Sartre on SM

Amongst Freudians, the desire to submit in that SM kinda way is usually attributed to infantilist fantasies: the subconscious drive to return to infancy, when you were both helpless but also felt loved and protected cuz of the overwhelming presence of your Mother.

And although I can't think of much to contradict this from my own experience, I have always thought that a different explanation was a wee bit more on the mark.

Turn with me now to the writings of M. Jean-Paul Sartre.

In Being and Nothingness, his viciously convoluted and written-on-pain-relievers opus, he discusses the burden of being human. What is foisted upon us is radical contingency: we are who we are because of our choices, and the only reason we aren't otherwise is because of our choices. At the extreme, the question 'Why are we at war in Iraq?' can be answered, 'because you chose to have us go to war in Iraq," and 'why aren't you the lead dancer in the New York City Ballet can be answered, 'because you chose otherwise." Hence, the other great theme of Sartre's work, responsibility.

Not taking responsibility for your choices manifests itself in what is called 'mauvais foi.' Literally translated, 'bad faith.' And one of the most common manifestations of this bad faith is self-reification: the desire to make yourself into a Thing rather than a person. A Thing, as in, not alive, not responsible, radically determined. A doorstop is a doorstop not because it chose to be a doorstop, but because someone decided that this material would be so configured and serve as a doorstop.

Now wouldn't that--as a matter of passing fancy--be sweet? No responsibility, none of that choosing. You just are because powers beyond your control decided you were going to be.

See what I'm getting at?

slave, prisoner, lashed to the whipping post, wrapped up in duct tape... there's a certain 'thing-ness' to each one of those. And clearly, some power beyond your control is clearly in charge at that point.

One way that my theory works and where the freudian approach falls down is in the Safe, Sane, Consensual department. If it was just a matter of wanting to return to an infantile state, than the SSC formula wouldn't be an issue.

But it is an issue. Everybody wants to push those boundaries. Even the World's Most Responsible bottom (whoever he or she may be), who negotiates every scene in advance to the nth degree, entertains fantasies of being gang-raped while lashed down to a pool table by nameless faceless strangers.

(Trust me on that one.)

See, if it's my theory that's operating here, that makes sense. SSC sticks in the craw of the eroticizing of the flight from personhood into thing-ness. Because you can't choose to be a thing without the ability to choose. In order to make it work, you have to make believe that that pre-scene negotiation thing didn't happen. And a good Top will play with that ("I like having you in those chains, boy. And you're gonna be there for as long as I decide you're gonna be there, aren't ya? Maybe that will be forever, fucker").

And therein lies the Eternal Paradox--or one of 'em--of SM. You can never quite escape being your bad ol' radically contingent, choosing, and ultimately responsible self. And so you're never quite satisfied. Mr. Preston, the Master who makes men into slaves, is thus a fiction, but a compelling one.

*sigh*

I guess it's kind of evident that I'm still a wee bit peeved that my college didn't give me a minor in philosophy becuase I was three credits short, huh?

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