Marcuse and Bourdieu on The Sociology of Art

Marcuse and Bourdieu on The Sociology of Art
Richard Birch
Modern Sociological Theories SOCI 3016
Professor Vardalos
Friday, Nov 25 2005

When considering the meaning of cultural creativity in the social, the meanings and their conceptual connotations of art, the meanings of creative expression, and the identity of the artist as both an objectified fragment and distinctive subject, it is interesting to examine the very tragic nature of the artist as perceived in sociology. What is an artist in the social? Is an artist a fragmentary entity disconnected to culture in order to create new cultural productions? Is artistic expression truly a freely constructed thing immune to the confines and restraints of technocapitalism and social hegemonic ideologies? Is an artist immune from the rationality of postmodern production and consumerist demand that in turn influences the evolution and direction of artistic freedom and expression? These are questions the sociology of art never answers. These are questions that ring as most profound and subjectively important for an artist to have as entities within the social. These are questions ignored by the very nature of sociology itself in its empirically quantitative character. These represent the tragedy of the sociology of art. Yet there are two important theorists who have attempted, though not as the primary thrust of their research, to engage critical thought with explicating art in the social. By conflating artistic production with technological production, Herbert Marcuse and Pierre Bourdieu transcend the typical in social thinking on the sociology of art. In Marcuse’s book One-Dimensional Man, he engages in critical analysis of art as an extension of technology and technocapital ethos, constructing connectivity to artistic alienation with the rationalization of labour and oppression. Artists are producers, labourers essentially chained to having to sell their labour as artists in order to continue artistic production, not artistic expression. Bourdieu in his book Sociology in Question depicts artists as components of the social constrained by the commonality of what art is mediated from. The artist eventually breaks from the everyday socially constructed symbolic representation of the artist as a creator, and adopts immediate complicities the term artist must bring forth from creator to the consumer (1993).

If we are to embark on a discourse of the meaning of art in the social, one has to confirm the identity of art and artistic creation as a form of production. The very term production is used in all forms of artistic technical definitions, from music, film, literature, architecture, dance, and dramatics. Without production there would be no art as either of a humanist form of expression, or as a commodified institutional enterprise, that is if there really is any distinction to be made between these two. The question is, can art be separated from those aspects of human technocapitalist existence that are rationalized? Is art in essence, essential in true artistic form? Is there really any true artistic subjectivity for the artist and for those who experience it as consumers? In other words, is art essentially one-dimensional and can it be applied to strategies of distinction if artists are extensions of technology and postmodern capitalism? Therefore for purposes of constructing connectivity between art and production, it is useful to conflate the impact of technology on artistic creativity in human existence with rationalization. Herbert Marcus’s book One-Dimensional Man defines people as extensions of technology. It could also be argued in analysis that people are not merely extensions of technology, but we are also subsequent to the relationship between technology and labour. We are as thus extensions of corporations, especially corporations that own and control the means of commercial and non-commercial artistic production in society. Therefore in this thinking we are also products of the relationship between corporate culture and labour culture, not precursors to either one of them. Artists do not live individual human lives as subjective entities. Artists live as objects as constructed by the corporatization of human existence. In this way artists are controlled as objects, made to believe they are subjects of their own creation and postmodern design. “Indeed, what could be more rational than the suppression of individuality in the mechanization of socially necessary but painful performances” (Marcuse, 1964). This is what Marcuse calls the Freedom of Enterprise, where non-conformity to technocapitalism is essentially socially useless especially “when it entails tangible economic and political disadvantages and threatens the smooth operation of the whole” (1964). This Freedom of Enterprise is about a bilateral choice universal to economic and political socialization. One can choose the liberty of selling one’s labour, or the liberty and inevitability of starving to death (1964). Marcuse claims in his book that if people were allowed to exist without having to be subject to the mechanization and technological processes involved in the marketing of their labour, then they would become free economic agents, essentially free from this form of freedom. But freedom of enterprise is contingent on alienation according to Marcuse. For without the alienation of the labour force, it can be argued that the rationalization of human existence could not be achieved to serve technocapitalism. In analysis the risk for the established processes of global oppression and the relationship between labour and the ownership of production is not the eradication of labour and of the necessity for one to sell his or her labour in order to consume, but the potential creation of nonalienated labour as the foundation of society.

