Bathetic Masochism and the Shrinking Woman

Abstract

Abstract This essay examines the privileged position given to masochism in some recent critical-theoretical work and argues that a controversy of size is often involved in recalibrations of subjectivity. The masochist is frequently described as a shrinking subject who paradoxically has the potential to function on a grand scale. I track questions of size through certain radical accounts of subjectivity, arguing that such spatial thinking has a complex relation to female subjectivity, which has a long history of being imagined (and stigmatised) as an inherent propensity to smallness and masochistic self-diminution. As a case in point, I address the recent Fifty Shades novels, which romanticise masochism as a shrinking of the female subject accompanied by an increase in her orgasmic and consumer power. The gender-specific implications of shrinking here highlight the potential bathos, or failure, of a radical re-calibration of size effected through masochism. Bathos is seen as an effect of disproportion and I explore the ways in which gendered conventions bathetically 'shrink' female subjects. Finally, I argue that a valorsiation of masochism might reflect the disappointment of certain radical aspirations and demonstrate expansive hopes of transformation shrinking into bathetic adaptation.Key words masochism, size, shrinking, bathos, Bersani, Marx, Fifty Shades of Grey, Berlant[T]he masochist is a revolutionist of self-surrender.Theodor Reik, Masochism in Modern Man (1941)[M]asochism becomes an act of resistance, inseparable from a minority sense of humor.Gilles Deleuze, On Philosophy' in Negotiations, 1972-1990 (1995)I wish to propose that, most significantly, masochism serves life ... What has been repressed from the speculative second half of Freud's text is sexuality as productive masochism. The possibility of exploiting the shattering effects of sexuality in order to maintain the tensions of an eroticized, denarrativized, and mobile consciousness has been neglected, or refused ...Leo Bersani, The Freudian Body (1986)Great claims have recently been made for the power of masochism as a productive mode of resistance. These claims seek to re-imagine masochism as the precursor to radical communal change, rather than positioning it as an individual sexual pathology, and have gained such an aspirational charge that one commentator, remarking on the upsurge in academic interest in masochism at the start of this century, describes it as the 'politically correct form of [postmodern] self-improvement'.1 In this article, I examine the privileging of masochism in some recent critical-theoretical work, and focus on the controversy of size that I believe is at stake in many explorations of radicalized masochism. The radically masochistic subject is often described as a shrinking subject who paradoxically has the potential to function on a grand scale (to produce larger effects - narrative, intersubjective or political; to operate as a model for large-scale change). Questions about the relative size of the subject have long been raised by writers who seek to explore, satirise and critique current configurations of power: these questions of size, I will argue, have a complex relation to radical theories of masochism (a simultaneous shrinking and explosion of the subject), and to female subjectivity, which has a long history of being imagined (and stigmatised) as an inherent propensity to smallness and masochistic self-diminution.An exploration of the radical potential of masochism and its complex relation to questions of size and gender seems particularly apt right now, in the midst of the popularity of the Fifty Shades of Grey series (and forthcoming film), and my approach here is partially a response to the Fifty Shades novels and their deployment of masochism as an aspirational life-style fantasy. This fantasy romanticises masochism as a shrinking of the female subject (smaller, thinner, more child-like), accompanied by an increase in her orgasmic and consumer power (more clothes, more houses, more spectacular climaxes). …