from Amber Musser, “Masochism: A Queer Subjectivity?”, rhizomes 11/12 (fall 2005/spring 2006):
While [Judith] Butler highlights the social context required to endow a subject’s performance with significance, [Gilles] Deleuze’s masochist is created in the intersubjective space between the dominant and the submissive as opposed to within a larger social context. Masochism can be thought as reciprocity dependent on local, contingent differences where the intersubjective relation takes precedence to the individual. The crucial exchanges between the dominant and submissive, which anchor masochistic notions of agency are based on the differences assigned in their contract and articulated in their performance, which in turn produces their identities. The performative aspect of masochism depends on the locality of perception between performers. Beyond the broader notion of context, whereby certain acts take on meaning because of their location, perception, which operates on a more intimate level between performers, is significant because it creates the identities of the performers, even as they create the performance. In the ambiguous terrain between reality and fantasy, the self is figured as a potential, not an identity because identity relies on interaction from others (the audience and the other performers) in the performative exchange. Both the dominant and submissive anticipate the reaction and action of the other, altering their performances and identities accordingly. This suggests that identities are contingent and fluid, relying on difference and requiring intersubjectivity for their creation and manipulation. Through this, we gain an understanding of becoming as a continuous social process that is equally dependent on relations with others and regulatory norms.
Yet this process of becoming is also embodied, which points to another key difference between Deleuze’s masochist and Butler’s subject. Utilizing the space constituted by the ambiguity of the performance of masochism, the flesh becomes a place of respite, the impossible location of non-identity. It is part of the masochist’s coherence as well as the site of its dissolution. The flesh in masochism is everything; it grounds the process of becoming and allows the masochist to relinquish identity, but remain in existence. Masochism shows the flesh to be a valuable commodity in and of itself, not something excluded by discourse, but a necessary active part of subjectivity.
… Masochism illustrates another type of marriage between self, flesh, and desire; the masochist requires both flesh and desire to attempt a loss/ refinding of self. This embodied eroticism locates desire and flesh at central nodes in the practice of masochism and the agency of the masochist.
The continuities and differences between Deleuze and Butler’s portraits of subordination provide fertile ground for expanding notions of queer subjectivity. While Deleuze’s masochist/dominant complex is but one type of queer subject, linking it with Butler opens other possibilities for understanding subjectivity. Building on Deleuze’s vision of masochism, these new subjects are grounded in terms of desire, flesh and context, but they are not limited to the specific practice of masochism. Deleuze’s theory of masochism offers a way to read Butler’s theory of subjectivity as enabling empowered, embodied, erotic, and fluid subjects. These emerging social subjects, in turn, lay the groundwork for both a queer way of relating and potentially a queer ethics.