Pierre Bourdieu saw this relationship of labour to human existence in a somewhat different fashion in his book Sociology in Question. He does not believe that rationalization of human existence was a product of alienation from labour and production, but more so an ethos of what he calls “distanciation” (Bourdieu1993). Distanciation is a result of strategies of distinction, where cultural practices are “always strategies for distancing oneself from what is ‘common’ and ‘easy’” (1993). Strategies for distinction are typically active in non-dominant classes for dominant classes by definition are already distinct to political economical structures as in control of that which is common epistemology. Distinction for Bourdieu is about distinguishing knowledge, institutions, and social behaviour from that which is socially constructed as vulgar or deviant. Microsocially people distinguish themselves in their interactions from that which is not consistent with what has to be loved (1993). The yield of such distinction strategies is to produce a distinction from themselves, that which is common. In one such example of this form of existential production is the utilization of technology for the creation of art and the harnessing of human creativity. For Bourdieu states in Sociology in Question,

I have myself shared in the illusion of ‘cultural (or linguistic) communism. Intellectuals spontaneously understand the relationship to a work of art as mystical participation in a common good, without rarity. My whole book argues that access to a work of art requires instruments that are not universally distributed. And consequently that the possessors of those instruments secure profits of distinction for themselves, and the rarer these instruments are (such as those needed to appropriate avant-garde works), the greater the profits. (1993)

In analysis of this idea of distinguishing that which is common and meaningless in the social, a correlation to Marcuse’s notion that our technological relationship reifies our existence as alienated can be drawn. For Marcuse, technology is accessed for all productive purposes. For Bourdieu art and creativity, even microsocially is meaningless if it is produced for all who exist in the social. For Marcuse, nonalienation is the activity of labour utilized for the organization of very different relations and moral structures than for profit and commercial productivity (Marcuse, 1964). To alienate labour from that which it produces reifies the redundancy of human existence and the power of political economic hegemony. If labour and human existence connects under a different set of goals that intend for technology to return to being extensions of creativity and artistic expression, then what will only ever produced is the liberating alternative.

Consider Bourdieu’s thoughts on popular culture as correlative to his ‘cultural communism’ idea. He addresses the question of whether popular culture exists, particularly if dominant classes are passive to strategies of distinction. That which in reality resembles what people in discourse explicate as popular culture and thus popularized artistic products through linguistic means, is questionable. Popular culture is common culture. Popular culture serves the dominant classes under the lens of cultural communistic thinking. Commonality in culture only reifies commonality. For Bourdieu, popular culture is incongruent with art. Popular culture is produced for commonality and common access. The relationship between the artist and that which he or she produces becomes problematic. Art and cultural capital is created. ‘Creation’ for Bourdieu is the convergence of that which makes one an artist and that which makes possible the division of labour for cultural production (1993).

The labour through which the artist makes his work and, inseparably from this, makes himself as an artist…can be described as the dialectical relationship between his ‘post’…and [that] which more or less predisposes him to occupy that post or…more or less completely to transform it. (1993).

This in essence defines the artist’s ‘post’ as determined by the social conditions of his or her creative production, and as being subject to the social demands and constraints inscribed in the position he or she occupies in production (1993).

To bring connectivity to the concept of Bourdieu’s cultural communism and Marcuse’s rationality is possible. For Marcuse, art and culture is unilateral in concept; a realm of one-dimensional thought systemically regulated by the purveyors of knowledge and mass information (Marcuse, 1964).

Reason, in its application to society, has thus far been opposed to art, while art [is] granted the privilege of being rather irrational – not subject to scientific, technological, and operational Reason. The rationality of domination has separated the Reason of science and the Reason of art into the universe of domination (1964).

Therein lies the tragedy of rationalization when thinking about the artist and artistic production. Reason converges with the function of art, as technology is itself “the instrumentality of pacification” (1964). The artist possesses insight, vision, creative wisdom, love, desire, sensuality, expressive ethos, access to technology, potential access to the public and the social, and a need to create art. All of these guide the artist to conceive and create the vision of technology and thus the construction of the machinery of art and expression. In this thinking, the essential relationship between technology and art, and the conceptual practices of the two points to an explicit “rationality of art” (1964).

It seems in Marcuse’s book, art creates a universe of thought of which he posits it against the existing hegemonic principles of art and technology. That art, as convergent and connected to human existence, is also rationalized and alienated in a technical universe. In contrast to a technical universe, the artistic universe is one of illusion and resembles “a reality which exists as the threat and promise of the established one” (1964). As Bourdieu intends for the artist to distinguish himself or herself from the commonality of the social and from what is culturally constructed as artistic, he also calls for sociology to shift from measuring and giving account of cultural consumption to measuring and examining cultural production. Sociology accepts this distinction, but not favours it when empirically analysing what art means to the social in regards to cultural communism. Sociology and it’s bedfellow, statistics, “belittle and crushes, flattens and trivializes artistic creation: that is sets the great and the small on the same footing, at all events fails to grasp what makes the genius of the greatest artists” (Bourdieu, 1993). Malraux philosophically implied that art imitates art. Sociology only then imitates and thus reifies it’s own limits as sociology. Sociology of art fails tragically to account for what is important in art, that artistic creation cannot be nor should it be explained wholly in conditions and language of demand. Art is not merely an aesthetic, just as artists in the social are not simply fragments in the social they wish to express about. Artists, as sociologists are also subjective texts, struggling to strategize their own critical distinction from the commonality of postmodern human reality (1993). Yet, in reality when measuring the meaning of art in the social, Bourdieu posits an important explanation of the nature of the artist’s identity within the social.

