled us to play around with ideas and bodies and other objects without fear of social sanctions from our immediate and preferred social environment. No matter whether or not I disidentify with my ascribed maleness or whiteness (and the opportunity to do this may itself be a result of my multiple privileges), and no matter whether or not I try to reject and undermine some of the privileges associated with these markers of identity, I do get White Male privilege, my perspectives are influenced by my embodied history, and there are some embodied experiences that I have never made and that I probably wont ever be able to make. As I have indicated above, I dont want to speak for anyone, but with them. I believe that it is only by relating our various situated knowledges to each other and trying to understand and adapt our and each others perspectives that we can arrive at better knowledges, and, relatedly, better politics (c.f. Haraway 1988, 1991). Consequently, my aim with this dissertation is not to claim universality for the suggestions which I offer. Instead, what I hope for is that they are relatable that other people who inhabit different positions in the webs of situated knowledges can relate them to their own experiences, positions and possibilities. Finally, this is a work of fiction. It does not simply describe the state of the world as it is, but much rather as it could be as it may be now and, more importantly, as it might become. 5
Charting the Context
In this chapter, I will evaluate a range of arguments about the relations between BDSM and race/racism. Broadly speaking, some of these arguments emphasise the individual/-ised/-ising aspects of BDSM, while others focus on political and social contexts. However, the arguments in this second group are also based on the effect of BDSM on particular people rather than broader oppressive structures since BDSM is not just an organised movement but a collective of practices that are intricately linked to practitioners and the specific contexts in which they occur. Although the division into categories that I have used in this chapter may suggest that discourses around BDSM in general and BDSM race play in particular can be neatly segregated and shelved, they are not only interrelated, but also influence each other. While I will maintain a categorisation for greater clarity, I will also mention related discourses where appropriate. I will first examine individual/-ised/-ising understandings of BDSM. Namely, I will investigate how BDSM has been construed in terms of psychopathology and, more recently, as offering therapeutic opportunities, as well as the related argument that BDSM is apolitical because it is a personal choice. I will then intro-
duce more politically salient arguments around BDSM: first, I will consider how BDSM may reproduce social power relations or make mockery of real oppression; I will then examine the idea that rather than reproducing them, BDSM has the potential to expose social power hierarchies. Finally, I will inquire how BDSM is seen as a politically transgressive/subversive strategy as well as criticisms of this understanding of BDSM as serving as an alibi for acting out privilege. 7
Sick: BDSM as psychopathology
Since the inception of the terms sadism and masochism in sexology at the end of the 19th century and their combination into sadomasochism in psychoanalysis at the beginning of the 20th century (Sisson 2005, p.149), sadomasochism has been seen mostly as an aberration of the human psyche, a traumatically induced, preoedipally fixated form of acting out that, despite its orgiastic pleasures, leads to a restricted capacity for meaningful relationships (Weille 2002, pp.1312). This pathologisation of BDSM is mirrored by a pathologisation and stigmatisation in society (Weiss 2006), and also sometimes taken up in political criticisms of BDSM (c.f. Norris 1980, Tiklicorect 1981, Hoagland 1982, Jeffreys 1990). For example, relating specifically to the intersections of BDSM and race, Black Women who engage in BDSM may be accused of self-hatred or told to enter therapy (Hernandez 2004). However, the suggestion that BDSM may be a sign of psychopathology has been contested in recent years by practitioners and academics (c.f. Weinberg, Williams and Moser 1984, Beckmann 2001, Weille 2002, Langdridge and Butt 2004, Baggaley 2005, Kleinplatz and Moser 2005, Lindemann 2011). Langdridge and Barker (2007a, p.3) argue that psychologists who research BDSM often base their analy-
The Theatre of Play Charting the Context
ses on small samples or psychotherapy clients rather than normal practitioners, and Richters etal. (2008), based on a study of over 19,000 people, suggest that BDSM practitioners are not more likely to experience higher levels of psychological distress than other research participants. Additionally, it has been argued that clinical definitions of BDSM as pathological are overbroad: Moser and Kleinplatz (2005, p.265) argue that heterosexuality meets the DSM-IV-TR definitions of both a mental disorder and a paraphilia, at least as well as the other listed paraphilias. In this sense, psychology and psychiatry can be seen as offering and propagating discourses about sexuality in general and BDSM in particular that aim at a normalisation and regulation of sexual subjects (Foucault 1998 [1976]) rather than reflecting the needs of these subjects. 8
Helpful: BDSM as therapy
In addition to challenging conceptions of BDSM as pathological, practitioners and academics have maintained for some time that engaging in BDSM may have therapeutic effects (c. f. Weille 2002; Lindemann 2011; Beckmann 2004, p.204; Bauer 2008, p.235). For example, Lindemann (2011), in a study of professional dominatrices in the San Francisco Bay Area, suggest that their research participants often interpreted their work as psychologically beneficial for their clients, explicitly referring to themselves as therapists (p. 151). In their psychoanalytically informed study of BDSM practitioners, Weille (2002) argue that people may be able rework trauma through BDSM by revisiting their traumatic experiences in the safe environment of a scene (Weille 2002, p.148). Similarly, a modern-day Jew might participate in a reenactment of some horror from the Holocaust, experiencing anti-Semitism in more scripted and overt ways
than she does in her everyday life, testing her limits, feeling a corporeal, painful, and/or even pleasurable link to her ancestors (Freeman 2008, p.40). Furthermore, the use of derogatory terms against members of marginalised communities in BDSM play may enable practitioners to contextualise injurious terms in a scene and therefore reduce their power in everyday life (Lindemann 2011, pp.1612). However, engaging in BDSM practices does not necessarily and always have therapeutic effects. For example, Weille (2002, p.143) claim that growth is tied to the kind and depth of relationships that consensual [BDSM] players are able to form, implying that BDSM may be therapeutic only in the context of normal, intimate relationships. This seems to contradict an understanding of professional BDSM work as therapeutic. On the other hand, it is often argued that BDSM communities create safe spaces (c.f. Smith 2005; Bauer 2007, 2008), which could be understood to offer the kind of nurturing environment that may be necessary for therapeutic effects to arise. However, this suggestion has recently come under criticism especially in relation to race (Bauer 2008, Weiss 2011). Additionally, some of the dominatrices interviewed in Lindemanns (2011) study stated that they sometimes refused to partake in therapeutic play because they felt that absolving their clients of certain kinds of behaviour, such as perpetrating domestic violence, may lead to a proliferation of such behaviour (pp. 1667). This suggests that certain kinds of race play involving members of racially hegemonic groups may only free them from a sense of guilt and thereby stifle efforts for fighting systematic oppression. Similarly, while Black men prefer to see White dominatrices, in sub or switch sessions Black men prefer to dominate Black women (Lindemann 2011, p.160; their emphasis). This points towards the difficult tensions at the intersections of racialised and gendered identities. Similarly, 9
it has been argued that while the release of tension may be beneficial on a personal level, it cannot replace the collective struggle for equality (Hoagland 1982, p.160). As Fanon (2008 [1952], p.74) suggest, [a]s a psychoanalyst, I should help my patient to become conscious of his unconscious and abandon his attempts at a hallucinatory whitening, but also to act in the direction of a change in the social structure. 10
Just a game: BDSM as a private matter
Despite such discourses, BDSM is often not seen as related to social struggles, but constructed as a private matter (c.f. Rubin 1989, p.310; Weinberg, Williams and Moser 1984; Beckmann 2001; Taylor and Ussher 2001; Langdridge and Butt 2004; Moore 2005; Bauer 2008, p.235). It is argued that while BDSM may not be politically subversive or revolutionary, it does not cause any real harm either (Moore 2005, p.174). For example, the Black race play practitioner Mollena Williams state that I am not responsible for anything except living an ethical life, being true to my God, and respecting this planet and her inhabitants the rest is outside of my control (in Plaid and Williams 2009). In this context, BDSM is often construed as a fantasy which is cut off from social reality (c.f. Weinberg and Williams and Moser 1984; Hopkins 1994, 1995; Califia 1979, p.172; Ritchie and Barker 2005, p.234). For example, it is claimed that BDSM should not be construed as anti-feminist because rather than reproducing patriarchal power relations, it is just a simulation: In significant ways, SM scenes parallel the experience of being on a roller coaster. There is intense emotion fear, tension, anticipation, thrill. There is physiological arousal adrenaline rush, headiness, gut twisting, a body high (Hopkins 1994, p.125; see also Williams in
Adelman 2011). However, the argument that BDSM is just a simulation has been contested on the grounds that BDSM relies on the social reality of structural dominance and submission (Vadas 1995) as well as the suggestion that sexual fantasies may further social oppression (c.f. Meredith 1980, Hein 1982, Lorde and Star 1982, MacKinnon 1989). Closely tied to the conception of BDSM as a simulative interaction between autonomous subjects is the emphasis on consent and the negotiation of desires and limits in BDSM scenes (c.f. Weinberg, Williams and Moser 1984; Rubin 1989; Taylor and Ussher 2001; Langdridge and Butt 2004; Sophia 2007): BDSM is only seen/accepted as BDSM if it is safe, sane and consensual (Langdridge and Butt 2004, p.42). For example, a Black research participant in a study of a relatively progressive BDSM community in London suggest that the intersection between SM and black people creates problematics for lots of black people. But those people miss an argument. First of all, there is a consent, whereas slavery wasnt with consent (Lindemann 2001, p.86; my emphasis). However, play between White Doms and Black Subs seems to be more popular than other forms of race play (Hernandez 2004), which implies that even though race play may be consensual, roles are not entirely freely chosen. In this context, Radical Feminists have suggested that consent may not be an adequate defence for BDSM because social power relations influence peoples behaviour, which may make consent between members of hegemonic and subordinated groups meaningless (c.f. Morgan 1977, Stoltenberg 1980, Bar On 1982, Rian 1982, Cowling and Reynolds 2004b). The concept of choice may be employed to redress arrangements that are based on social power hierarchies as apolitical: the construction of race play as choice itself relies on racial privilege (Weiss 2011, p.173). 11
However, understanding enjoyment of BDSM by members of oppressed minorities as a result of a sort of false consciousness relies on a deterministic view of sexual relations as always and necessarily patriarchal and racist (Moore and Reynolds 2004). This cements the very power relations these critiques set out to fight (Carmody 2004) and privileges the intersectional experiences of some over those of others (Moore and Reynolds 2004, p.33). Furthermore, conceptions of consent as a co-operative activity may be a way of reworking more problematic conceptions of consent. For example, in current understandings of consent, Women may be constructed as passive because they only give consent to Men who in turn obtain it (Calder 2004), a dynamic that is disrupted by the active involvement of all parties in the negotiation of consent in BDSM encounters. Similarly, the quality of consent may be greater if it is not tacitly assumed but communicatively negotiated (Reynolds 2004). In any case, it is important to keep in mind that even though BDSM practitioners may not be free, autonomous subjects, sexual dissidents are as conscious and free as any other group of sexual actors (Rubin 1989, p.306) and that consent is not a simple act, but a project, a skill we have constantly to learn (Butler 1980, p.173). 12
