Socijalno – filozofski i psihoanalitički pristup (sado)mazohizmu
Authors:   , Šokičić Iva 
Published: November 2021

The general aim of the thesis is an interpretation of sadomasochism as a relevant sexuality and a psycho - sexual, socio - philosophical and cultural phenomenon, developed by multidisciplinary aspects of psychoanalysis and social philosophy with the focus on the philosophical analysis of the individual and social understanding of sadomasochism and the essential dilemmas about its intelligibility and adequate positioning of sadism and masochism in the domain of sexuality. I have made the effort of critically rethinking sadomasochism as a specific sexuality in its practice, but equal to every other sexual orientation according to the principle of egalitarian freedom of choice and philosophical elaboration of its position in the context of contemporary theories of sexuality. As a starting point for understanding the theories of sadomasochistic sexuality, a historical background of the concept of perversion and interpretations of sadomasochism is presented through a detailed overview and analysis of the earliest psychoanalysis of Richard von Krafft - Ebing and Sigmund Freud. The interpretation of sexuality and sadomasochistic relationships in the postpsychoanalytical theory of Jacques Lacan is elaborated as the most relevant for the contemporary psychoanalytical philosophy and understanding of sexuality. Sadomasochism is explained in terms of Lacan's conceptually - categorial system, as a special and unique relationship of signifiers, intermediated by desire described as the relationship of the other (objet petit a) and the Other (objet grande Autre). Lacan's structurally - categorial system of subjects, objects and indefinite different possibilities of relationships between individuals and signifiers reveals their both conscious and unconscious desires and therefore is an excellent method of studying and theoretizing sadomasochistic sexuality and interactions in all their varieties and development of the Symbolic, Imaginary and the Real order. The central original theses are interpretations of ontology and phenomenology in anthropological philosophy of sexuality of George Bataille and his naturalist conceptualization of sexuaity as a „violent transgression“, and at the same time erotic and sensual, spiritual and ritual, transcendental phenomenon. Bataille's theory of the essential, inevitable unity of sexuality and violence is strongly antropologically founded, relying on vivid depictions of ancient sexual ritual in comparison with contempory human sexual experience. According to Bataille, violence and sexuality, as primal animal insticts and human drives, are inseparable and therefore sadomasochism can be understood as a necessary trangression, transcending all taboos and cultural norms. His exquisite theses on sexuality, based on descriptions of the unity of the physical and the psychological dimensional and explaining the very origin of sadomasochism, are an excellent theoretical framework for the understanding the practice of sadomasochistic sexuality as an equilibrium of the violent, cruel, profane with the sacrificial, ritual and sacred, transcending into the domain of the spiritual. Bataille's works and thought on sexuality are interpreted as the basis for the ontology of sadomasochism, since transcendentality is the main characteristic of the state of mind caused by intense and unique sensations of the masochistic experience. Phenomenology of masochism, as the primary and far more complexed sexual predisposition and orientatation than sadism, is best expressed in the thought of Gilles Deleuze, centrally focused and concentrated on distingishing and dividing masochism and sadism into two different entities and forms of existence. Deleuze's theory of masochism is of great relevance, since he strictly excludes masochism from sadism, as two separate worlds, with his references on Leopold Sacher - Masoch and his notion of masochism as supersensuality. According to Deleuze, masochism is a world of its own, and the masochistic individual has a unique set of mind, psyche and desires for physical pain, opposite to a sadist, which ontologically differenciates masochists from sadist. Jean - Luc Nancy's philosophy of the body is of great significance for understanding sadomasochistic sexuality, since he positioned the body as the central part of the individual's person, selfhood and the realization of sexual identity. As I have demonstrated, he has developed a conceptual paradigm in which myself is the body and his term „corpus ego“ stands for the unity of body, self and mind. The unity of body, self and mind and the idea of the body as the self are followed by his understanding of physical sensations as life forces, which are the essential components of sadomasochistic sexuality and lifestyle. Jean Baudrillard's analysis of the postfuturist and postsexual society and his brilliant depictions of human drives for violent sexuality in comparison with the perception of reality or its simulation plays an extremely important role in explaining the contemporary technological society and specific sexual practices. Baudrillard has reformulated some of the major Lacan's terms and concept in his own, original and different interpretation of sexuality and violence in terms of seduction, pornography and sexual pleasure by referring to manifestations of extreme sexuality in voyeurism, implying various sadomasochistic practices, reaching the limitless hyperreality of taking pleasure in participating severe accidents and acts of brutality as a response to the exposition and submission to mechanisms of technology. Herbert Marcuse's philosophical interpretation of Freud is of extreme importance for the explanation of the reflexion of the physical in the social state and the broad problematics of contemporary society and the individual as a product of repressive civilization and repressed sexuality and the idea of an open possibility of realization of an non – repressive, but productive society of the pleasure principle. The essential part of the thesis is based upon the theories of the society and sexuality in Foucault's and Gilles Deleuze's philosophy, very different and highly critically opposed psychoanalitical approaches - a historical and „antihumanist“ analysis of social dynamics which shape individuals by conditioning their behaviour. The position of sadomasochist sexuality in the social context has been demonstrated by the historically - philosophical theory of power relations in the thought of Michel Foucault with an emphasis on his exquisite, detailed and probably most precise analysis of development of thought and science of sexuality. I have applied Foucault's theses on social power relations on the hermeneutics of sadomasochistic sexuality, since his main focus was the historical knowledge of sexuality, dating from ancient Greece, its practices and a specific ethics. Foucault's theory of sexuality was established precisely on societies buit upon the essential relation of power and knowledge which made sexuality a political and scientific issue, including the practice of sadomasochism as the best manifestation of paradoxical power relations, the one of equal individual, both wielding power and submitting to powerlessness, a realtionship beyond power, in search of knowledge through sexual experience and liberation. Sexuality, as an ultimate form of liberation, is presented with an emphasis on sadomasochistic sexuality as the ultimate form of interpersonal power exchange in the social context of sadomadochistic communities and subcultures and the reception of such practices by the traditional mainstream society. The final conclusion of Foucault's theses on sexuality is an interpretation of power relations in radical sadomasochistic relationships from the socio - philosophical, political, but also psychological perspective, along with the ethics of sadomasochism as a prescribed conduct regarding safety and consensuality. Contemporary theories and conceptions od sadomasochism, most expressed in the USA from 1990s to the present day have explained and interpreted the basic linguistic register of BDSM and represented the essential practices of this sexuality, which has, by social development, evolved from „true“ sadomasochism to populizarization and mainstream culture of the postcapitalist consumerist society. Numerous contemporary sociology and physchology theoreticians, including psychotherapists represent a positive attitude towards sadomasochism and shall be confronted with „heavy“ arguments of radical feminist authors against this sexual practice, but it is important to note that the renowned feminist theoreticians have taken the affirmative attitude towards S/M as practioners themselves. The intention of the thesis, after a philosophical overview of the phenomenon of sadomasochism in theory and practice, is an original interpretation and rethinking of various theories and the still present dubious and problematic understandings of sadomasochistic sexuality - as a psychopathological disorder, perversion, violence, abnormal sexuality or deviation, which should be disregarded and discarded as obsolete misinterpretations. Innovative interpretations of the relevant literature and my own personally developed theses in ontology and epistemology of the individual, community and the social totality shall constitute a unique opposition to the psychopatologization of sadomasochist sexuality in the social and the individual psychological sphere of the phenomenon of sadomasochism which, from the socio - philosophical and psychological perspective, has an immense role in contemporary society and culture.