In the encounter between a work of art and the consumer, there is an absent third party, the person who produced the work, who has made something to his taste through his capacity to transform his taste into an object, to transform it from a state of mind, or rather, a state of body, into something visible corresponding to his taste. The artist is the professional practitioner of the transformation of the implicit into the explicit, the objectification that transforms taste into an object, who realizes the potential, in other words a practical sense of beauty that can know itself only be realizing itself (1993).

Yet for Bourdieu, it is seemingly impossible for sociology to separate this conceptual utopian image of the artist with that objectification he or she is ascribed to reify. For art cannot ever realize itself. Art is not subjective in cultural communism. Art is fashioned to be common. Only through strategies of distinction can the rationality of art be dismissed or halted, and thus art as an institutional construct is therefore only ever objectified.

In comparison, for Marcuse the artist must negotiate his or her identity with the Hegelian notion that the “technological rationality of art seems to be characterized by an aesthetic ‘reduction’” (Marcuse, 1964). Marcuse aligns the rationality of the artist to the reduction of art to an object, or a “totality of objects” as he calls it, to a state in which,

The object [art] takes on the form and quality of freedom. Such transformation is reduction because the contingent situation suffers requirements which are external, and which stand in the way of its free realization…thus, the artistic transformation violates the natural object, but the violated is itself oppressive; thus the aesthetic transformation is liberation (1964).

This reduction of the aesthetic pacifies the artist into believing he or she truly engages in real artistic expression and creativity. However this reduction signifies their oppression of which the artist as an extension of technocapitalism and technology is blind to. The developing one-dimensional society changes the association between rational and irrational thought. In lieu of what Marcuse claims is the insanity of rationality, that which is rational becomes the place on which irrationality exists. As for the artist, the ideas that promote love, creation, expression, and desire – the art of life, is reduced to the irrational. This Hegelian reduction of the aesthetic makes the imagination of the artist an instrument of progress (1964). Through rationalization in a one-dimensional society, like all other established societies, art as methodologically progressive is subject to social and corporate abuse. The power of imagination when used for the productive purposes and function of art far exceeds any political voice that may stand up to this form of oppression. For thinking of technology on the basis of imagination, technological advancement accompanies progressive rationalization, or even more so, the realization of the imaginary (1964).

Art has not been impervious to the process of reification. All art reifies all other art in a one-dimensional, socially common society. All art reifies its own existence but only as much to a reduction of something less than itself. The tragedy of reification is that it simply portrays art, as the very essence of human existence, love, and desire as confined to one-dimensional thought. For both Marcuse and Bourdieu, to liberate the imagination from those institutions that pacify it is a political activity. The dialectical representation of art in sociology pronounces it’s own hopelessness. This is what makes the conflict productive. This is why tension fuels the artist for both Marcuse and Bourdieu. The artist’s greatest struggle is to deal with the social fact that freedom of thought, the freedom of creativity, and the freedom of expression in the symbolic sense can only be free in the administered material world. Without the material forces that shape the drive for resources and production, even the most profound artistic awareness and consciousness in the social will remain incapable and immobile.

References:
Bourdieu, P. (1993). Sociology in Question. (R. Nice, Trans.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Marcuse, H. (1964). One-Dimensional Man. Boston, Mass: Beacon Press.

Constructing a BDSM Experiential

Constructing a BDSM Experiential
Richard Birch
Sex Roles and Sexuality SOCI 3626
Professor Vardalos
Wednesday, Nov 23 2005

Constructing a BDSM Experiential
Oppression is a powerful force. Not so powerful as sexual oppression as formulated through the subjective experiences of the oppressed. As sexual subjects, we are attuned to the very importance of negotiating what is sexual as socially constructed parameters epistemologically formulate our own subjectivity. The subject, as the bearer of law, of language, of social synthesis, must also negotiate his or her own meanings through those available in the context of the social and of the Symbolic. As Judith Butler posits, “the Symbolic becomes possible by repudiating the primary relationship to the [body]” (Butler, 1999). Yet as law is oppressive in nature and in design, the body as contextual is thus also oppressed in how it uses social language in its subjective sexualization. Consider the concepts libido and desire. As individuals we may view the libido as defined through natural biology, chemical, hormonal, and that which depends on the fabric of procreation and the purpose of such activity. Desire can even be argued to be defined and set apart as problematic in the Foucaultian sense by juridical systems of power that generate people’s subjective meanings of their own experiential sexual frameworks. This is not merely on the basis that power, whether juridical or not, regulates political life in the Symbolic. In other words the limiting, control, and prohibition of everyday social experiences limits those it is designed to “protect” to the political structure social norms are intended to maintain. Control, power, regulation of everyday sexual life is the phenomenon of politicizing it as a commodification contingent on the retractability of choice. Yet, when thinking of libido and desire as socially problematic, they are now dependent variables in the social, akin to “libidinal chaos characteristic of that early dependency…now fully constrained by a unitary agent whose language is structured by that law” (1999). For BDSM theory, it is obvious that the reversal of retractability is key to understanding the subculture it is intended to explicate. The microsociological structure which is rooted deep in how it fosters and constructs its political visibility in the social is above all extremely important to take account of when considering the pervasive cultural conditions BDSM exists by. It is through the following direct observational ethnographical account of a BDSM fetish culture that this existential matrix will be explained as a systemic response to socially defined conditions of sexuality and desire. It is this experiential construct of BDSM culture that reifies its own existence.

