CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Mdzeluri, Mariana |
|---|---|
| Title | The Spaces of the Repressive Hypothesis: Subject and Sexuality in BDSM |
| Summary | BDSM is usually positioned as a reality alternative to the mundane. In my thesis I explore the nature of this alternativity, and how it is connected the subject – in particular, on affective level. Drawing on theory of performativity, affect theory, and Foucauldian repressive hypothesis as analytical approaches, I analyzed interviews of English-speaking BDSM practitioners I met in Budapest. In addition, I involved insights received in conversations and observations of local parties as well as from secondary literature. I found out that in BDSM, sexuality functions as a spatial phenomenon – it works not as a psychological property, or drive, or a subject’s object-directed desire, but as a virtual space – a fantasy to explore and inhabit with different scenarios. I argue that repressive hypothesis produced the fantasy of sexuality as an underground space in relation to social and the subject. The subject has its own spatiality that is described in performativity studies in terms of transparency, surveillance, and theatricality. I show that these two spaces – of the “subject” and of “sexuality” – are related fantasies produced by the repressive hypothesis, which are structured and affectively attuned in different ways, which, in its turn, governs performance in different ways. Furthermore, I claim that BDSM “came down” and inhabited that virtual dungeon of sexuality, “underground” of the subject and society where, according to the repressive hypothesis, hypocritical Victorians banished sexuality to. Through the analysis of the interviews with BDSM practitioners, I investigate affective economies of these fantasies, and their relation in the shame/theatricality circuit. |
| Supervisor | Timar, Eszter; Renkin, Hadley Zaun |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/mdzeluri_mariana.pdf |
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