Critical D/s Analysis: A Study in BDSM Identity Politics
Prpared by Richard Birch
Qualitative Methods SOCI 3126
Professor Vardalos
Tuesday, April 25 2006
This work Copyright (C) 2006 Richard Birch
Identity politics is one of the most unique and profoundly intriguing components of social research and theory. It can uncover sociological truths. It can also reveal sociological fictions. Both are very real and measurable. Both posit meaning forward to the world for analysis, conjecture, and discourse. Identity constructs are essentially the mechanism for institutional constructivism. Identity is where we find the drama in everyday social life. Identity keeps us moving, keeps us valid, keeps us serving, keeps us with the notion that we are individuals. The politics of the body provides us with the reality of roles as they are subject to the master narratives that define what roles are to solidify, how they are to be played out, and why we conceptualize their existence in the first place. Identity is what keeps us living as consumers. Identity is what maintains our positionality in economics. Identity is what we see as the unique demarcation point of social life, for when we think about living in the social, we are thus socialized to view society from outside-in, meaning it is society that affects us. The body politic is where our most unique human-centric existential subjectivity is relentlessly discursive and at times completely pointless. Yet, research in this abstract conceptual area as the self is essential for a specific reason other than for social change or communal interaction. Identity reveals darkness. Identity reveals the underbelly of human experiential matrices that elude and exist amidst all institutions. Identity conceptually brings out the most taboo activity we can construct. Identity is also thus subject to parameters of taboo and derogatory demarcation. This is what makes the body politic and identity politics so incredibly interesting in social research. Because in the very fabric of the darkness of specific underground elements of everyday social life, there can exist beauty and the idea of free thought and free thinking. Yet there is a way to see this beauty, but it is a way that is potentially counter-contextual to the existence of taboo culture. The lens from which we look through exists only in rationality. The lens sharpens the focus only under the premise and stipulation of critical thought and substantial social theory. One of the most profoundly interesting and exemplary identity constructs is the masochistic sexual subculture construct. It is a realm, unique and powerful enough to hold the title culture and institution on its own. The actors and members in this community, this subculture, have roles just as roles exist outside of the BDSM social framework otherwise known as vanillaspace. But the uniqueness to the BDSM subculture, or altspace, is measurable according to theories of rationalization and repressive desublimation, specifically those written in Frankfurt School theoretical writings on reification and social dimensionality. Hebert Marcuse states in his book One-Dimensional Man that “in the political sphere, [trends] manifest [themselves] in a marked unification or convergence of opposites…This unification of opposites bears upon the very possibilities of social change where it embraces those strata on whose back the system progresses – that is, the very classes whose existence once embodied the opposition to the system as a whole” (Marcuse, 19). Marcuse is not speaking about social phenomenon that is progressive however. He is discussing social phenomenon that is pathological and oppressive. It is based on the notion of the administered universality of one-dimensional life, the postmodern iron cage, the constructed realm of rational choice that supercedes all endeavours to be real, actualized, and creatively productive (as opposed to the Marxist definition found in the capitalistic modes of production). To be outside the mode, the realm of technocapitalist meaning is to be transformative “of the antagonistic structure itself that resolve contradictions (as perceived by virtue of rationalization) by making them tolerable” (21). As Marxism posits the conceptual transition from capitalism to socialism as a political revolution, it can be argued for purposes of conceptual development by virtue of grounded theoretical methodology that the BDSM sexual subculture is potentially teetering on the same sort of revolution, though it never seems to be quite recognizable even from within its very thick and vast borders. Under Marcusean thought, could it be possible that masochistic BDSM subculture is set up structurally to potentially subvert hegemonic ideologies of identity? If so, could it potentially through subversion affect social change? Does it aim to be socially revolutionary by essence of the roles, engendered encounters, and the basis of deconstructing the political body? Or, alternatively, does BDSM altspace simply reify and confirm the oppressive dynamics of postmodernity?