As BDSM is a powerful phenomenon as a response to socially constructed notions of sexual authority and agency, it is not without a Hegelian dialectical existence. The sexual domain that excludes it from the Symbolic and exposes the Symbolic as hegemonic is a sort of difference-presupposition mediated by a male-mediated phallogocentric Hegelian economy (1999). But in order for there to be a difference, and thus signifier of difference in the social, there must be an antithesis positioned against the sexual epistemological normalcy. One such example of that, which signifies such a differential though subcultural in nature, is the BDSM Fetish culture that convenes regularly at Club 5 in Toronto, Ontario on the first Saturday of every month. This event held regularly in the heart of Toronto’s gay village signifies a subculture of sadomasochism. Here in this club one can directly observe the social behaviour of those engaged in pursuing and embodying masochistic sexuality. To define masochistic sexuality, one can argue that it exists to deconstruct “deliberate productions of sexual scenarios where the subject(s) can act on the far side of culturally determined identities” (Noyes, 1997). This is important to understand when turning one’s gaze towards fetishistic masochistic sexual subcultures. For BDSM as it relates to the social, is above all situated well within the realm of social constructionist sexual theory. The intent of this fetish event is predominantly spectacle. It is nothing if not spectacular. Every single nuance and aspect of it is performative in nature. Everyone in this social environment is sexually characterized to play a role that is something outside his or her normal everyday “vanilla” spheres of existence. To experience the alternative is to experience the fetish objects. In essence it is the players who are the fetish objects, not merely the leather, pleather, latex, plastic, rubber, metal, chains, whips, diapers, and other countless objects not immune to the creative methods actors in this social environment devise in the pursuit of objectified pleasure. Through subjective expression of desire and subcultural iconography, masochism possesses postmodern dimensions that perhaps reify that which leads the player to vanilla existential oppression. The enactment of heightened über-stereotypes allows the actors in this social a brief moment in time-space to have a sense of performative agency in their lives and how they develop and construct their own individual sexualities. This is an environment where free will is taken, not assumed. Masochism concerns liberal conceptions of free will, the universality of ethics, and the distribution of power among gendered subjects in the Symbolic sense (1999). In other words, masochistic performative sexuality explicates the fictionality of mainstream socio-sexual roles and makes drama of codified morality while also constructing micro-cultural appropriation.

As actors, they construct sexual masochism as a “theatrical appropriation of cultural stereotypes” under the guise of bodily pleasure (1997). One such example of this observed in this environment is the Uniform community. Examples of uniform characterizations performed at these events include policemen, army lieutenants, colonels, soldiers, war criminals, and prison guards. Clearly these specific roles signify dominance in the social. They signify as being iconographic of authority, punitive, muscular, unemotional, reserved, highly sexualized, and assertive. The attire typically worn, predominantly by men is dark, sleek, wet like in texture, and constrained. The only flesh an observer can see are portions of the wearer’s face not covered by a hat, visor, or dark glasses. There is a homogenic structure to this particular uniform icon characterization which is important and which makes this a unit of focus. Though on the surface it is dark and authoritarian, there is a haunting sensuality to the clothing and to the men who wear them. There is a generosity embodied in how they interact with their submissives. The sensuality of a warrior, the imagery of a soldier fighting for the pleasure of his submissive partner in a technocapitalist ethos is conjured when observing this group of actors. In listening to the communication between uniform men dominants and their submissive counterparts, not once is there any sense that the hierarchy is absolute. In other words, it is clear when examining the discourse within a binary of dominant / submissive interaction the uniform men as subjects represent opposition to master sexual status. In this socio-sexual environment they are aware of their role for their submissives, and their responsibility to protect and pleasure them. It is this generosity and heightened masculine sensuality that surprisingly is above all else the core character trait of these otherwise hardcore looking individuals. In observing their actions in play with their partners, the pain, the hurt, the physical communication is based on what Foucault called “the eroticisation of power [and] the eroticisation of strategic relations” (1999). In observing the technique uniform men specifically utilize in the flagellation of their submissives signify the rejection of strategic ruling relations in vanilla mainstream spheres of social power, and thus removes them from their institutional fundamentals. The flagellation that occurs with this group, the punishment and the punitive sensuality is observed to be more of a dissolving of mainstream sexual epistemology. The authoritarian is not feared here. Here he is used. He serves the interests of the submissive. His importance as an actor in this subculture is that of a purveyor of identity appropriation in this radical sex-play community. The uniform man is the icon of sexual social constructionism ideals of masculinity. Yet, as he codifies masculine power and authority in the Symbolic, he also embodies engendered sensuality and pleasure when challenging heteronormative thinking. Most of the uniform men played with other male submissives. There was little cross-gender interaction except for one instance. This raises questions about the social construction of masculinity in power positions. Like the sociology of sport and the social construction of masculinity in sport, so does BDSM theory raise questions about the “workings of power in society” (Messner, 2005).