Collusion: BDSM as reproducing oppression
However, it has been suggested that BDSM, rather than being a merely private pleasure, may play a part in the reproduction of social power hierarchies (c.f. Meredith 1980, Hein 1982, Lorde and Star 1982, MacKinnon 1989). While many BDSM practitioners may see their desires as natural expressions of innate identities (c.f. Hopkins 1994, pp.136; Langdridge and Butt 2004, pp.423), it is being discussed that BDSM sexualities only arise in interaction with social power
structures (c.f. Butler 1980; Rian 1982, p.46). Furthermore, irrespective of the genealogy of BDSM desires, it is argued that BDSM makes violence and abuse acceptable (Jonel 1982, p.21). One strain of the argument that BDSM reproduces oppression is that engaging in BDSM increases rather than satisfies practitioners desire for the enactment of power relations (Linden 1982, p.10). However, the adoption of a submissive sexual role by a socially submissive person can entail greater assertiveness and therefore freedom in non-sexual contexts (c.f. Weille 2002, p.149; Moore 2005, pp. 16970; Smith 2005, p.180; Beckmann 2004, p.204). Additionally,Yost (2007, p.151) suggest that for people who identify as BDSM Doms or Subs (that is, not as Switches), power and pleasure followed counter-stereotypical patterns. In fantasy, the person in power tended to use that power to give pleasure to his/her partner, and the person who submits felt sexual pleasure himself/herself. This implies that, contrary to the claim that BDSM Doms use Subs for their own pleasure while Subs sacrifice themselves for their Doms (c.f. Russell 1982 [1980], Hein 1982), Doms want to afford their Subs enjoyment. It seems that BDSM involves a much more complex interplay between different kinds of power relations than simply reinforcing existing inclinations towards submission or domination: BDSM practitioners may become more socially self-determined even though or because they appear to reproduce their oppression in BDSM encounters. However, it is further argued that even though people might be freer to choose power roles in and because of BDSM play, they still reproduce power rules and with them fundamental social mechanisms of domination and oppression, even if they arent tied to particular social positions (Bar On 1982, p.78; Bersani 1996, p.89). Lorde (in Lorde and Star 1982, p.68) claim that to affirm that the exer13
tion of power over powerlessness is erotic, is empowering, is to set the emotional and social stage for the continuation of that relationship, politically, socially and economically. On the other hand, these criticisms of BDSM are often based on a vision of a world without power (c.f. Rian 1982, Wagner 1982, Nichols and Pagano and Rossof 1982), and such a concept seems difficult to uphold if we consider the suggestion that power is inherent in all interpersonal relationships (Foucault 1998 [1976], p.94). In this sense, rather than envisioning a culture of neutrality, it may be more effective to focus on transforming structures of domination and submission. The emphasis on consent and negotiation and the agency this affords especially Subs makes it seem unlikely that BDSM encounters actively reproduce ideologies of unilateral domination. Additionally, many BDSM practitioners see their practices as opposed to institutionalised power relations (c.f. Taylor and Ussher 2001, Ritchie and Barker 2005, Bauer 2008). However, public representations and interpretations of BDSM tend to focus solely on power differences and brutal and unforgiving sadism (c.f. Weiss 2006, 2009). Such representations and interpretations may indeed eroticise unilateral dominance rather than negotiated power exchange. Furthermore, as ideals of negotiation between equals and free consent may serve to obfuscate how power works in BDSM relationships and BDSM communities (Weiss 2011), practitioners may cling to the illusion of a world without real power themselves and thereby reproduce social power relations. 14
Mocking: BDSM as disrespect towards real oppression
An argument that is related to the claim that BDSM reproduces social power hierarchies is the suggestion that it mocks real oppression by staging it as (unreal)
fantasy (c.f. Hein 1982; Russell 1982 [1980]; Sims, Mason and Pagano 1982). For example, Hein (1982, p.87) stress that playing with power, pain and social roles means reducing other peoples real suffering to a mockery. Every joyous torturer and willing torturee negates and denies the real agony of six million Jews, countless Blacks and untold numbers of others whose victimization remains substantial and involuntary. One of the most prominent sites to which this argument is applied is Nazi insignia (c.f. Stoltenberg 1980, Star 1982). Defences of the use of such insignia in BDSM play argue that a signifiers meanings depend on its context (c.f. Califia 1979, Ardill and OSullivan 1986). However, Star (1982) suggest that while meaning may indeed be influenced by context, BDSM practitioners do not have the social power to change the perceived meanings of the Nazi insignia they wear in public (see also Scott 2012a). Additionally, Sims (in Sims, Mason and Pagano 1982, p.100) suggest that [s]ome of the things that I have seen and heard about succumbing to the power of someone else are devastating for me as a Black woman, having grown up in Black culture and being subjected to someone elses power, and having to live with that all my life. However, assuming that BDSM practitioners do not actually intend to make mockery of other peoples suffering, depending on the context of particular scenes, such differences in interpretation can be remedied by mutual empathy. Indeed, Moore (2005) argue that even though Nazi insignia are sometimes used in BDSM play, the popular association of BDSM with Nazi sadism may primarily be a result of a tendency to pathologise BDSM by conflating it with extreme forms of violence; the use of Nazi insignia by BDSM practitioners does not imply that they support Nazi values (Moore 2005, pp.1724). Additionally, Butler (1997a, p.161) suggest that while the contexts of some speech acts (and the wearing of Nazi insignia can 15
be considered a speech act because it constitutes a form of communication) may be very difficult to shake[, they] are never fully determined in advance. Rather than representing mockery of real oppression, injurious signifiers may be addressed and reworked in BDSM play. For example, Mollena Williams suggest that the wound of a history of white racism should be touched in order for it to heal (Plaid and Williams 2008; see also Freeman 2008, p.40). Finally, Star (1982, p.134) claim that wearing Nazi insignia in public may indirectly support Nazi movements by making it appear as if they had more support than is actually the case. However, it seems more plausible that Nazi insignia may be used to shun BDSM practitioners (Moore 2005), and it seems unlikely that actual Nazis would wear latex SS uniforms in public. In any case, the claim that similar arguments can be made for whips, dog collars, slave collars, etc. (Star 1982, p.134) seems unfounded insofar as these symbols are not used by oppressive groups for the same or similar purposes. Nonetheless, an uncritical approach by BDSM practitioners to practices and social contexts may point to a certain ignorance on the side of practitioners (c.f. Weiss 2011, Bauer 2008). While this certainly does not amount to indirect support of Nazi groups, it may very well support social power hierarchies through its lack of critical reflection. 16
Exposed: BDSM as exposing power relations
On the other hand, it has also been argued that rather than reproducing social power relations, BDSM exposes them by reappropriating, foregrounding and parodying them in sexual play (c.f. Taylor and Ussher 2001, Beckmann 2007; Langdridge and Butt 2004). For example, Beckmann (2007, p.196) claim that the framework of consensual S/M body practices allows and even requires
far more reflection (self- and contextual) about personal responsibility and rights than any normal sexual encounter, and Langdridge and Butt (2004, p.467) suggest that contracts for longer-term BDSM relationships are often signed in a ritual that can be seen as a parody of traditional marriage ceremonies1. Similarly, Chancer (1992) suggest that our society is pervaded by sadomasochistic relationships insofar as it is based on acts of submission and domination , and that BDSM play may undermine these structures because it exposes them. Consequently, BDSM race play may make explicit the very master-slave configurations that haunt us (Sharpe 2010, p.148). In the context of predominantly White BDSM communities in which whiteness and White privilege are not acknowledged, publicly replaying violent racialised scenarios like slave auctions or scenes involving Ku Klux Klan imagery may shock practitioners into realising and recognising the racial/-ised/-ising links between BDSM practices, BDSM communities and wider society (Weiss 2011, pp.20917). However, the political effectiveness of seeing BDSM as exposing power hierarchies has been put into question (c.f. Hoagland 1982; Linden 1982; Bersani 1996, pp.8588): [t]o strip away conventional niceties, to become more aware of inequalities of power in all relationships, to explicate violent social tensions, to recognize the secret sexual nature of authority: does any of this suggest much more than a nonhypocritical acceptance of power as it is already structured? (Bersani 1996, p.85) In this sense, while BDSM may expose the existence or even patterns of social dominance and submission, it doesnt question the ideology behind them (Hoagland 1982, p.158). Instead, BDSM may merely show that the exercise
1 However, the people involved in these rituals may vehemently object to an understanding of their practices as parody because they may be very serious for them. I will return to the problem of inscribing meaning into BDSM practices in chapter 4.
17
of power can be thrilling, and it can be just as thrilling for the victim as for the victimizer (Bersani 1996, p.88), therefore reflecting power hierarchies without exposing that is, criticising them (Linden 1982, p.4). Giving examples of BDSM race play, Mollena Williams (in Plaid and Williams 2009) only offers scenarios in which the historical oppressor is in the dominant position while the historical oppressed is in the submissive position, and the tables-turned scenario involves a slave seducing the master, blackmailing them (Williams in Plaid and Williams 2008). While this can be interpreted as exposing historical relations of racialised dominance and oppression, this is not the only possible reading. Indeed, practitioners who think that their practices are cut off from reality may not relate these forms of race play to social relations at all. 18
The revolution will be sexualised: BDSM as transgression/subversion
In addition to the claim that BDSM may expose power dynamics, it has also been argued that BDSM can be a transgressive practice, subverting traditional power relations. The main arguments for the subversive potential of BDSM are that it fosters empathy and mutual understanding (c.f. Califia 1979, Smith 2005, Beckmann 2004,Yost 2007, Bauer 2008), that it enables a proliferation of subject positions (c.f. Califia 1979, Beckmann 2001, Ritchie and Barker 2005, Bauer 2007, 2008) and that it allows practitioners to take a more critical stance towards traditional institutions of sexualised power (c.f. Califia 2000 [1994], p.xii, Ritchie and Barker 2005). One important argument for the political potential of BDSM is that it fosters empathy. For example, Yost (2007, p.151) argue that BDSM deals in terms of power-with rather than power-over, and Williams (in Hernandez 2004) stress
that empathy and emotional care are especially important in race play because of its focus on psychological limits. Additionally, BDSM play may enable practitioners to recognise and appreciate the relations of interdependence that exist between Doms and Subs (Califia 1979, Smith 2005). Finally, exploring different roles/identities in oneself may offer an experience of intrapersonal diversity that can lead to greater appreciation for diversity in and with others (Bauer 2008, p.244). However, Bar On (1982, p.79) suggest that interdependence in BDSM scenes is not so much a result of political values and considerations, but simply of the necessities of the situation, and even though BDSM in general and race play in particular may in principle require sensitivity and empathy as well as an appreciation of interdependence, not all practitioners may actually feel and act this way. Therefore, people who are empathic in BDSM encounters may still be ignorant in other sectors of their lives. In addition to the argument of empathy, it is suggested that the fluidity and relatively free choice of power roles in BDSM makes possible a deconstruction and proliferation of culturally legible subject positions (c.f. Beckmann 2001; Smith 2005; Ritchie and Barker 2005; Bauer 2007, 2008). BDSM may enable practitioners to imagine and explore radically different subjectivities and realities by disrupting the links between bodies and identities and making them available to redefinition and rearrangement (Bauer 2008). Similarly, it has been suggested that Black communities may feel a need to police their desires, and that, therefore, engaging in race play may be a way of defying the (self-)regulation of racialised minorities (Williams in Plaid and Williams 2008; see also Sharpe 2010, pp.1478). However, as Women may find it more difficult to trust dominant Men than Women (Ritchie and Barker 2005, p.234), BDSM practitioners may not be able to 19