Grounded theory, specifically Marcusean social theory and analysis, though not initially intended for situating models of desublimation upon sexual orientative groups and activities, can be used to assess and generalize that which brings social meanings forth as knowledge and argument. The rhetoric of discourse is subject to the phenomenological essence of all individual accounts in play. The science of sexual taboo is quite revealing of Marcusean theory. It is dark like Marcusean theory. To actively examine the inner workings of the BDSM social institution, is to sustain high levels of critical thought, or else knowledge generated is inconsequential and insubstantial. To research the actors in altspace is effective done under a specific form of consciousness, a “space within” where subjects and respondents constitute objects of instrumentality, holistically as the raison d’etre in the successes and progressions of productivity. In other words, knowledge in altspace is best derived from those aware of their oppression, from those who are aware of why they engage in the roles that are constructed. It became clear that through a relentless search for actors to be willing respondents in this research, information was best provided by one who has a unique understanding of alienation and other modes of negation subsequent to technological rationality. In other words, the respondent had to be aware of their oppression and to be open to discussing their activities in altspace in order to provide cues as to whether such oppression gives meaning to their D/s role in subversive or stabile ways (65). Desublimated sexuality is key to understanding what the D/s identity construct is about because of its seemingly transformative nature, that which turns repression into the sublime, and vice-versa. To de-sublime something, like a sexual taboo according Marcuse, is a method of attaining a degree of normalization where the individuals are “getting used to the risk of their own dissolution and disintegration” (78). Because a one-dimensional society turns everything into a resource, a commodity measurable by development and growth, it can utilize what it touches in its nature of exploitation. Existence is “drudgery”, and thus drudgery is “satisfaction” (78). Most importantly in exploitation, when drudgery becomes satisfaction, it is not difficult to then conceptualize that freedom is oppressive for its meaning and the subsequent drive to be free, and the complacent tendency to rationalize a freedom-sense is also oppressive. Sexuality and sexual subcultures are just the same. They are built on rationalization. To engage in masochistic sexual socialization is a rational choice because the need for it is also constructed. That is desublimation. That is Marcusean sex at its most hardcore and pornographic.
Dal, is a 34-year old woman dominatrix. In her vanilla world she was born in a Southern Ontario, Canada, middle-class family structure, is highly educated, and is also very aware of her oppression in techno-capitalism. Her first encounter in altspace occurred in 1999 when a friend took her to a fetish event. It was here where she actualized her first altspace social knowledge. In her interview she was immediately able to posit descriptions of herself and of her socially constructed role as a dominatrix in altspace with ease and complete understanding. Dal is and has for many years been very aware of her attraction to darker lifestyles. For her the underground, the secret masochistic lifestyle she pursues outside of her vanillaspace existence is a demarcation point in her subjectivity and experiential framework. It is here where her underground sexuality (D/s sexuality) exists in response to repressive desublimation.
When speaking to Dal about her vanilla life, as a way to set up an experiential mise-en-scène that could suggest the possibility of causality and subsequent meaning in her altspace existence, it was becoming clear of how truly tied the respondent is to gender roles. She is very aware of her oppression as a female in patriarchy. She is aware of the challenges that exist in her professional world because of her gender. She is aware of the feminist sensibilities she possesses and has possessed for several years in response to what she has observed in the social as a woman. She knows what her desire is. She desires at times to be something different in the social. She endeavours to find acceptance in a lifestyle of differences in body types, where she can allow herself to be sexual and sensual. For Dal, traditionally in vanillaspace, active sexual and engendered sensuality as feminine in the mainstream hegemonic was submissive, not in the BDSM kink sense of the word. But purely because of her gender and the ascribed role she deals with as a woman, the parameters of sexuality and sensuality have always been constructed for her and without influence. In altspace she claims she can allow herself to be dominant and sexual which is interesting that she in her interview termed in this way. To “allow” herself a performative basis of sexual and sensual communication and discourse, of active role-playing, and of engaging in the social-psycho drama of the D/s world is key for it is in that allowance she deals with her desublimation in techno-capitalism.