One such interaction observed at this site was between a uniform male and a submissive male. The submissive, dressed completely in black leather and PVC tightly fitted to his extremely thin androgynous physique, was led to a Saint Andrew’s Cross apparatus of which he was strapped to. It is with this interaction where the observer can see BDSM play as based on the negotiation of differing degrees of power, as is much of everyday vanilla life. The negotiation of power is the alternative to the utopian abolishment of power. This negotiation between these two individuals was communicated through pain. With each hit on his body, on his buttocks, hips, legs, and back with the crop, the dialogue negotiating each other’s existence in this subculture becomes the most important discursive interaction in the room.

Pain is mystery. It can be a mystery to outside observers as well as to those inside in the culture. Yet, though interpretations of the uses and nature of physical pain in BDSM sex play varies depending on where one may be situated in the dominant / submissive continuum. To experienced leatherfolk and fetish event regulars pain is a path not a destination. Pain is a currency used by many in this culture who find both a sense of community and transcendence in leatherspace. “Leatherspace” is not solely the physical location of fetish clubs and dungeon bars where people convene to dress up in fetish clothing. “It is also the mental space which leatherfolk create in common. When traditional families and churches can’t fulfill [their] needs for communal and transcendental experience, many people will explore alternative…forms of bonding and ritual” (Tucker, 1991).

The Dionysian notion of indulgent sex, drugs, alcohol, and dancing as precursors to sexual interaction is sociologically a method of enacting initiation and rituals. Leatherfolk communities and fetish culture have forms of rituals and initiation that are aligned with this tradition. Yet, in observation rituals are linked heavily and are dependent on the commercialization of such activities. The result is a chaotic use of alcohol, drugs, and dance music that are all designed to cater to this Dionysian pleasure principle (1991). Though even in a sexual subculture like this people cannot completely transcend cultural and social bonds outside. It can be argued that this commercialization and adoption of mainstream products of techno-commercialism reifies BDSM as representative of assimilation (Rust, 2005). In other words, there is a buying into corporate sexual commodification through the use of alcohol, drugs and popular music in these clubs to generate an atmosphere of subcultural identity. Yet the identity exists because mainstream society exists. It is for this reason that BDSM will never transcend beyond the realm of taboo underground consensual sexuality. Technocapitalist culture prevents BDSM subculture to manifest its own iconography, its own cultural products, and its own original subjective meanings for global processes of oppression are ever present. This reification exists as long as sexual oppression of social minorities exists.

These are brief moments in time-space for BDSM participants that though reify their status and place in the Symbolic, they also reverse the discursive elements that structure their mainstream sexual codifications. The ritual of pain is no illusion in this scene. Pain is ritualistic. It is also discursive as can be demonstrated by the systemic use of code terminology. If pain is the currency in which relations and status is negotiated and commodified, then code stop words one hears at these events represent the rate of exchange. Stop codes serve as a purpose similar to an “acrobat’s safety net” (Noyes, 1997). Without the agency of the submissive and his or her absolute control over the play with dominant partners, there is no value in the pain. They no longer become valuable as subjective commodities, but then are reduced to simple sexual objects. That is why code terminology is so important.

Anomalies do occur in this regard. The neglect of a dominant was observed at one brief moment. An interaction between a male dominant and a female submissive performing the roles of teacher and school-girl was highlighted by the dominant’s ignoring of his sub’s code words during their performance. There was a moment when one was not sure if the ignoring of the codes was part of the pleasure, but it became clear that the mood in the room fell awkward. This dominant demonstrated a lack of knowledge regarding his role. His true purpose is to adhere to a flipped binary. He is the dominant, but he failed to address and obey the commands of his submissive. He was not acting BDSM. He was acting vanilla. He was not giving pleasure according to BDSM constructed notions of relations. He was reifying engendered oppression according to Symbolic social knowledge. Stop codes are typically borrowed from outside the sadomasochistic context to indicate the intent to stop a scene. In every other case at this event this was respected. But not all dominants and submissives interact and play with safety nets. The safety net is a theoretical construct at best, one set up to protect the players from harm and to shield the activity from vanilla mainstream epistemological ideas of sexual behaviour. If by definition BDSM is consensual sadomasochism then it seems it has to function outside the realm of mainstream society in order to achieve this agenda. Its weakness is not the risk of being perceived as deviant, violent, non-consensual, or harmful. The risk to BDSM culture is that at times it can fall back onto the normalcy of heterocentric patriarchal hegemonic principles. When the exchange of power becomes based on gender and defined by mainstream socially constructed hierarchies it falls short of its pleasure principle. If the power exchange is based on a blending and reversal of hegemonic gender, then real desire, exchange, love, friendship, kinship, community, and above all universal diversity is produced.