completely escape social constructions. Additionally, switching and fluidity seem to be emphasised by Feminist and Queer practitioners (c.f. Ritchie and Barker 2005; Bauer 2008;Weiss 2011, pp.1745; see also Chaline 2005 for the prevalence of switching amongst Gay Men), while comparably fixed roles appear to be much more common in more mainstream communities (c.f. Sisson and Moser 2005; Yost 2007; Weiss 2011, pp.267 and 178; however, see also Weinberg, Williams and Moser 1984 for fluidity outside of Queer communities). Consequently, it seems plausible that the subversive potential of BDSM is a function not so much of BDSM as such, but rather of the ideologies of specific practitioners and communities. Additionally, even though playing with and thereby deconstructing and subverting gender is relatively common in Queer BDSM communities, playing with race is not (Beckmann 2007, p.201; Bauer 2008). 20
It wasnt me: transgressive BDSM as alibi
Even if traditional roles can be played with in the context of BDSM, this may not necessarily lead to positive political effects. Indeed, it has been argued that the focus on negotiating consent and the ability to freely play with power is used by BDSM practitioners as an alibi to brush over the privileges that enable them to engage in BDSM in the first place (c.f. Morgan 1977; Barry 1982; Sims, Mason and Pagano 1982; Sheff and Hammers 2011; Weiss 2011). For example, Sheff and Hammers (2011, p.209) suggest that while polyamorous and kink communities ostensibly support values like equality and diversity, White privilege generally remains as invisible in these groups as [it] is in more conventional society, thus becoming the dominant racial paradigm. Similarly, Weiss (2011, p.15) claim that racial/-ised/-ising and class/-ed/-ing exclusions in BDSM communities are
disguised behind alibis of tolerance, class- or race-neutrality, and diversity. Furthermore, in addition to an ignorance of issues of race in BDSM communities, members of racialised minorities are also gravely underrepresented in BDSM communities and research (c.f. Chaline 2005, Bauer 2008, Sheff and Hammers 2011, Weiss 2011). Consequently, the ability to not address race can be seen as a privilege of White practitioners in the context of an unacknowledged universal whiteness that can be regarded to be a result of the overrepresentation of White practitioners in BDSM communities (Bauer 2008, p.246). For example, professional dominatrices tend to not receive requests for race play from white clients while such requests are relatively common amongst clients of color (Lindemann 2011, p.160). Similarly, in a discussion about whether BDSM may be feminist, practitioners seemed to not touch the issue of race (Ritchie and Barker 2005), which suggests that they may see feminism only from a colourblind, that is, a hegemonic Western perspective. It seems that the identity of some BDSM communities may in fact be centered on the intersectional identities of a few (Crenshaw 1991, p.1299), namely White Middle-class (Male? Heterosexual?) practitioners living their dream of liberal colour blindness. In this sense, avoiding the topic and issue of race play in the context of a culture that is ostensibly characterised by diversity and transgression of identity norms may be a means to evade the intersections of BDSM practices and racial/-ised/-ising hierarchies (Weiss 2011, p.19). On the other hand, Beckmann (2007), in a study of a relatively progressive and politically aware BDSM community in London, claim that in this community, critical reflection on power roles is actively encouraged. Similarly, a research participant in Bauers (2007, p.189) study of a dyke+ BDSM community points out 21
that some BDSM communities are super apolitical in a lot of ways and express doubts whether they can really engage in healthy SM because they have no fucking idea what oppression is.These studies appear to contradict the suggestion that BDSM communities in general tend to encourage an uncritical attitude towards practitioners privileges. Furthermore, Lindemann (2011, p.159) argue that the clients of professional dominatrices in New York are more racially diverse than those in the San Francisco Bay Area where Weiss (2011) conducted their study. Therefore, some BDSM communities may be more racially diverse and more politically aware and active than others. Nonetheless, it seems that racism is rarely challenged in BDSM communities, and even practitioners in Queer communities shy away from dealing with issues of race (Bauer 2008). In this sense, the potential fluidity and openness that such communities offer some members may lead to ignorance of social hierarchies and power dynamics and thereby stifle the political potential of subverting these very hierarchies and power dynamics. 22
Preliminary Summary
Many arguments around BDSM in general and race play in particular have been brought forward, and in most cases, there are no simple answers. While BDSM practices may not be a sign of psychopathology, their therapeutic potential depends on their contexts and may even entail negative political consequences if members of oppressing groups use BDSM as a means to obtain absolution. Similarly, while the release of personal tension that arises from systematic discrimination may be positive, it cannot and should not replace political struggle. Furthermore, while the complete displacement of BDSM practices into the realm of private choices of autonomous actors may not be warranted, they may serve to rework ideas of
consent and power in relationships. On the other hand, while BDSM may expose structural power relations, it may also reproduce them, and while BDSM may offer opportunities for resignifying symbols of oppression for some people, it can also reinforce these symbols for others. Finally, while BDSM may foster empathy and offer opportunities to imagine and explore (new) identities, realities and intelligible subject positions, the ability to take part in these activities may itself depend on a prior position of privilege. This is especially salient in relation to race and race play because such issues are often avoided in environments that are characterised by an ideology of colour blindness. As it seems that BDSM can be politically useful as well as politically problematic, it is crucial to consider that [t]here is no homogenous S&M culture (Langdridge and Butt 2005, p.72). This heterogeneity includes different conceptions of power and different understandings of BDSM practices as serving political goals, potentially serving political goals, or being completely cut off from any political context. Engaging in BDSM does not guarantee political subversiveness, especially in relation to racially marginalised groups, but neither does it automatically entail discrimination. These contradictions cannot and should not be resolved into either one or the other position because what BDSM is depends on the context and can be internally contradictory. Consequently, we should keep in mind the risk of further scapegoating already marginalised sexual practises and practitioners (Rubin 1989, p.301). Sex does not always need to lead to the revolution; sex like any other activity can also just be fun. Or, as Chancer (2000, p.87) suggest: it may be possible and desirable to protest the sadomasochistic character of a given culture, at the same time recognizing that sadomasochistic desires are likely to characterize many individuals ex23
periences of desire (see also Deckha 2011). It seems useful in this context to conceptualise personal ideologies as being similar to sexual desires to see ideologies as well as desires as emotionally charged and at least in part socially constructed. This means that we can avoid pitting innate desires against artificial ideologies (a move that is itself deeply ideological). Instead, we may profit from seeing people and practices as complex webs of interrelated and potentially contradictory desires (including ideologies) which are never under the complete control of an autonomous subject. This conception requires an approach to private as well as public, personal as well as political desires and practices that avoids scapegoating, but combines empathy for others with a desire to fight structural unfairness. Because BDSM race play at least can be politically useful, the important question might be: how can practitioners use BDSM race play to spread political awareness and initiate power-sensitive conversations? 24
Subjectivities/Identities
As we have seen, BDSM race play can be both politically useful and politically problematic.While some communities encourage consciousness and awareness, in others, an emphasis on consent and free negotiation as well as tolerance, equality and diversity conceals relationships between BDSM, race and social power relations. One way of increasing awareness of these issues may be an understanding of (some) BDSM race play scenes as a theatre of play: in such performances, racial issues can be highlighted and discussed.This theatre of play is enabled by the constructedness of practitioners identities and subjectivities. In this chapter, I will first introduce Foucauldian conceptions of power as well as performativity theory which enable us to not only interrogate the genesis of practitioners identities and subjectivities, but also offer a more useful conceptualisation of power in race play than liberal notions of negotiated power exchange. I will then argue that BDSM play allows for a useful understanding of the fracturedness and multiplicity of identity and subjectivity. Finally, I will propose that this multiplicity that becomes available in BDSM play can be used for political purposes.
Power
As described in the last chapter, BDSM is often understood in terms of power. 26 For example, BDSM performances are seen to expose or parody power relations, to reproduce them, to subvert them by offering new viable subject positions, and to hide them behind a veil of diversity and unacknowledged White universality of experience. Furthermore, BDSM is very often or even primarily understood as involving an exchange of power between the involved parties in which one/ some submit their power to another/others. In this sense, power is conceptualised as an object, a commodity that people can possess and that they can therefore also (temporarily) transfer to others, often in the form of a kind of contract (c.f. Weinberg, Williams and Moser 1984; Langdridge and Butt 2004; Langdridge and Butt 2005; Ritchie and Barker 2005). Additionally, power in BDSM is often seen in terms of the power to restrict other peoples agencies. For example, Chancer (1992, p.48) suggest that power in BDSM encounters consists in a restriction of freedom (of movement or otherwise) of the sub by the dom.These two features power as a commodity and power as restrictive can be seen as the defining characteristics of a classic juridical model of power (Foucault 1976, p.88). However, Foucault has argued that this perception of power as a transferable means of restriction/repression is inaccurate:
Powers condition of possibility must not be sought in the primary existence of a central point, in a unique source of sovereignty from which secondary and descendent forms would emanate; it is the moving substrate of force relations which, by virtue of their inequality, constantly engender
The Theatre of Play Subjectivities/Identities
states of power, but the latter are always local and unstable. Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere. [P]ower is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society. (Foucault 1998 [1976], p.93) 27
In this sense, power is not a self-contained commodity or a right that can be transferred between social actors, but only exists in and as expressions of the unequal and mobile relations of power that are inherent in all relationships (Foucault 1998 [1976], p.94): it is neither given, nor exchanged, nor recovered, but rather exercised, and it only exists in action (Foucault 1976, p.89). Furthermore, in addition to permeating society, power does not simply restrictnatural desires (Foucault 1998 [1976], pp.968). Instead, power produces social realities and subjectivities by both totalising (that is, categorising) and individualising people (Foucault SubjectAndPower). People are placed in totalised/totalising categories based on the practices they engage in and the embodiments that are ascribed to them practices are seen not simply as something people do, but as expressions of what they are, will be, may be (Foucault 1991 [1975], p.18). Similarly, power also works to create people as subjects: [t]here are two meanings of the word subject: subject to someone else by control and dependence, and tied to his own identity by a conscience or self-knowledge. Both meanings suggest a form of power that subjugates and makes subject to. (Foucault 2001 [1982], p.331) In this sense, power influences how people are by transforming the how into a who, the doing into a being.