In Marcusean social theory, repressive desublimation by which the people give over their sovereignty and their everyday perceived liberties to those who control power, social institutions and knowledge in exchange for crude materialistic and sensual satisfactions (82). In altspace, the aesthetic of fetishistic events and environments is important for Dal. The performative dressing up inspires the actor in her. Here in the scene she can be powerful and sexual at the same time, and not compromise her moral integrity. In altspace hang ups about her physical body is not as bad if they really exist at all.
In hegemonic desublimation acceptance is conditional on giving up personal subjective ideas about beauty, power, and agency. We must relinquish our agency in an industrial society in order to exist as functional extensions of machines and of the processes that maintain our existence. Desublimation is counter to the performative aspect of Dal’s altspace existence. The phenomenon for her is that she functions and negotiates existence through this altspace and the repressive desublimation as a form of art. It is creative when she performs flagellation on a play-partner, whether it is in private of in public. It is artistic for her when she dresses up in specialized fetish wear. It is artistic for her when she exerts power and dominance over her submissives for it is done sensually and with respect. This assimilation into a mechanized universe “establishes cultural equality while preserving domination” (64). In altspace Dal easily tackles the phenomenon of her personal Verfremdungseffekt, or “estrangement-effect” (67). In place of complete acceptance from other people in vanillaspace social environments like work, family, friends, and in her political realm pertaining to the body-politic, in altspace she can work the curves if she wants to, not just the curves of her body, but the curves and waves her actions as a dominant individual can have in a meaningful collective subjectivity. Dal recognizes the world for what it is, patriarchical, sexist, heteronormative, and imbalanced. She sees her association in the social as problematic because her femininity is problematic in oppression. Femininity is constructed as a means to maintain performance in labour and repressive desublimation. Through her altspace existence she can produce a disassociation in which the world can be recognized as what it is and dealt with accordingly (67).
In dealing with her dissociation of social hegemony, she takes on a rather sublime and specific role in altspace. The role of a dungeon monitor is crucial for her. Dungeon monitors are strictly crucial in all public masochistic play scenarios. The role of the monitor is to ensure safe, secure, and consensual play is performed in dungeon altspace environments. She is to know the limits of the submissives in the room and gage what is going on closely, that all performative flagellation is appropriate, that there no miss management of equipment, that no one is interrupting a scene, and that no bloodletting results which can result in complex charges.
Whether she is a dungeon monitor or engaged in play as a dominant, it is a way for her to express her distaste for feminine subordination. She has no problem playing with a female sub, but she does have a hard time watching Male Dom/ female sub interaction. However when there is respect and a balance in power exchange then it’s fine, otherwise “grates on her nerves”.
Dal is quite able to clarify what the D/s construct subjectively represents in her social existence and how it subsequently provides connectivity to her position in master narratives. In regards to relations of identity in capitalistic terms, according to Dal many Doms are typically unsatisfied in their professional and economic life. However, in altspace she now feels she has the freedom to express herself theatrically, in a corporeal way. She likes to “haul ass” as it were to challenge something in her altspace lifestyle that she definitely can’t in the vanilla world under desublimation. Dal as an underground alternative identity is just another layer to whoever she is. She doesn’t believe it is a political economic subversion or a subversion of gender roles, though she claims even switching the D/s role construct for her male partner is awkward. Her feminist sensibilities even start censoring her actions of being a sub for she becomes very aware of how her actions serve the master narratives in her existence because her traditional performative femininity becomes problematic. However she in Marcusean desublimatory fashion wants to negotiate around the need to “please her man”, but not compromise everything she believes in. As a woman she does not feel she is a submissive, but because she is a female in the social she has always been treated as such, she has always been very aware of her oppression as a female in techno-capitalist. Her mother was a role model as the primary bread winner, she was socialized in a feminist-dominant household, and in a patriarchical world feminist thinking is an extension of who she is and from where she comes from.