It is the experiential construct of BDSM culture that reifies its own existence. In observation BDSM interaction is best suited for a marginalized experiential matrix. It functions as marginalized because it displaces “attitudes promoted by the middle- and upper-class controlled media” (Rust, 2005). But it works in the context of marginalization to a social not engaged in laissez-faire concepts and ideas on tolerating alternative forms of sexuality and gender expression. Heterosexism maintains its position at the top of social hierarchies politicizing and policing all economic parameters of technocapitalist existence. Though BDSM theory and subcultural communities exist as experiential matrices opposed to global processes of gender and sexual oppression, it reifies its existence as well as reinforces mainstream hegemonic social hierarchies. There is no hope in thinking that appropriation of BDSM subculture is possible for it too serves technocapitalism. By moving the sexual experiential underground into the realm outside the vanilla it differentiates itself from normalcy. It acquires an identity of assimilation much like homosexuality has acquired this in postmodernity. It exists as long as technology and the means to produce fetishistic objects exist. It is from this movement to the underground that social life becomes complex. Much like heteronormative ideology regulates racial or ethnic minority sexual behaviour also regulates the need for underground taboo communal engagement (Rust, 2005). However, this is really only problematic if one chooses to believe that BDSM exists to challenge heteronormative hegemony. It does not. It serves to accommodate a commodified pleasure principle of agency and free will. As stated before free will is taken. It can also be taken back , and in some cases given freely. BDSM theory does not measure the impact of oppression in the social. It measures and attempts to explain true synthesis and synergy in socio-sexual communities. There is power to harm others in all social environments in regards to gender and sexuality hierarchies. But in this community there is no harm, only the hurt of consensual subjects. “Sadomasochism is embedded in our culture since our culture operates on the basis of dominance-submission relationships, and aggression is socially valued” (Kamel, 1995). Sexual oppression exists because sex, desire, lust, femininity, and violence are conflated in heteronormative society. This conflation allows not individuals as sexual entities to freely formulate how to become masochistic practitioners, members of masochistic social interaction, and to actualize masochistic sexual identity. In direct observation of BDSM culture, there is the ability to socially construct agency though subcultural and prone to mainstream vanilla reification.

That god forbid that made me first your slave
I should in thought control your times of pleasure,
Or at your hand th'account of hours to crave,
Being your vassal bound to stay your leisure.
O, let me suffer, being at your beck,
Th'imprisoned absence of your liberty;
And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each check
Without accusing you of injury.
Be where you list; your charter is so strong
That you yourself may privilege your time
To what you will; to you it doth belong.
Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime.
I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,
Not blame your pleasure, be it ill or well.
(Shakespeare, Sonnet No.58)
References:

Butler, J. (1999). Gender Trouble. New York, NY: Routledge.

Kamel, G. W. L. (1995). The Leather Career: On Becoming a Sadomasochist. In T. S. Weinberg (Ed.), S&M: Studies In Dominance & Submission. (pp. 51-60). Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Messner, M. A. Constructing the Sexual Self: The Negotiation and Actualization of Sexual Identity and Behaviour. In T. L. Steele (Ed.), Sex, Self, and Society: The Social Context of Sexuality. (pp. 115-121). Toronto, ON: Nelson.

Noyes, J. K. (1997). The Mastery of Submission: Inventions of Masochism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Rust, P. (2005) The Impact of Multiple Marginalization. In T. L. Steele (Ed.), Sex, Self, and Society: The Social Context of Sexuality. (pp. 121-127). Toronto, ON: Nelson.

Shakespeare, W. (2001). Sonnet No.58. In R. Proudfoot (Ed.), The Arden Shakespeare: Complete Works. (p. 27). London, UK: Nelson.

Tucker, S. (1991). The Hanged Man. In M. Thompson (Ed.), Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics, and Practice. (pp. 1-14). Boston, Mass: Alyson Publications, Inc.