Performativity theories elaborate on this idea of the subjection and subjectification of people.The concept of performativity is based on Austins (1962) linguistic concept of performative speech acts: speech acts dont merely describe something, but perform actions. For example, uttering a safe word in a BDSM scene performs the function of signalling that something is wrong and (usually/ideally) effects a pausing of the scene. Similarly, expressions of ones group/category identity as expressions of ways of being can be understood to not simply describe someones identity but to also prompt/force other members of the same totalised/-ing group to follow these norms about how or who someone who is a member of that group should be (Butler 2011 [1993], p.xix). In this sense, normal expressions are always also normative insofar as they create the very identities which they appear to merely express (Butler 2006 [1990], p.34). The driving force behind performativity is the iterability of such expressions: performativity cannot take place in isolated moments in time. Much rather, any performative act draws on its social context, the power of other statements and actions (and statements are actions too insofar as they are always performative) that came before it and that exist in parallel to it: 28
If a performative provisionally succeeds , then it is not because an intention successfully governs the action of speech, but only because that action echoes prior actions, and accumulates the force of authority through the repetition or citation of a prior, authoritative set of practices. What this means, then, is that a performative works to the extent that it draws on and covers over the constitutive conventions by which it is mobilized. In this sense, no term or statement can function performatively without the
accumulating and dissimulating historicity of force. (Butler 2011 [1993], p.172) 29 Although Butler based their approach to performativity on the construction of gender/sex, performativity theory has also been applied to race (c.f. Ross 2005; Ehlers 2006, 2008). Ehlers (2006, p.153) argue that race is devoid of ontological security and is instead performatively constituted (their emphasis). In this sense, [r]ace is a practice an ongoing discursive process of racing individuals that must be maintained in order to survive. The categories accepted as natural and inevitable must consistently and seamlessly be reiterated in discourse in order for these categories to be sustained. (Ehlers 2008, p.334) Furthermore, while power always pursues aims, these aims are not the result of the conscious choices of specific, volitional subjects (Foucault 1998 [1976], p.95). Instead, these choices like the subjects themselves are the result of power as it worked in their subjection/subjectification: [t]he power to race and, indeed, the power to gender, precedes the one who speaks such power, and yet the one who speaks nevertheless appears to have that power (Butler 1997a, p.49). The subject is only retroactively instituted as the source of power or the origin of a performative statement (Butler 1997a, p.49). Consequently, the autonomous subject that freely negotiates consent and enters contracts is destabilised and put into question: [p]ower not only acts on a subject but, in a transitive sense, enacts the subject into being (Butler 1997b, p.13; their emphasis). As power produces subjectivities, the appeal to a prediscursive subject may be little more than a ruse: [t]he man [sic!] described for us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a subjection much more profound than himself (Foucault 1991 [1975], p.30).
Resistance
However, [t]o say that one can never be outside power does not mean that one 30 is trapped and condemned to defeat no matter what (Foucault 1980, pp.1412) much rather, resistances are all the more real and effective because they are formed right at the point where relations of power are exercised (Foucault 1980, p. 142). [T]o be constituted by discourse is not to be determined by discourse, where determination forecloses the possibility of agency (Butler 2006 [1990], p.195; their emphasis). Indeed, agency is the assumption of a purpose unintended by power, one that could not have been derived logically or historically, that operates in a relation of contingency and reversal to the power that makes it possible, to which it nevertheless belongs (Butler 1997b, p.15; their emphasis). Because performativity relies on the constant iteration and recitation of norms, the site of this iteration introduces a moment of instability, an opportunity to turn these norms against themselves, to expose them as arbitrary (Butler 1997a, p.14). As the primary effect of performativity is the structuring of the field of possible subject positions (Butler 1997b, p.84) and as subjects are never fully determined by norms, they always introduce slight errors into the citations of these norms (Butler 2011 [1993]). These errors offer opportunities for the proliferation of culturally intelligible subject positions. Ehlers (2006, p.149) suggest the concept of crisis as a moment of political opportunity: [c]onfigured in terms of race, crisis is registered as a decisive point where the supposed ontology of race must be reaffirmed in response to a risk that renders this truth unstable or in response to a threat that racial truth might not exist (Ehlers 2006, p.149). Such a crisis arises whenever a subject is called upon to confirm the racial/-ised/-ising truth that is
ascribed to it, and every crisis holds the possibility of exposing the instability of identity. In this context, sexuality is a nexus of power relations that can be used and invested in multiple ways (Foucault 1998 [1976], p.103), and, far from being antithetical to each other, pleasure and power seek out, overlap, and reinforce one another (Foucault 1998 [1976], p.48). These two arguments that race is performatively constructed and that sexuality is a nexus of power relations suggest that BDSM race play may be especially well-suited for observing and subverting regimes of power that institute normal/ised/-ising subject positions. Indeed, as I have shown above, BDSM has been considered as a profoundly political practice by both its opponents and its proponents. For example, arguments that BDSM play is subversive because it parodies power relations (c.f. Langdridge and Butt 2004; Ritchie and Barker 2005) seem to draw on Butlers (2006 [1990]) suggestion that drag can be subversive. Additionally, arguments suggesting that BDSM practices require or foster self-reflexivity (c.f. Smith 2005; Beckmann 2004) suggest that BDSM may indeed offer an opportunity for observing social power relations. Finally, BDSM may offer not only a perspective from which relations of power can be observed as they play out, but also a space where new configurations of power can be imagined and explored (c. f. Smith 2005; Bauer 2007, 2008). Bauer (2007, p.180) argue that [t]he concept of performativity works differently in BDSM spaces. In contrast to everyday life, in BDSM spaces one can consciously choose and negotiate identities for play. The social pressure to conform to normative roles and identities may be relieved in BDSM play: BDSM performances may enable subjects to try out / try on different, new subjectivities, thereby offering a way of disrupting the iterative process of normative identity construction. 31
However, it is important to note that there is no necessary relation between drag and subversion, and drag may well be used in the service of both the denaturalization and reidealization of hyperbolic heterosexual gender norms (Butler 2011 [1993], p.85). Additionally, Weiss (2011, p.178) claim that, in the BDSM community they surveyed, while Dominant Women were celebrated as transgressing gender norms, Submissive Men were not. Subversion of power roles and proliferation of subject positions may therefore not be an inherent feature of BDSM. Instead, in combination with widespread racial privilege amongst practitioners, even though or maybe because questions of power are foregrounded in BDSM play, practitioners may be oblivious or ignorant of socio-political issues and power hierarchies in wider society and how they interact with (their) BDSM practices (Weiss 2011, pp.1445). Additionally, conceptions of power as a commodity that is transferred between autonomous subjects may hinder political struggles by displacing responsibility on the individual. Similarly, Bauer (2008, p.246) suggest that gender transgression may be enabled in the Dyke+ community they surveyed because of its exclusion of Cis Men. They theorise that since it is a mixed-race space that is dominated by members of the privileged race, this seems to rather foreclose a playful approach in this regard (Bauer 2008, p.246) and that the invisibility of whiteness seems to be a prerequisite for transgressions in other realms (Bauer 2008, p.249). Therefore, whether and to which extent particular practices can be performatively subversive depends on their specific context (Butler 2006 [1990], p.xxii; Weiss 2011). Additionally, it has been argued that White Scientists curiosity about the sexual deviances of their white objects of knowledge Foucaults main argument for the construction of totalising sexualised species/categories (1998 [1976]) was 32
motivated by and complicit to the reproduction of their shared racial normativity (c. f. Stoler 1995; Ross 2005). Subjects are never simply sexualised, but always also racialised, and racial and sexual subjectivities are intertwined (c.f. Ferguson 2005; Walcott 2005; Butler 2006 [1990], p.xvi). Queer theorising based on performativity theory has been accused of ignoring the racialisation of sexual subjects and instead reproducing ideas of whiteness as universal (c.f. Cohen 2005; Harper 2005; Johnson 2005). Additionally, [f]ailure to ground discourse in materiality is to privilege the positions of those whose subjectivity and agency, outside the realm of gender and sexuality, has never been subjugated (Johnson 2005, p.139). In this sense, [d]econstructive strategies remain quite deaf and blind to the very concrete and violent institutional forms to which the most logical answer is resistance in and through a particular collective identity (Gamson 1995, p.400). Just because we have deconstructed our own identity/subjectivity (and their respective plural forms), this does not mean that we have found in such a deconstruction a means of effective political resistance (Bersani 1996, p.4). However, to claim that race is produced, constructed or even that it has a fictive status is not to suggest that it is artificial or dispensable (Butler 2011 [1993], p.189). 33
Dividuality
However, identity politics has come under attack as well (c.f. Butler 2006 [1990]; Johnson and Henderson 2005b). For example, Johnson and Henderson (2005b, p.5) argue that essentialist identity politics often reinforces hegemonic power structures rather than dismantling them. Similarly to the suggestion that identity is built on the exclusion of others/Others (Butler 2011 [1993], pp.xiiixiv), identity politics is understood to privilege the identities and associated material
realities of some over those of others (c.f. Crenshaw 1991; Cohen 2005). One significant way to address this problem has been the idea of intersectionality: 34 We regard the concept of intersectionality as signifying the complex, irreducible, varied, and variable effects which ensue when multiple axis of differentiation economic, political, cultural, psychic, subjective and experiential intersect in historically specific contexts.The concept emphasizes that different dimensions of social life cannot be separated out into discrete and pure strands. (Brah and Phoenix 2004, p.76)
Different group identities, rather than just being stacked on each other and staying internally intact, influence each other, and subjects exist at the intersections of various dimensions of subjectivity. Rather than privileging the experiences and realities of one sub-group and universalising their identity as the identity of all other sub-groups, intersectionality requires that group differences be taken into account. In this sense, not only is a subject always a member of multiple groups, but also rarely a full member of all these groups, as the normativities of some group memberships foreclose full membership in other groups. For example, a Black BDSM practitioner may be neither a full member of Black communities because of their involvement in BDSM nor of BDSM communities because of their blackness. However, in some BDSM communities, an apolitical stance towards sexuality or the positioning of Kinkiness as a homogenous shared sexual identity in combination with superficially embracing liberal diversity and thereby displacing responsibility onto individual subjects can serve to erase intersectional identities of socially especially racially marginalised practitioners
