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Title: Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism
Author: Amber Jamilla Musser
Year Posted: 2014
Primary Subjects Covered: Theories of Masochism, Patriarchy, Colonialization, Queer Concept, Feminist Principle, Slavery, Electricity, Chronic Health issues
Created for: Lecturers
Advised for: Teachers, Therapists
Views Taken: African American, Queer, Feminist
Style of Source: Queer, BDSM, Feminist
APA Citation: Musser, Amber Jamilla (2014) Sensational Flesh: Race, Electric power, and Masochism. New York, NY: New York College Press.
In Sensational Flesh: Race, Electric power, and Masochism, Amber Jamilla Musser explores queer, feminist, and critical race theories of power, sensation, and distinction by examining texts, art, and movie on masochism. By inspecting sexuality, agency, and subjectivity with an mindset of empathic examining, putting oneself in the author’s sneakers or character, the reader understands the sensation that people today encounter as electricity or subordination, largely as a result of the domination of the patriarchy, colonialism, and racism.
The writer commences with an overview of philosophical theories of masochism. In the late 19th century, philosophers 1st printed details on masochism in scientific literature. Richard von Krafft-Ebing, a European psychiatrist, considered masochism as remarkable or unconventional. He felt that females who engaged in masochism were not acting out of the variety of societal norms. He viewed gals as normally subordinate.
In distinction, he thought of gentlemen who took on a subordinate job in intercourse as pathological because he seen them as seeking to develop into feminized. On the other hand, Freud saw masochism as a neurosis and connected it to the demise travel. Musser then moves on to the mid-20th-century philosopher Foucault who praised S&M as supplying new choices of satisfaction and generating community. Leo Bersani seemed at S&M via a psychoanalytic lens and thought of it to be an act of self-annihilation.
In Chapter 2, Musser discusses masochism as linked with patriarchy and colonialization. Radical feminist sights of S&M all through the 1980s linked the exercise with patriarchal motives and espoused that it invited masculinity into the bed room. Whilst Frantz Fanon, a French West-Indian psychiatrist and writer, surmised that masochism resulted from colonialization and white practices of domination over black males. Fanon explained the dynamics of on the lookout at somebody as an act of domination, privilege, and objectification. He wrote that the black male physique was equated with sexual prowess and was topic to the white gaze, maintaining the black person at a distance of inferiority and otherness.
Chapter 3 facts traditionally significant erotic novels to display female objectification, complicity, and coldness and how women of all ages achieve or lose company in S&M interactions. Set in 1940s patriarchal France, the Tale of O capabilities a female named O, who willingly submits to a masochistic romantic relationship. Musser argues that contrary to the idea that the act of submission getting innate to girls, the character has agency by means of her complicit willingness to submit and her want to be objectified. O also gains company by her potential to gaze, her coldness, and her objectification of other women of all ages.
In Chapter 4, Musser looks at the romance amongst the labouring black system, whiteness, and masochism. Drawing on Fanon’s work, the damaging white societal check out concerning black bodies and the biological, uncooked, violent, and sexual renders black adult males depersonalized and devoid of possessing agency. He also describes the procedure of ‘becoming black’ as remaining marked by discomfort and suffering (p. 89).
In Chapter 5, the creator introduces us to Bob Flanagan. He finds company despite the uncontrollable suffering and struggling inflicted by Cystic Fibrosis by picking out to interact in masochism and have some regulate more than when he will encounter soreness. Audre Lorde’s (a breast cancer survivor) composing shares the pain of her health issues with the reader, the danger of her health issues to her femininity, and her eventual discovering of local community with black females and the erotic in her time of therapeutic.
Musser concludes the e-book with a glance at the romance involving black gals and flesh. The artwork of Kara Walker aids to reveal the stereotypes of black women and how they limit black women’s agency. The creator asks the reader to contemplate what it would just take to retain the multiplicity of the erotic, to have lots of voices, and an expanded community to enliven all bodies.
This guide is an academic historic reflection on the concept of masochism as a result of the lens of psychology, feminism, colonialism, erotic novels of the 20th century, disability, and queer idea. It is a dense read through with elevated use of the English language. If you take pleasure in reading academia, then this reserve could be of desire to you. If not, it may be a complicated examine especially for people who have English as their 2nd language.
About the Author:
Amber Jamilla Musser is an Assistant Professor of Females, Gender, and Sexuality Research at Washington University in St. Louis.
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