Outsider Characters and Social Exceptionalities

Richard Birch
Dr. A. Sol
Shakespeare Part 1
8 November 2005

Outsider Characters and Social Exceptionalities

One of the most important characteristics of Shakespearean plays is there being textual references to the social. In reading The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and Midsummer Night’s Dream it is clear Shakespeare had an ardent sense of the social, and its structures and systems around him that guided the classes to be framed, constructed, sorted, and maintained upon the hegemonic ideologies of his time. As entertainment his work is full of narratives that capture the imagination of his audience through his power of language and his mastery of the structure of knowledge around it. But more importantly, his work, as sociological texts capture the audience’s sense of their own oppression. The social minorities in these plays are clearly strategically selected and placed. Shakespeare’s use of these outsider characters provides knowledge of the social hierarchies of the day. They also serve to enlighten real social minorities about their own oppression. It could be argued that viewing Shakespearean plays was one of the only ways this could occur during this period of history. The development of the outsider character’s structured knowledge is key to the social milieu of 16th and 17th century Europe. Shakespeare created these characters based on the people’s consciousness and subjective experiences. These plays are important to the social for they are based on a root proposition that states, “man’s consciousness is determined by his social being” (Berger 6). What allows Shakespeare to be perceived as one of the earliest European writers of the social was how he dealt with his fellow men as constituents of different spheres of reality (Berger 21). This subjective reality of everyday life evident in his characters is symbolic of the order of hierarchical stratification. Whether the classist ordinance be formed on the basis of gender, race, socio-economic status, sexuality, religion, or of other social stereotypes, they all originate and point towards oppression. The relative pyramids of power key to the construction of social knowledge still ever present in contemporary postmodernity. As textual they educate by challenging the reader to assess his or her own assumptions of the roles and norms designed around the organization of class and social positionality, and thus, they challenge and develop a sense of their own knowing of their own subjective existence as social beings.

Social stereotypes are complicated through highlighting the exceptionalities of their own displacement in hierarchical structures. This is called exceptionality, because to posit social knowledge of hegemonic symbolic order of classes and social minorities specifically as constituents of Elizabethan norms relies on the utilization of traditional and objective definitions of roles and norms. The exceptionalities of these classes posit the characters as unique to the texts as people with subjective selves, with individual histories, agendas, psyches and roles outside social knowledge of their stratified definitions. The characterizations of Othello, Bottom, Shylock and Portia as exemplars of social exceptionalities provide alternative standpoints to the reader. The black military leader and politician, the ambitious peasant, the Jewish money lender who is aware of and fights against his own oppression, and the strong intelligent aristocratic female who fights for love and human dignity display the writing as a revolutionary force as stated by literary historian Brents Stirling in his critical analysis of Shakespearean sociology (Stirling 77). Though Stirling’s critical analysis is heavily biased in the conservatism of his day and in a measurably literary structural functionalist methodology of discourse, he eludes to the idea that Shakespearean sociology as textual accounts of the subjective experiences of outsider characters and the social changes occurring in Elizabethan and James I eras regarding the development of a middle and bourgeoisie classes, show that Shakespeare’s writings reflect the regimes of his time (Stirling 77). Though Shakespeare wrote at times in accordance with the struggle with the bourgeoisie James I had, the existence of these characters do speak of the aim that Shakespeare had, that social knowledge can be challenged. Shakespeare’s social minorities, the humble of the folk are almost without exception “sound and sweet at heart, faithful and pitiful…he has no respect for the plainer and simpler kind of people as politicians, but as a great respect and regard for their hearts” (Stirling 81). This is ever clear in his presentation of the mechanicals of Midsummer Night’s Dream. On the surface the stereotypes are present in the characterizations of Bottom, Quince, Snout, and Flute. They are depicted as not possessing an intellect that could rival other social echelons. They are very aware of their place in life and what social stratas their lives serve. They are purposely presented as without the mastery of language. This lack is key for Shakespeare as it reifies our assumptions that language, if not within their grasp, neither will the ability to negotiate their way through structures of knowledge and through their own oppression. However Shakespeare identifies a significant difference in these characters that sets them apart from other social minorities. They are self aware of their lack of agency in the hierarchy, yet they create their own agency through art and through a collective embracing of their servitude. They are ambitious, they are striving for art, they wish to do good for those above them in status so to possibly elevate themselves to a level one may not imagine them to be able to reach. It is Bottom who wishes this the most and wishes to create the most impact in every sense.

That will ask some tears in the true performing of it. If I do it, let the audience look to their eyes: I will move storms, I will condole in some measure. To the rest – yet my chief humour is for a tyrant. I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat in, to make all split.
(Midsummer I.ii.22-27)

Portia is indicative of the exceptionality of femininity in masquerade. Shakespeare challenges our assumptions or understandings of femininity and of womanliness through the direct juxtaposition of her character to the symbolic order of historical society. In The Merchant of Venice, the place where Portia resides, Belmont, is the place where the heavenly order is an object of admiration” (Alvis & West 236). She is obliged to descend from Belmont that literally translates into beautiful mountain, down into Venice in order to save the social apparatus that elevates her and it’s symbolic structures. Shakespeare’s intention is for Portia to embody divine wisdom and mercy traditionally and typically framed for masculinity in the classical sense. In her questioning of Shylock of his lack of mercy for Antonio she gives a case for her attack on his judgement and for her own qualities.
The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest
(Merchant IV.i.182-184)
Portia, though disguised as male during the moment she says this, embodies mercy and order. In essence, assumptions about femininity as socially defined constructions of knowledge are uprooted. Order, mercy, pedagogy, and elements of the cerebral typically are designated as masculine traits in literary and classical genres historically where power of law and discourse resides in male spheres. Of course her intention is to defend Antonio from Shylock and to save Bassanio from guilt and disgrace. But her actions speak of the social normativity of the period. Her embodied wisdom is to protect the law, to uphold mercy, and to defend Christianity as the religion of Venice from any attack (Alvis & West 236). The skill of Portia in her ability to defend the good of the social against that which threatens the status quo of the reigning era of the period is what Shakespeare wishes to exemplify in this. By having this activity made present by the female lead, it challenges sexist ideologies in the text. In this comedy we are given every element of a tragedy where the lovers seem to be doomed and the villain seems to be finding his way towards a personal victory. But what offsets this and places us back to the realization that it is a comedy is the agency and intellect of a seventeenth century woman (Alvis & West 282). The same can be said of Midsummer Night’s Dream where tragedy seems to be looking amongst all that unfolds, but it is the delight and ambition and greater good of the mechanicals that sets everything back to a level of comfort.

