Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism

Author:   Amber Jamilla Musser
Publisher:   New York University Press
ISBN:  

9781479891818


Pages:   272
Publication Date:   05 September 2014
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
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Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism


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Overview

In everyday language, masochism is usually understood as the desire to abdicate control in exchange for sensation—pleasure, pain, or a combination thereof. Yet at its core, masochism is a site where power, bodies, and society come together. Sensational Flesh uses masochism as a lens to examine how power structures race, gender, and embodiment in different contexts. Drawing on rich and varied sources—from 19th century sexology, psychoanalysis, and critical theory to literary texts and performance art—Amber Jamilla Musser employs masochism as a powerful diagnostic tool for probing relationships between power and subjectivity. Engaging with a range of debates about lesbian S&M, racialization, femininity, and disability, as well as key texts such as Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs, Pauline Réage’s The Story of O, and Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality, Musser renders legible the complex ways that masochism has been taken up by queer, feminist, and critical race theories. Furthering queer theory’s investment in affect and materiality, she proposes “sensation” as an analytical tool for illustrating what it feels like to be embedded in structures of domination such as patriarchy, colonialism, and racism and what it means to embody femininity, blackness, and pain. Sensational Flesh is ultimately about the ways in which difference is made material through race, gender, and sexuality and how that materiality is experienced.

Full Product Details

Author:   Amber Jamilla Musser
Publisher:   New York University Press
Imprint:   New York University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.80cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.476kg
ISBN:  

9781479891818


ISBN 10:   1479891819
Pages:   272
Publication Date:   05 September 2014
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Contents Acknowledgments xi1 Introduction: Theory, Flesh, Practice 12 Specters of Domination: Patriarchy, Colonialism, and Masochism 313 Objectification, Complicity, and Coldness: The Story of O's Narratives of Femininity and Precarity 584 Time, Race, and Biology: Fanon, Freud, and the Labors of Race 885 Lacerated Breasts: Medicine, Autonomy, Pain 118Conclusion: Making Flesh Matter 151Notes 185Bibliography 211Index 231About the Author 255

Reviews

Sensational Flesh explores the material aspects of power how, in a Foucauldian sense, it is felt in the body unpacking the bodily, sensational dimensions of subjectivity. Comprehensive and exhaustive in scope, Musser leaves no stone unturned in her consideration of masochism in all its different formulations, and in the often-contradictory ways it has been deployed. -Jean Walton, author of Fair Sex, Savage Dreams: Race Psychoanalysis, Sexual Difference


Author Information

Amber Jamilla Musser is Associate Professor of American Studies at George Washington University and the author of Sensual Excess, also published by NYU Press.

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