(c.f.Weiss 2011).The question therefore is: [w]hat kind of politics could embrace partial, contradictory, permanently unclosed constructions of personal and collective selves ? (Haraway 1991, p.157) An alternative to homogenising identity politics and race-neutral queer politics may be a politics that is based on coalitions rather than identities. As Haraway (1988, 1991) argue, partiality may provide a basis for a politics that does not rely on homogenised/-ing attributes and totalising characteristics but is based on affinity rather than identity. Affinity, in this sense, refers to the being related not because of a prefigured and prediscursive shared truth, but because of choice (Haraway 1991, p.155). A politics of affinity does not require monolithic group identities, but much rather the ability to empathise with others. Indeed, to ignore the multiple subjectivities of the minoritarian subject within and without political movements and theoretical paradigms is not only theoretically and politically naive, but also potentially dangerous (Johnson and Henderson 2005b, p.5). BDSM race play may offer an opportunity for such a politics that is based on a conception of subjectivity and identity as fractured and partial. In this context, I want to propose the term dividuality dividedness and dividingness for the practices of splitting and multiplication, as a counterpart to normative visions of integrity and individuality. Just as the author in historical analysis, rather than being an expression of a predefined order of things, is a functional principle that is ascribed to collections of texts a posteriori (Foucault 1969, p.101), so can the coherent and cohesive subject be seen as a construction, a functional principle. For example, Butler (2006 [1990], p.23) suggest that the coherence and continuity of the person are not logical or analytic features of personhood, but, rather, socially instituted and maintained norms of intelligibility. Indeed, [s]uspending the de35
mand for self-identity or, more particularly, for complete coherence seems to counter a certain ethical violence, which demands that we manifest and maintain self-identity at all times and requires that others do the same (Butler 2005, p.42): 36
Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are but to refuse what we are. We have to imagine and to build up what we could be to get rid of this kind of political double bind, which is the simultaneous individualization and totalization of modern power structures. (Foucault 2001 [1982], p.336)
The adoption, adaptation and appropriation of various roles of power as well as personality and the imagination and exploration of unstable, divided and dividing subjectivities is often seen as a significant characteristic of politically Queer BDSM practices (c.f. Lindemann 2001; Langdridge 2005; Smith 2005; Beckmann 2004, p 205; Bauer 2007, 2008; Weiss 2006). Indeed, as Langdridge (2005, p.203) suggest that certain BDSM practices demonstrate the intentional splitting of self and body, it can also be argued that BDSM practices involve a splitting of ones subjectivity: by playing with different aspects of oneself / ones selves and trying out and trying on identities that one does not usually consider part of oneself / ones selves, one puts the normalising performativity of social roles and totalising identities into question. Furthermore, the suggestion that BDSM play may enable an experience of intrapersonal diversity (Bauer 2008, p.244) can be seen as an example of how dividuality may lead to greater empathy for others. In this sense, rather than just building coalitions around issues that affect members of various, but allegedly internally
homogenous groups (and group identities), BDSM may offer the potential for a politics of empathy empathy not in the sense of condescending compassion, but as conscious political awareness for power relations and embodied subjectivities. As Walcott (2005, p.93) point out, a sociality of mutual recognitions may be preferable to en-/forced homogeneity. In a politics of empathy and affinity, the tension between assertions of multiple identity and the ongoing necessity of group politics (Crenshaw 1991, p.1296) can be alleviated by focusing not only on multiple and yet always multiply incomplete group memberships, but on crossgroup identification and empathy. In this sense, dividuality can be a counterpractice to what Haraway (1988) calls the God trick: the claim to see from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. In the context of racial relations and BDSM race play, the God trick can be seen in terms of universal whiteness / White universality: just as the God trick involves the illusion of disembodied vision from everywhere and nowhere at the same time (Haraway 1988, p.581), so does unmarked whiteness (Wiegman 1999). Rather than relying on the God trick of unaccountable universality, partial perspectives promise locatable and therefore responsible knowledge: 37
One cannot be either a cell or molecule or a woman, colonized person, laborer, and so on if one intends to see and see from these positions critically. Being is much more problematic and contingent. Also, one cannot relocate in any possible vantage point without being accountable for that movement. Vision is always a question of the power to see and perhaps of the violence implicit in our visualizing practices. (Haraway 1988, p.585)
Dividuality in BDSM race play can offer an opportunity to be responsible/responsibly by putting into question homogenising and universalising identities and offering a way of responsible and contextualised relocation. Furthermore, the focus on co-operation in BDSM race play may enable ways of relating to others and their respective situated knowledges: [t]he knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming to be another (Haraway 1988, p.586). Therefore, BDSM race play can help make racial/-ised/-ising privilege visible by exposing the various totalising and marginalising discourses that inhabit and form particular subjects. As Flax (1995, p.436) argue, [o]ne does not have to occupy a position of pure oppression to articulate principles or engage in practices intended to end relations of domination. Indeed, a politics of affinity and empathy based on fracturedness and dividuality may enable BDSM practitioners to engage more effectively in a politics that is intended to fight relations of domination. However, rather than just splitting imposed subjective coherence and enabling co-operative vision and empathy, BDSM may also reinforce ideas of hierarchy as being a rigid structure because practitioners imagine power in the juridical, geographical terms outlined above (c.f. Langdridge and Butt 2005, p.71). Similarly, the idea of BDSM as fostering empathy and thereby enabling affinity may be an ideal scenario rather than a descriptions of many actual encounters. Politically effective dividuality may require a prior political awareness or at least willingness to engage with subjects other than oneself in this sense, empathy is as much a prerequisite for politically effective BDSM race play as it can be its result. Additionally, I do not intend the term dividuality to imply that the subject con38
sists of distinct parts that can be rearranged and replaced at will. Much rather, the concept of intersectionality suggests that the subject is not simply dividual in the sense that it can be split into atomic characteristics, but that these characteristics influence each other. However, White BDSM practitioners may often avoid the racial implications of assuming a dividual identity as a slave (Bauer 2008, p.246) by splitting off race play and their partial play identities from social power hierarchies (Weiss 2011). In this sense, dividuality can serve as a smokescreen, a justification for the privilege of a universalist perspective that allows people to move into and appropriate the position of particularity in the first place (Wiegman 1999). It seems that dividuality in BDSM race play may well be politically problematic because it can further racialised oppression and privilege. Therefore, when Haraway (1988, p.590) suggest that [s]ituated knowledges are about communities, not about isolated individuals and we imagine BDSM communities to offer opportunities for the formation of such interconnected situated knowledges, it is important to keep in mind that these communities are also permeated by unequal power relations, including racism and sexism (c.f. Sheff and Hammers 2011;Weiss 2011). In this sense, BDSM race play does not simply consist of co-operative practices that can be imagined as innocent and free from social power relations. Much rather, if such a theatre of play is to provide an opportunity for powersensitive conversations and an effective politics of affinity and/through empathy, it requires a willingness of practitioners to critically engage with their privileges and positionalities. 39
The Theatre of Play
BDSM race play may be politically useful as well as politically detrimental. Furthermore, BDSM play may provide a safe space in which social power hierarchies can be exposed and new subjectivities can be tried out. However, it has also been argued that the conception of a safe space, the splitting off of BDSM play from social reality has been used as a smokescreen to brush over how social privilege, especially in relation to race and class, structures participation in some BDSM communities. On the other hand, some BDSM communities and some BDSM practitioners may be more aware of social power relations and more intent on effectively fighting them. The social constructedness of identities and subjectivities and the fracturedness and partiality of subjectivity as it can be played out and explored in BDSM race play in the form of dividuality may be useful in enabling a politics of affinity and empathy. In this chapter, I will further explore how BDSM race play can be used by politically aware practitioners to initiate power-sensitive conversations. To this end, I will first relate performativity to performance and explore the implications of the volatility of meaning and the materiality of embodied identities
for the subversive and conversational potential of performance. I will then argue how performance and co-operative acting in BDSM race play can be used as an educational tool, where I understand education as power-sensitive conversations that can be initiated by fractured and partial subjects. Finally, I will give some suggestions for how this theatre of play can be used to enable a better understanding of the relationships between race and BDSM play. 41
Performance
Although, as I have argued, performativity theory was based on the linguistic theory of performative speech acts that is, speech acts that perform actions , it has often been conflated with the idea of the performance of the self, the staging of ones identity (c.f. Brickell 2003, 2005). Although this conflation has been critiqued (c.f. Brickell 2003, 2005; Butler 2011 [1993]), in the context of BDSM race play, it can be useful to relate performativity to performance because, as Bauer (2007, p.180) argues, [t]he concept of performativity works differently in BDSM spaces. In contrast to everyday life, in BDSM spaces one can consciously choose and negotiate identities for play. In this sense, the scenes performances of race play can offer subversive citations of performative principles. Social realities and performatively constituted identities feature heavily in BDSM play: [l]ike all cultural performances SM is an engagement with social norms that, when effective, can communicate and consolidate those norms and serve as critique, evaluation or rejection of the ways that social power and categories work in the everyday (Weiss 2009, p.187). Consequently, while BDSM may sometimes reproduce social power by offering practitioners a space in which they can imagine themselves to exist outside of social power relations, it can also break
The Theatre of Play The Theatre of Play
down this very split between private desires and public relations (Weiss 2011, p.218). In this sense, BDSM practices can create as well as destroy alibis: 42 [S]ome [BDSM performances] make visible, and thus available for reimagining, the normally invisible construction of racialized belonging, while others make spectacle, and thus detach the audience from such productions. Crucial here are the personal, social, and national imaginaries available for play, the social tensions between the visible and invisible, known and unknown, and public and private that animate SM dynamics; and the effect of affective involvement, an emotional attachment to particular scenes and dynamics, for players and audiences alike. (Weiss 2011, pp.18990)
Indeed, as Ehlers (2008, p.343) suggest,
it is in the realm of the embodied performance(s) of racial norms that these very same norms can potentially be re-worked. If race only exists in the re-tellings, if it is that which must be sustained (and is never achieved), then it is precisely here in the instantiations of race where race must be articulated that the possibilities for infractions, interruptions, and interventions might open up.