Othello also explicates social stereotypes and challenges hegemonic principles on race and ethnicity that still exist today. Yet in this tragedy there is no setting back to a level of comfort, or no wisdom shall take precedence in nurturing the greater good of all men. The true tragic element and force of Othello is based on his inability to believe the impossibility of racial prejudice (Alvis & West 289). It is a tragedy because “the outsider cannot believe he has been fully accepted as fully as he has been accepted” (Alvis & West 289). His disbelief of his social status as a sought after mercenary soldier and protector of Venetian wealth and order determines his jealousy. This play and Merchant of Venice challenge our assumptions of race and ethnicity by presenting us the modern principles and the nature of bourgeois democracy. “Henceforth Christianity, Judaism, blacks, whites, the family and the regime, must find their place within a framework consistent with the terms of trade, with comfortable self-preservation” (Alvis & West 303). But what sets Othello apart from the other two plays is how the restating of the social normalcy required in this period, does not present us a vision of the whole of Shakespeare’s western political universe. He essentially consigns us to and reifies our subjective experiential places in the symbolic. He provides cues to this in the relationship between Othello and Desdemona as they interpret their relationship and their love as vulnerable to the political universe around them.
DESDEMONA The heavens forbid
But that our loves and comforts should increase
Even as our days do grow.
OTHELLO Amen to that, sweet powers!
I cannot speak enough of this content,
It stops me here, it is too much of joy.
(Othello II.1.192-195)
Though this scene is on the surface intended to exemplify a love and powerful attraction between these two characters, the inter-racial characteristics are designed to formulate a feeling of uneasiness in their inter-status relationship as well. Othello states his joy is too powerful for words, but it is exemplified as having a too much of a good thing. The challenge of racial stereotypes is not solely to posit our sensitivities on the side of the outsider and to enlighten the reader to the subjective experiences of he who is racially discriminated. The challenge involved in reversing any discourse on racial hierarchies will have to deal with the constant universality that that which is challenged also reifies and reinforces the same stereotypes one wishes to disenfranchise.

The above three examples of outsider characterizations and the presentation of the exceptionalities personified by each by these also in reinforce the stereotypes that they portray. These three plays represent themselves as extensions of the English history cycle, most predominantly in Othello and The Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare as a social commentator knew that the commercial regime taking form in his era would resemble an embodiment of democratic republicanism. These plays direct the reader and the audience to the doctrine of universal framework of trade and political synergies required for an emerging modernity. The plays of Shakespeare mark not only the end of an ancient political world, but they also mark the prospect of a universal homogenous world economic structure about to develop in the following century. These outsider social minority characters are key in this context. Through successfully challenging our assumptions of the cultural stereotypes indicative of the 17th century women, the black military leader, and the poor man hoping to better his place in the world economy, and then replacing them back to a framework of oppression at the end of each of the plays ultimately reinforces these stereotypes and does not overthrow them. There is never any intent to do that in these works. The characters are intended to grow, to develop as antitheses of the norm, to be successful in their endeavours. However, at the moment of change, and when their exceptionalities become ever apparent they are not removed from their original position. Portia returns to Belmont to live with her new husband Bassanio who will ultimately provide her with her identity, Bottom will resume his place in the working class and struggle as one who resides in at the base of pyramidal structures of power, and Othello meets his demise from his mere existing against the hierarchical structures posed to destroy him. Shakespeare does provide the reader and the audience with agency to moderate our own assumptions, and even more our expectations of these outsider characters, for it provides one to obtain a knowing of their place in the social. We have the wisdom Shakespeare about this, but we never really see any real synthesis of change emerge from such synthesis. Norms and structures go untouched in these plays and so does the impact of the outsiders.

References
Alvis, John, and Thomas G. West. Shakespeare as Political Thinker. Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1981.

Berger, Peter. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Toronto: Anchor Books, 1966.

Proudfoot, R., Anne Thompson and David Scott Kastan. The Arden Shakespeare: Revised Edition. Arden, 2001.

Stirling, Brents. The Populace in Shakespeare. New York: Columbia University Press, 1949.