Altspace is a forum to express feminine mystique, though ultimately he can’t express publicly her involvement in the lifestyle, she could be subverting mainstream because she risks everything professionally by doing this, the risk of being found out is dangerous. If Dal were truly subverting mainstream hegemonic principles of oppression as it relates back to the initial research question, deconstructively and interpretively this would not be an issue. There is no subversion in underground context. If it is underground and discreet, it is foundational. Identity is dark and secretive because it serves power that way. We as social beings do not share our true identities because in a collective social we are not permitted to. As Marcuse posits, we give up our right to individuality for the pleasures of postmodernity and thus interpretively rationalize a constructed engendered existence to negotiate through a dark identity. Because Dal’s altspace remains dark and secretive it cannot be described as subverting. However, the next question would be, is D/s subversion really social change conceptually? Is not the creation of a social institution like the fetishistic institution, where one can performatively express an engendered mystique not needing any other level for existence? Because BDSM does not function on the same parameters of repressive desublimation as a social phenomenon (it is useful for clarity and to distinguish the concept from Freudian theory) the question of whether BDSM altspace and the D/s construct is subversive may not the be the right research question after all. It creates knowledge, but it doesn’t create history. Altspace creates knowledge for those who engage and exist as part of it but it doesn’t transcend to notions affecting public morality and social justice. As a body of identity politics, it serves hegemony first by reifying the roles we discuss through discourse. Quite possibly, it could be argued that the D/s relationship if ever appropriated and successful in a realm of social change and subversional power, could lead to its demise as a subculture. It functions on the existing as the taboo, and the cultural other. It functions as aside from gender and sexual normativity. It functions to serve both sides of the oppression equation. Maybe there already is balance in altspace, and where the rare phenomenon of balance occurs, subversion is immaterial in Marxist terms. BDSM is still however a product of desublimation in some ways.
Reference:
Marcuse, H. (1964). One-Dimensional Man. Boston, Mass: Beacon Press.
Qualitative Methods SOCI 3126
Professor Vardalos
Tuesday, April 25 2006
This work Copyright (C) 2006 Richard Birch
Identity politics is one of the most unique and profoundly intriguing components of social research and theory. It can uncover sociological truths. It can also reveal sociological fictions. Both are very real and measurable. Both posit meaning forward to the world for analysis, conjecture, and discourse. Identity constructs are essentially the mechanism for institutional constructivism. Identity is where we find the drama in everyday social life. Identity keeps us moving, keeps us valid, keeps us serving, keeps us with the notion that we are individuals. The politics of the body provides us with the reality of roles as they are subject to the master narratives that define what roles are to solidify, how they are to be played out, and why we conceptualize their existence in the first place. Identity is what keeps us living as consumers. Identity is what maintains our positionality in economics. Identity is what we see as the unique demarcation point of social life, for when we think about living in the social, we are thus socialized to view society from outside-in, meaning it is society that affects us. The body politic is where our most unique human-centric existential subjectivity is relentlessly discursive and at times completely pointless. Yet, research in this abstract conceptual area as the self is essential for a specific reason other than for social change or communal interaction. Identity reveals darkness. Identity reveals the underbelly of human experiential matrices that elude and exist amidst all institutions. Identity conceptually brings out the most taboo activity we can construct. Identity is also thus subject to parameters of taboo and derogatory demarcation. This is what makes the body politic and identity politics so incredibly interesting in social research. Because in the very fabric of the darkness of specific underground elements of everyday social life, there can exist beauty and the idea of free thought and free thinking. Yet there is a way to see this beauty, but it is a way that is potentially counter-contextual to the existence of taboo culture. The lens from which we look through exists only in rationality. The lens sharpens the focus only under the premise and stipulation of critical thought and substantial social theory. One of the most profoundly interesting and exemplary identity constructs is the masochistic sexual subculture construct. It is a realm, unique and powerful enough to hold the title culture and institution on its own. The actors and