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Playing on the Edge
Sadomasochism, Risk, and Intimacy
Staci Newmahr (Author)
9780253222855
Paperback / softback, published 14 February 2011
244 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.363 kg
Playing on the Edge. . . is an exciting sociological contribution to academic explorations of SM, providing an empirically rich window into a rarely seen SM community. Staci Newmahr's exploration of the public SM scene is interesting, thoughtprovoking, and in some cases, challenging. Her involvement in the field and her willingness to share at least the surface details of her experience are extraordinary. Moreover, her commitment to understanding the community of public SM players with rigor, intellectual honesty, and sensitivity is the hallmark of a great ethnography. Playing on the Edge is a well written, well supported, clear, easily accessed, and comprehendible yet theoretically rich delineation of a (supposedly deviant) community. In simple terms, this is a very good book and a first-class example of what ethnographic research can and should look like. [A] ground-breaking book . . . . captivating and ethnographically dense.
Representations of consensual sadomasochism range from the dark, seedy undergrounds of crime thrillers to the fetishized pornographic images of sitcoms and erotica. In this pathbreaking book, ethnographer Staci Newmahr delves into the social space of a public, pansexual SM community to understand sadomasochism from the inside out. Based on four years of in-depth and immersive participant observation, she juxtaposes her experiences in the field with the life stories of community members, providing a richly detailed portrait of SM as a social space in which experiences of "violence" intersect with experiences of the erotic. She shows that SM is a recreational and deeply gendered risk-taking endeavor, through which participants negotiate boundaries between chaos and order. Playing on the Edge challenges our assumptions about sadomasochism, sexuality, eroticism, and emotional experience, exploring what we mean by intimacy, and how, exactly, we achieve it.
Contents Introduction Part 1: People Part 2: Play Part 3: Edges Concluding Notes: Erotic Subjectivity and the Construction of the Field
Acknowledgments
1. Defiance: Bodies, Minds, and Marginality
2. Geeks and Freaks: Marginal Identity and Community
3. Tipping the Scales: Striving for Imbalance
4. Fringe Benefits: The Rewards of SM Play
5. Badasses, Servants, and Martyrs: Gender Performances
6. Reconcilable Differences: Pain, Eroticism, and Violence
7. Collaborating the Edge: Feminism and Edgework
8. "What It Is That We Do": Intimate Edgework
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index