BDSM play is often described with metaphors of performance and theatre (c.f. Sharpe 2010, p.148; Weinberg and Williams and Moser 1984, p.383) the description of an encounter as a scene is one of the most obvious signs of this convention.While practitioner themselves often express a dislike for an understanding
of BDSM play as a performance because they feel that it makes BDSM a form of pretending and therefore contests the reality and validity of their identities (c.f. Weiss 2011, p.152; Ritchie and Barker 2005, p.235; Sophia 2007, p.274), [r]elations among people are always constructed, and the question to be asked is not which ones are the most natural, but rather what interests are served by each construction (Bersani 1996, p.38). Consequently, an understanding of BDSM as performances/theatre can be a way to expose the constructedness of identities and practices. As Foucault (in OHiggins and Foucault 1982/1983, p.20) call BDSM communities laboratories of sexual experimentation, it seems useful to also see them as theatres in which sexual experimentation can be consciously linked to the constructedness of identities, dividuality and an empathy for the other/Other. In addition to an understanding of performances as linking the private to the public and offering opportunities for subversive citations of social norms that can express, expose and create subjects as fractured and therefore able to form connections with each other, an understanding of BDSM scenes as performances highlights the importance of the volatility of meaning in an evaluation of these practices. As conceptualising BDSM race play as performances enables us to see them as texts, it also becomes clear that these performances can be read in more than one way: 43
The effort to guarantee a kind of efficacious speaking in which intentions materialize in the deeds they have in mind, and interpretations are controlled in advance by intention itself, constitutes a wishful effort to return to a sovereign picture of language that is no longer true, and that might never have been true, one that, for political reasons, one might rejoice over
not being true. (Butler 1997a, p.93)
Furthermore, if meaning is not under the control of sovereign subjects, the simple distinction between performers and audiences cannot be upheld. Instead, performers also perceive (and thereby interpret and construct) their own performances, and audiences perform (create) the meanings of their perceptions.There is always a possibility that performances will be read against their intentions and in most (if not all) cases, performances will not be read in complete accordance with their intentions. As Brickell (2005, p.36) argue, there is a tendency toward conservatism within interactions, including subjects reluctance to accede to a definition of the situation that challenges the consensus.Therefore, the audiences including the performers of potentially subversive performances of BDSM race play can and will neutralise the subversive potential of these performances, for example by hunting for signs that confirm rather than challenge stereotypes (Shome 1999, p.123). Indeed, as Butler (1993, p.205) ask: [i]f racism pervades white perception, structuring what can and cannot appear within the horizon of white perception, then to what extent does it interpret in advance visual evidence? In the context of BDSM, we can add to this visual evidence all other forms of perceptions that can be experienced during race play scenes. Because meaning is instituted in interpretation, the act of seeing performances of BDSM race play as reproducing racism may the very act by which this foreclosure of meaning is effected (Butler 1990b, p.193): just as interpretations of race play as subversive may open it up to being subversive, interpreting race play as necessarily racist can make it racist. If in BDSM race play that reflects racial/-ised/-ising norms the imperative do this is less delivered than depicted, and what is
44
depicted is a set of compensatory ideals and hyperbolic norms (Butler 1997a, p.68), racialised submission in race play could be construed (and construal is an active though not necessarily conscious process of interpretation and construction which can be influenced by the contextualisation in the theatre of play) as an exaggerated representation of social fantasies. Therefore, as Butler (1997a, p.69) call for a feminist reading of pornography, a similar suggestion can be made about the reading and therefore production of BDSM race play scenes. However, because the very conception of BDSM as transgressive may serve as an alibi for not inspecting practitioners privilege (Weiss 2011, p), deviant performances should not be constructed as automatically transgressive. What BDSM practices are is not fixed, but contextually contingent. Consequently, it may not be enough to try to subvert performative norms silently instead, this subversion can potentially be performed more effectively if it involves and encourages a more active and conscious engagement with its possible meanings a theatre of play that does not only depict, but also tries to explain. 45
Education/Conversation
Indeed, if BDSM is conducive to an empathic understanding of others (c.f. Beckmann 2007; Bauer 2007, 2008) because it enables an experience of partiality and dividuality, BDSM race play may be an opportunity for educational interventions. For example, Bauer (2007, p.181) claim that
[t]he experience of understanding an identity or a power dynamic is a common and valued theme among BDSM queers and points to the value they place on looking at gender and sexuality from different perspectives
as means of acknowledging and respecting difference, both within themselves and interpersonally [BDSM practitioners] observe in themselves an increased awareness of or at least an interest in social power structures, including gender hierarchies and norms, in everyday situations. 46
As I have argued, the possibility of trying and experiencing different partial identities in BDSM play may serve as a way to constructing situated knowledges. Indeed, BDSM play has been suggested to function as a way of building practitioners skills (c.f. Smith 2005, p.185; Bauer 2008, p.236), including the epistemic skill of an outsiders critical perspective on marriage, the family, heterosexuality, gender roles, and vanilla sex (Califia 2000 [1994]). As Haraway (1988, p.58) suggest, [t]he standpoints of the subjugated are preferred because in principle they are least likely to allow denial of the critical and interpretive core of all knowledge. In this sense, BDSM practitioners may be more likely to be able to see through the God trick of White universality. However, BDSM practitioners are not always and necessarily more politically aware and more able or willing to question the God trick that is often also the source of their own privilege. As [l]iberation rests on the construction of the consciousness, the imaginative apprehension, of oppression, and so of possibility (Haraway 1991, p.149), it may be especially important to build epistemic skills in relation to race in BDSM communities. In this sense, BDSM race play could offer a way of addressing fallout from the system (Califia 1980, p.173) in BDSM communities. The crucial question in this context may be: How do we represent the Other in performance in a self-reflexive, dialogical, nonracist, nonsexist, nonhomophobic, nonclassist way? (Johnson 2003, p.220) Johnson (2003) offer a tentative way of combining performance and education
in the context of literature classes at universities: racialised texts are performed by students so that the normativities associated with authentic performance of race can be unravelled. For example, when a White Working-class Woman performed a text that involved the authorial voice of a Black Working-class Woman, they were criticised by Black students in the class for their stereotypical performance of that / such a Black Woman. As Johnson (2003, p.238) note, the Black students comments toed the conservative line of black authenticity: Youre not black, so how could you possibly play a black woman in a realistic way? However, these Black students came from a Middle-class background and were therefore likely to have had less access to knowledge about the life of a Working-class Woman than the White Working-class student. Nonetheless, it seems that Black authenticity trumped Working-class authenticity (Johnson 2003, p.239): even though the Black students did not have full access to the intersectional identities in the text either, the assumption of racial/-ised/-ising homogeneity prevailed. The contradictions between multiple identities that arose in the context of this performance offered an opportunity for a discussion about race, authentic Blackness and intersections of race and class that would otherwise have been difficult to stimulate (Johnson 2003, p.240). BDSM race play may afford performers and audiences similar opportunities for power-sensitive conversations. Indeed, not all cross-cultural appropriation necessarily entails colonisation and oppression. Much rather, some sites of cross-cultural appropriation provide fertile ground on which to formulate new epistemologies of self and Other (Johnson 2003, p.6). In this sense, the experiential process of performance facilitated the students cross-cultural engagement (Johnson 2003, p.244; their emphasis). This can be linked to the suggestion that the rule that good doms need to have subbed 47
first leads to an experiential empathy for powerlessness (Beckmann 2004, p.203): the assumption and appropriation of social roles in BDSM play may offer an opportunity for cross-cultural empathy and engagement. As Johnson (2003, p.252) point out, performing personal narratives may both facilitate de-essentializing and othering the self and [call] attention to the material consequences of inhabiting blackness. Therefore, playing with race in the theatre of play may facilitate navigating the tensions between a critical understanding of the constructedness and fracturedness of identities and an awareness of the material effects of these constructed and fractured identities. However, it is important to keep in mind that this experiential empathy should not be construed as offering complete experiences of Otherness. Namely, because the meaning of experiences depends on ones own response to them, and because this response is contingent on peoples embodied identities and prior experiences, the meaning that one person ascribes to a scene in the theatre of play does not necessarily correspond to the realities of people who are constantly forced to experience these scenes in their everyday lives. If this caveat is not considered, experiential empathy and the appropriation of cultural identities run the risk of reinforcing White practitioners ignorance: It wasnt that bad for me in play, so it surely isnt that bad for you in your life either. Indeed, performance is not magic: there are pitfalls to performance that may result in tragic misreadings by colonizing the Other, exoticizing or fetishizing the Other, trivializing the Other, or by not engaging the Other at all (Johnson 2003, p.243). While embodiment in performance may offer an opportunity for critical knowledge (Johnson 2003, p.244), this opportunity needs to be actively taken up. BDSM race play may not simply be an exchange of power, a dynamic between 48
power and powerlessness, but rather a co-operative effort, an expression of power as the human ability to act in concert (Arendt 1969, p.44). However, even though BDSM play may, on the surface, be an expression of shared power, it is also fraught with internal power relations, and these internal power relations are necessarily unequal not because BDSM play entails a power exchange, but because BDSM practices and BDSM practitioners are embedded in and influenced by wider social relations of power. It would be a mistake to simply brush away these concerns even if people act in concert, the tune is not completely harmonious. Indeed, while BDSM practitioners as members of a sexually ostracised group may have a better chance at seeing through the God trick, how to see from below is a skill that needs to be learned (Haraway 1988, p.584), especially in light of the idea that the relations of social privilege and discrimination extend into BDSM communities. Haraway (1988, p.589) stress the importance of interpretation, translation, stuttering, and the partly understood in the production of situated knowledges. Similarly, Butler (1997a, pp.878) suggest that 49
if one always risks meaning something other than what one thinks one utters, then one is, as it were, vulnerable in a specifically linguistic sense to a social life of language that exceeds the purview of the subject who speaks. This risk and vulnerability are proper to democratic process in the sense that one cannot know in advance the meaning that the other will assign to ones utterance, what conflict of interpretation may well arise, and how best to adjudicate that difference. The effort to come to terms is not one that can be resolved in anticipation but only through a concrete struggle of translation, one whose success has no guarantees.