members in this community, this subculture, have roles just as roles exist outside of the BDSM social framework otherwise known as vanillaspace. But the uniqueness to the BDSM subculture, or altspace, is measurable according to theories of rationalization and repressive desublimation, specifically those written in Frankfurt School theoretical writings on reification and social dimensionality. Hebert Marcuse states in his book One-Dimensional Man that “in the political sphere, [trends] manifest [themselves] in a marked unification or convergence of opposites…This unification of opposites bears upon the very possibilities of social change where it embraces those strata on whose back the system progresses – that is, the very classes whose existence once embodied the opposition to the system as a whole” (Marcuse, 19). Marcuse is not speaking about social phenomenon that is progressive however. He is discussing social phenomenon that is pathological and oppressive. It is based on the notion of the administered universality of one-dimensional life, the postmodern iron cage, the constructed realm of rational choice that supercedes all endeavours to be real, actualized, and creatively productive (as opposed to the Marxist definition found in the capitalistic modes of production). To be outside the mode, the realm of technocapitalist meaning is to be transformative “of the antagonistic structure itself that resolve contradictions (as perceived by virtue of rationalization) by making them tolerable” (21). As Marxism posits the conceptual transition from capitalism to socialism as a political revolution, it can be argued for purposes of conceptual development by virtue of grounded theoretical methodology that the BDSM sexual subculture is potentially teetering on the same sort of revolution, though it never seems to be quite recognizable even from within its very thick and vast borders. Under Marcusean thought, could it be possible that masochistic BDSM subculture is set up structurally to potentially subvert hegemonic ideologies of identity? If so, could it potentially through subversion affect social change? Does it aim to be socially revolutionary by essence of the roles, engendered encounters, and the basis of deconstructing the political body? Or, alternatively, does BDSM altspace simply reify and confirm the oppressive dynamics of postmodernity?
Grounded theory, specifically Marcusean social theory and analysis, though not initially intended for situating models of desublimation upon sexual orientative groups and activities, can be used to assess and generalize that which brings social meanings forth as knowledge and argument. The rhetoric of discourse is subject to the phenomenological essence of all individual accounts in play. The science of sexual taboo is quite revealing of Marcusean theory. It is dark like Marcusean theory. To actively examine the inner workings of the BDSM social institution, is to sustain high levels of critical thought, or else knowledge generated is inconsequential and insubstantial. To research the actors in altspace is effective done under a specific form of consciousness, a “space within” where subjects and respondents constitute objects of instrumentality, holistically as the raison d’etre in the successes and progressions of productivity. In other words, knowledge in altspace is best derived from those aware of their oppression, from those who are aware of why they engage in the roles that are constructed. It became clear that through a relentless search for actors to be willing respondents in this research, information was best provided by one who has a unique understanding of alienation and other modes of negation subsequent to technological rationality. In other words, the respondent had to be aware of their oppression and to be open to discussing their activities in altspace in order to provide cues as to whether such oppression gives meaning to their D/s role in subversive or stabile ways (65). Desublimated sexuality is key to understanding what the D/s identity construct is about because of its seemingly transformative nature, that which turns repression into the sublime, and vice-versa. To de-sublime something, like a sexual taboo according Marcuse, is a method of attaining a degree of normalization where the individuals are “getting used to the risk of their own dissolution and disintegration” (78). Because a one-dimensional society turns everything into a resource, a commodity measurable by development and growth, it can utilize what it touches in its nature of exploitation. Existence is “drudgery”, and thus drudgery is “satisfaction” (78). Most importantly in exploitation, when drudgery becomes satisfaction, it is not difficult to then conceptualize that freedom is oppressive for its meaning and the subsequent drive to be free, and the complacent tendency to rationalize a freedom-sense is also oppressive. Sexuality and sexual subcultures are just the same. They are built on rationalization. To engage in masochistic sexual socialization is a rational choice because the need for it is also constructed. That is desublimation. That is Marcusean sex at its most hardcore and pornographic.
