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Chapter 4. Mysticism and Masochism or Religious Ecstasy and Sadomasochistic Delight
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chapter 4 Mysticism and Masochism or Religious Ecstasy and Sadomasochistic Delight Pain, whatever else philosophy or biomedical science can tell us about it, is almost always the occasion for an encounter with meaning. it not only invites interpretation: like an insult or an outrageous act, it seems to require an explanation. —david b. morris, Culture of Pain For Christians, suffering is never meaningless. —joseph amato, Victims and Values in his 1905 work Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Sigmund Freud made the (now primarily debunked) argument that, because masochism is a naturally feminine state, women are naturally masochistic. this argument , of course, is based on the idea that masochism is a state of weak passivity—a masochist is naturally submissive, and since submission and weakness are normally associated with the feminine, females must, by nature, be masochistic. despite objections to this definition, it is hard, as Jessica Benjamin argues, to ignore the underlying cultural assumptions about femininity upon which this definition is built: “though we may refuse [Freud’s] definition, we are nevertheless obliged to confront the painful fact that even today, femininity continues to be identified with passivity, with being the object of someone else’s desire, with having no active desire of one’s own” (87). in 1924, Freud wrote his most influential treatment of the subject, “the economic Problem of Masochism,” wherein he defines masochism as a repressive function and explains that 102 | Desire and the Divine “moral masochism” is that masochism tied predominantly to guilt, similar in function to repression itself. these definitions problematize the study of masochism as anything other than pathological and, as a result, sociologists, psychiatrists, theorists, and even masochists themselves have had to wrestle with definitions that seem at times overly reductive and at other times too inclusive. Most often, however, when faced with the masochist or with masochism , the most common response is silence. We find ourselves at a loss for words. in teaching dorothy allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina to a group of college sophomores, for example, i could not get one student to begin a discussion over Bone’s violent fantasies of punishment and fire. it was as if the scenes themselves did not exist, and when students were asked specifically about Bone’s masochism, most of them initially refused to see it as more than a disturbing and pathological response to the abuse she suffered at her stepfather’s hands. allison herself, on the other hand, is an open practitioner of S/M for whom masochism holds an important, even vital, meaning to her life and sexuality. her feelings on sadomasochism, and masochism in particular, differ from those of the students. they, like Freud, want to see masochism as repressive—a way of hiding the pain and anger. allison’s definitions, though they do not deny that there is sometimes a relationship between masochism and abuse, are more in line with Michel Foucault’s. Foucault, unlike Freud, sees sadomasochism as potentially positive and productive of, at the very least, pleasure.1 the titillation of black leather, fuzzy handcuffs, or “whips and chains” aside, however, most people still see masochism (or sadomasochism) as a perversity or as a result of some trauma. When we take the sex out of equation, however, and look at pain by itself, everything changes. Within the realm of acceptable commodities such as sports and beauty, pain is often acceptable and even encouraged. after all, “chicks dig scars,” and “beauty is pain.” the very concept of pain is undeniably historically constructed. in his study Victims and Values , Joseph a. amato points out that pain becomes completely infused with political meaning and is inseparable from identity politics: Who suffers? Who doesn’t suffer? What value should be placed on their suffering ? in his award-winning Culture of Pain, david B. Morris examines this historical construction of pain to show not only how people suffer, but how history has viewed pain and suffering both biomedically and spiri- [44.222.129.73] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 16:31 GMT) Mysticism and Masochism | 103 tually. examining the relationships between pain and beauty, pain and religion, pain and sex, and pain and medicine, he is able to show how, throughout history, pain as a concept has been interpreted and endowed with meaning. the meaning of pain obviously depends not only on the sufferer, but on outside interpreters as well. Morris reminds us, for example, of the belief on the part of whites in the antebellum South that...