In this sense, performances in the theatre of play can be seen as parts of a democratic process of translation. Indeed, feminists have developed translation practices to facilitate politically effective translation (c.f. von Flotow 1991). For example, in addition to exaggerating stereotypes or turning them against themselves by linking them to subject positions to which they are not supposed to belong, translators can highlight issues by adding prefaces and footnotes to translated texts in order to remove the translated text from its context-less state of otherwise assumed innocence (c.f. von Flotow 1991, Weiegger 2011). An important aim of this kind of queering translation is the fostering of consciousness and reflexivity in, for and by all participants in communication (Weiegger 2011, p.176). Similarly, as performances in the theatre of play can be seen as social texts, they can be prefaced and footnoted in order to help create a context in which these performances can more easily be related to political questions. 50
The Theatre of Play
One important opportunity that the theatre of play may offer is that of challenging universal whiteness in BDSM communities by making practitioners aware of the racial/-ised/-ising homogeneity of these communities. In this context, race play may not necessarily play on peoples everyday social identities but on identities that are assumed with the intention of what is otherwise (made) invisible: the relationship between engaging in BDSM practices and racial/-ised/-ising privilege. BDSM race play can constitute a moment of crisis in which the subject [is] compelled to occupy the given position and, moreover, ratify this position by re-enacting the supposed racial norms attendant to that allocation (Ehlers 2006, p.151). It can therefore function as a point of rupture in the construction of
racialised identities, and, more importantly,White identities that are not seen as racialised but depend on the racialisation of Others. In this sense, the theatre of play may provide an opportunity for staging something similar to what Butler (1990a, p.129) call inverted imitations: imitations that invert the order of imitated and imitation, and which, in the process, expose the fundamental dependency of the origin on that which it claims to produce as its secondary effect.While blackness is often theorised as constructed and historically contingent, whiteness is assumed as the transhistorical universal term from which blackness is derived (c.f. Fanon 2008 [1952]; Pieterse 1992; Stoler 1995; Shome 1999). The theatre of play may help expose the dependence of whiteness on the construction of blackness as its Other. Indeed, the focus on partiality and responsible and accountable situatedness that is at the heart of the theatre of play offers an opportunity to reject the God trick of disembodied, universal whiteness. In this sense, the theatre of play may counter paternalising attempts to help Others that are in fact based on the ignorance of ones own privilege/-s (Marty 1999, p.52). A related problem that can be taken up and made visible in the theatre of play is that of racism as inscribing identities into racialised Others: Racism is not only a visual ideology where the visible and somatic confirms the truth of the self. Euro-American racial thinking related the visual markers of race to the protean hidden properties of different human kinds. (Stoler 1995, p.205) As Pieterse (1992, p.26) argue, in racist societies [p]erceptions are manipulated in order to enhance and to magnify social distance. For example, Black Men may be stereotyped as hyper-virile (Fanon 2000 [1952], p.13037), Black Women as hypersexual (Collins 1990), and Black sexuality in general as savage and animal-like (Mayall and Russell 1990, p.294). Similarly, Mollena Williams suggest that some 51
members of BDSM communities who want to engage in race play are looking for a big, black dominant woman who conform to their racist stereotypes (in Hernandez 2004). In cross-racial performances of racial/-ised/-ising norms, it may be possible to initiate a conversation about the inscription of totalising identities into raced and, more importantly, racialised bodies. While we are all raced insofar as we all exist within socially constructed race relations, only some are racialised, that is, marked and defined by their racialisation (Flax 1995, p.442). In relation to these problems, the theatre of play may enable us to grapple with questions such as that posed by Flax (1995, p.438): How can Whites not be affected in their thinking of themselves and Blacks by the knowledge (tacit or overt) that a little more than a hundred years ago many Black people were property, not persons? Indeed, by offering an opportunity to make history happen in the present (Freeman 2008) in restaged scenes of historical slavery and everyday oppression, BDSM race play may make them available to power-sensitive conversations and discussions. Additionally, the theatre of play can also disrupt the displacement of responsibility onto the individual via notions of negotiation and free consent. Because BDSM practitioners expect negotiated limits to be strictly adhered to (c.f. Langdridge and Butt 2004, Sophia 2007), performances can show how peoples limits are often ignored in wider society (with the knowledge and consent of those who participate in the scene). For example, Mollena Williams propose staging a scene which involves imagery of the Ku Klux Klan in the United States in order to shock people into awareness of the historical implications of whiteness (in Weiss 2011, pp.21013). However, while this scene relies on evoking an affective response in audiences, the theatre of play focuses on conscious empathy and awareness. 52
An example offered by Johnson (2003) for the cross-racial performance of a Black text by an ostensibly Asian (or Asian-American) student may point to a potential way of how the theatre of play may work: when non-African American as well as African American students can perform black texts, the boundaries of race, class, gender, and sexual identities become blurred (Johnson 2003, p.244). By playing out racial themes and subsequently engaging in a conversation about whether and why they were perceived as authentic, the theatre of play may serve as a space in which hegemonic and mostly unconscious constructions of racialised Others can be brought to the surface. BDSM race play performances may offer an opportunity to disassemble and reassemble supposedly in-dividual identities, and this deand reconstructive process may be used to responsibly address material, embodied and constructed effects of peoples experienced and imposed oppressions. These situated and embodied knowledges may enable a politics of affinity and empathy and awareness of social power relations and privileges. However, it should be noted that unlike many BDSM communities, the classes in Johnsons examples were racially diverse. It may not be possible to stage and use performances like these in the environment of universal/-ised/-ising whiteness in many BDSM communities, similarly to how the exclusion of heterosexual cis men in the dyke+ community in Bauers (2007, 2008) study may be a prerequisite for enabling its members to play with gender stereotypes. Race play should not be used to entrench racial homogeneity in BDSM communities by dismissing racialised identities as a prop. 53
Conclusion?
Many arguments about whether BDSM in general and race play in particular should be seen as politically subversive or complicit to political oppression have been brought forward. Among them, it has been argued that BDSM practices expose oppression and parody, and reappropriate and rework mechanisms of power. On the other hand, it has been suggested that BDSM, rather than challenging mechanisms of power, simply mimics them in the context of sexuality or even reproduces them by extending them into the realm of more or less intimate interpersonal relationships. However, it may well be the very imposition of meaning onto BDSM race play that influences whether it is (or can be) politically subversive or not. As meaning is volatile and always constructed in specific contexts and by specific people, it is epistemologically as well as politically (and epistemology and politics are intricately linked) problematic to insist that BDSM race play is either exclusively subversive or exclusively oppressive, that it is either a private matter of consent that is cut off from all social context or that it enslaves all practitioners to an oppressive society. Additionally, because BDSM communities are no more a monolithic and
internally undifferentiated mass than any other total/-ised/-ising group of people, it is equally problematic to generalise from research in one BDSM community to BDSM communities in general: while some studies I have discussed suggest a high awareness of social power structures and privilege, others show that notions of transgression can be used to whitewash or much rather, bleach the racialisation of BDSM communities. Power is not a commodity that is in the hands of some who take it from others, but much rather a web of relations that do not simply act on prediscursively constituted subjects, but influence the constitution of these very subjects. Indeed, the performative constitution of people as subjects at the source of power affords them/us an opportunity for agency. In the context of BDSM race play, subjectivities and identities can be split into dividualities and therefore enable a politics of affinity and empathy. If we conceptualise BDSM race play as political performances in the theatre of play, we can use embodiment as a way of knowing (Johnson 2003, p.230) to forge alliances and networks of accountable embodied knowledges. We can employ techniques such as prefacing and footnoting in the translation of power-sensitive conversations between performers and audiences, where performers are audiences to their own performances and audiences perform meanings onto and into the performances they witness. Even though the meanings of race play may be contextually contingent, the possibly most important problem with its political potential is that most research seems to suggest that BDSM communities may be disproportionately dominated by white people (c. f. Bauer 2008; Sheff and Hammers 2011; Weiss 2011). While members of marginalised groups may not be boundlessly capable of saying what is right for their group, conversations about them without their involvement can55
The Theatre of Play Conclusion?
not be assumed to yield desirable results. As little as it is a space of simple power and powerlessness, the theatre of play is not a space that is free from power. Much rather, it exists only in interaction with power relations in wider society. For example, Queer communities may only enable playing with gender because of their exclusion of Cis Men, and predominantly White BDSM communities may unconsciously enforce racial homogeneity. Consequently, the theatre of play as an educational/conversational tool may not be equally available in all environments, and special attention needs to be paid to the context of political BDSM practices to enable them to succeed. This special attention may require an already formed political awareness or at least a willingness to tentatively submit to certain norms in order to gain better understanding. However, the theatre of play can also be used to highlight the invisible omnipresent whiteness that underlies the raceneutral assumptions of some BDSM practitioners. An understanding of race play as potentially enabling a better, more responsible engagement with racial/-ised/-ising norms and racial/-ised/-ising privilege should not serve a paternalisingly benevolent construction of racialised minorities as the homogenous Other who needs special treatment. For example, the suggestion that the terms master and slave necessarily contain links to historical slavery and that not having to engage with these links is a sign of white privilege constructs Black people as a homogenous and undifferentiated mass. Indeed, not only would at least some Black people not associate the terms master and slave with slavery, but also are the sweeping claims about how this or that homogenous group of people must surely feel about this or that issue demonstrations of the political and epistemic power to define and construct categories and subjects. What I believe is necessary is an engagement with practitioners of BDSM race play not 56
just as objects of the scientific gaze, but as active partners in research processes that, alongside and together with the theatre of play, produce situated knowledges not only about BDSM practitioners, but also with and for them. 57
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The Theatre of Play References
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The Theatre of Play: BDSM Race Play, Dividuality, and The Politics of Empathy