Dal, is a 34-year old woman dominatrix. In her vanilla world she was born in a Southern Ontario, Canada, middle-class family structure, is highly educated, and is also very aware of her oppression in techno-capitalism. Her first encounter in altspace occurred in 1999 when a friend took her to a fetish event. It was here where she actualized her first altspace social knowledge. In her interview she was immediately able to posit descriptions of herself and of her socially constructed role as a dominatrix in altspace with ease and complete understanding. Dal is and has for many years been very aware of her attraction to darker lifestyles. For her the underground, the secret masochistic lifestyle she pursues outside of her vanillaspace existence is a demarcation point in her subjectivity and experiential framework. It is here where her underground sexuality (D/s sexuality) exists in response to repressive desublimation.
When speaking to Dal about her vanilla life, as a way to set up an experiential mise-en-scène that could suggest the possibility of causality and subsequent meaning in her altspace existence, it was becoming clear of how truly tied the respondent is to gender roles. She is very aware of her oppression as a female in patriarchy. She is aware of the challenges that exist in her professional world because of her gender. She is aware of the feminist sensibilities she possesses and has possessed for several years in response to what she has observed in the social as a woman. She knows what her desire is. She desires at times to be something different in the social. She endeavours to find acceptance in a lifestyle of differences in body types, where she can allow herself to be sexual and sensual. For Dal, traditionally in vanillaspace, active sexual and engendered sensuality as feminine in the mainstream hegemonic was submissive, not in the BDSM kink sense of the word. But purely because of her gender and the ascribed role she deals with as a woman, the parameters of sexuality and sensuality have always been constructed for her and without influence. In altspace she claims she can allow herself to be dominant and sexual which is interesting that she in her interview termed in this way. To “allow” herself a performative basis of sexual and sensual communication and discourse, of active role-playing, and of engaging in the social-psycho drama of the D/s world is key for it is in that allowance she deals with her desublimation in techno-capitalism.
In Marcusean social theory, repressive desublimation by which the people give over their sovereignty and their everyday perceived liberties to those who control power, social institutions and knowledge in exchange for crude materialistic and sensual satisfactions (82). In altspace, the aesthetic of fetishistic events and environments is important for Dal. The performative dressing up inspires the actor in her. Here in the scene she can be powerful and sexual at the same time, and not compromise her moral integrity. In altspace hang ups about her physical body is not as bad if they really exist at all.
In hegemonic desublimation acceptance is conditional on giving up personal subjective ideas about beauty, power, and agency. We must relinquish our agency in an industrial society in order to exist as functional extensions of machines and of the processes that maintain our existence. Desublimation is counter to the performative aspect of Dal’s altspace existence. The phenomenon for her is that she functions and negotiates existence through this altspace and the repressive desublimation as a form of art. It is creative when she performs flagellation on a play-partner, whether it is in private of in public. It is artistic for her when she dresses up in specialized fetish wear. It is artistic for her when she exerts power and dominance over her submissives for it is done sensually and with respect. This assimilation into a mechanized universe “establishes cultural equality while preserving domination” (64). In altspace Dal easily tackles the phenomenon of her personal Verfremdungseffekt, or “estrangement-effect” (67). In place of complete acceptance from other people in vanillaspace social environments like work, family, friends, and in her political realm pertaining to the body-politic, in altspace she can work the curves if she wants to, not just the curves of her body, but the curves and waves her actions as a dominant individual can have in a meaningful collective subjectivity. Dal recognizes the world for what it is, patriarchical, sexist, heteronormative, and imbalanced. She sees her association in the social as problematic because her femininity is problematic in oppression. Femininity is constructed as a means to maintain performance in labour and repressive desublimation. Through her altspace existence she can produce a disassociation in which the world can be recognized as what it is and dealt with accordingly (67).