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THEATRE OF PLAY

BDSM race play, dividuality, and the politics of empathy

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The Theatre of Play Introduction

The Theatre of Play Introduction

The Theatre of Play Introduction

The Theatre of Play Introduction

Charting the Context

Sick: BDSM as psychopathology

The Theatre of Play Charting the Context

Helpful: BDSM as therapy

The Theatre of Play Charting the Context

The Theatre of Play Charting the Context

Just a game: BDSM as a private matter

The Theatre of Play Charting the Context

The Theatre of Play Charting the Context

Collusion: BDSM as reproducing oppression

The Theatre of Play Charting the Context

The Theatre of Play Charting the Context

Mocking: BDSM as disrespect towards real oppression

The Theatre of Play Charting the Context

The Theatre of Play Charting the Context

Exposed: BDSM as exposing power relations

The Theatre of Play Charting the Context

The Theatre of Play Charting the Context

The revolution will be sexualised: BDSM as transgression/subversion

The Theatre of Play Charting the Context

The Theatre of Play Charting the Context

It wasnt me: transgressive BDSM as alibi

The Theatre of Play Charting the Context

The Theatre of Play Charting the Context

The Theatre of Play Charting the Context

The Theatre of Play Charting the Context

The Theatre of Play Charting the Context

The Theatre of Play Subjectivities/Identities

The Theatre of Play Subjectivities/Identities

The Theatre of Play Subjectivities/Identities

The Theatre of Play Subjectivities/Identities

The Theatre of Play Subjectivities/Identities

The Theatre of Play Subjectivities/Identities

The Theatre of Play Subjectivities/Identities

The Theatre of Play Subjectivities/Identities

The Theatre of Play Subjectivities/Identities

The Theatre of Play Subjectivities/Identities

The Theatre of Play Subjectivities/Identities

The Theatre of Play Subjectivities/Identities

The Theatre of Play Subjectivities/Identities

The Theatre of Play Subjectivities/Identities

The Theatre of Play

The Theatre of Play The Theatre of Play

Indeed, as Ehlers (2008, p.343) suggest,

The Theatre of Play The Theatre of Play

The Theatre of Play The Theatre of Play

not being true. (Butler 1997a, p.93)

The Theatre of Play The Theatre of Play

The Theatre of Play The Theatre of Play

The Theatre of Play The Theatre of Play

The Theatre of Play The Theatre of Play

The Theatre of Play The Theatre of Play

The Theatre of Play The Theatre of Play

The Theatre of Play

The Theatre of Play The Theatre of Play

The Theatre of Play The Theatre of Play