In dealing with her dissociation of social hegemony, she takes on a rather sublime and specific role in altspace. The role of a dungeon monitor is crucial for her. Dungeon monitors are strictly crucial in all public masochistic play scenarios. The role of the monitor is to ensure safe, secure, and consensual play is performed in dungeon altspace environments. She is to know the limits of the submissives in the room and gage what is going on closely, that all performative flagellation is appropriate, that there no miss management of equipment, that no one is interrupting a scene, and that no bloodletting results which can result in complex charges.
Whether she is a dungeon monitor or engaged in play as a dominant, it is a way for her to express her distaste for feminine subordination. She has no problem playing with a female sub, but she does have a hard time watching Male Dom/ female sub interaction. However when there is respect and a balance in power exchange then it’s fine, otherwise “grates on her nerves”.
Dal is quite able to clarify what the D/s construct subjectively represents in her social existence and how it subsequently provides connectivity to her position in master narratives. In regards to relations of identity in capitalistic terms, according to Dal many Doms are typically unsatisfied in their professional and economic life. However, in altspace she now feels she has the freedom to express herself theatrically, in a corporeal way. She likes to “haul ass” as it were to challenge something in her altspace lifestyle that she definitely can’t in the vanilla world under desublimation. Dal as an underground alternative identity is just another layer to whoever she is. She doesn’t believe it is a political economic subversion or a subversion of gender roles, though she claims even switching the D/s role construct for her male partner is awkward. Her feminist sensibilities even start censoring her actions of being a sub for she becomes very aware of how her actions serve the master narratives in her existence because her traditional performative femininity becomes problematic. However she in Marcusean desublimatory fashion wants to negotiate around the need to “please her man”, but not compromise everything she believes in. As a woman she does not feel she is a submissive, but because she is a female in the social she has always been treated as such, she has always been very aware of her oppression as a female in techno-capitalist. Her mother was a role model as the primary bread winner, she was socialized in a feminist-dominant household, and in a patriarchical world feminist thinking is an extension of who she is and from where she comes from.
Altspace is a forum to express feminine mystique, though ultimately he can’t express publicly her involvement in the lifestyle, she could be subverting mainstream because she risks everything professionally by doing this, the risk of being found out is dangerous. If Dal were truly subverting mainstream hegemonic principles of oppression as it relates back to the initial research question, deconstructively and interpretively this would not be an issue. There is no subversion in underground context. If it is underground and discreet, it is foundational. Identity is dark and secretive because it serves power that way. We as social beings do not share our true identities because in a collective social we are not permitted to. As Marcuse posits, we give up our right to individuality for the pleasures of postmodernity and thus interpretively rationalize a constructed engendered existence to negotiate through a dark identity. Because Dal’s altspace remains dark and secretive it cannot be described as subverting. However, the next question would be, is D/s subversion really social change conceptually? Is not the creation of a social institution like the fetishistic institution, where one can performatively express an engendered mystique not needing any other level for existence? Because BDSM does not function on the same parameters of repressive desublimation as a social phenomenon (it is useful for clarity and to distinguish the concept from Freudian theory) the question of whether BDSM altspace and the D/s construct is subversive may not the be the right research question after all. It creates knowledge, but it doesn’t create history. Altspace creates knowledge for those who engage and exist as part of it but it doesn’t transcend to notions affecting public morality and social justice. As a body of identity politics, it serves hegemony first by reifying the roles we discuss through discourse. Quite possibly, it could be argued that the D/s relationship if ever appropriated and successful in a realm of social change and subversional power, could lead to its demise as a subculture. It functions on the existing as the taboo, and the cultural other. It functions as aside from gender and sexual normativity. It functions to serve both sides of the oppression equation. Maybe there already is balance in altspace, and where the rare phenomenon of balance occurs, subversion is immaterial in Marxist terms. BDSM is still however a product of desublimation in some ways.
Reference:
Marcuse, H. (1964). One-Dimensional Man. Boston, Mass: Beacon Press.
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