Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism

by Amber Jamilla Musser

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.

Genres: Theory, Sexuality, Race, Nonfiction, Gender, LGBT, Sociology

272 pages, Paperback

First published September 5, 2014

About the author

Amber Jamilla Musser is Associate Professor of American Studies at George Washington University and the author of Sensual Excess (2018).

Reviews

[Ayanna Dozier · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amber Musser’s Sensational Flesh is a fascinating study on masochism, race, and gender however, Musser’s methodology troubles and hinders her interpretations and findings. Musser’s book analyzes how masochism is a practice that elucidates how bodies respond and are treated by different sectors of power, moreover, sensation (as an affect---although her use of affect is a bit unclear) reveals the embodied perspective of the power relations of colonialism, patriarchy, and other tools of domination. Firstly, her analysis on masochism and race is almost tangential to her argument until her concluding chapter, “Making Flesh Matter.” There, the reader is finally given the pieces as to how we might interpret the use and desire of masochism in relationship to the Black woman, however, I would argue that the preceding chapters do very little in building into this analysis. Although readings of Audre Lorde’s work, specifically “Use of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” and The Cancer Journals appear in two separate chapters, Musser forgoes an interpretation of how Lorde’s work relates to the representation and use of masochism in Black communities and Black women in favor for a detailed study on white-coded artists and communities. I find this problematic as the conclusion and analysis on Black women fits too many concepts within a concluding chapter without extensive setup, especially as the work of a Black womynist was used earlier on outside of a major analysis on Black women. Secondly, Musser does not provide a satisfactory analysis on masochism, that with specific regard to its communal and collective attributes. While she does reject the “individuated---isolated” masochist agent interpretation, Musser does little to provide information on the actual communal aspects of masochism. I believe this is due to the lack of historical set up on masochism, which I think was not only sorely needed but could have greatly benefitted her analysis. Additionally, Musser says nothing of dungeons, group parties, gatherings, and public displays of masochism, which is a severe oversight in my opinion.

Despite these omissions, Musser’s book is still a fascinating read. Additionally, it is a premiere academic study on masochism and race. Moreover, Musser’s is a gifted close-reader and many of chapters provide great close reads on one or two key authors for her area of study. Her close read of chapter five, “The Lived Experience of the Black Man” in Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon is especially noteworthy as it enables her to establish a useful concept like “becoming-Black” (89). It is also worth noting that although Musser works extensively through Fanon for her analysis on masochism she omits the key paragraph of sadomasochism found in chapter six of BSWM (between white male colonists and Black subjects) for reasons unknown.

[Keliani · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know we must remind ourselves every now and then not to put authors on pedestals and truly humanize them, beyond their contributions and attitudes. But I must say after diving on this book I have Amber Jamilla Musser on a small one with high regard solely for bringing this tableaux of masochism(s). To me, Sensational Flesh is now a seminal/reference text, I happened to stumble upon it while digging through kink theory and had a very different idea of what topics it included but ended pleasantly surprised.

The book begins and ends with an idea we could call radical, maybe even controversial: from Foucault's view on using sadomasochism as a means of building community, building new types of relationships and dynamics through pleasure and the exploration of the limits of the body, in pain and power (basically: evolve) - to Musser's view of constructing black women as subjects using masochism and flesh as the guiding concepts. She does this by taking the plasticity of the term masochism from a variety of scenarios: masochism as clinically defined by Krafft-Ebing and Freud (erotogenic, biological), (feminine) masochism or reversed roles investigated through Story of O and Venus in Furs, masochism and the colonized mind from Frantz Fanon (moral, white guilt, no such thing as a masochist black man!) and (undesired? non controllable) masochism through the lens of illness with Gilles Deleuze, Audre Lorde's The Cancer Journals and Bob Flanagan's performances. Flesh being the vehicle.

Lastly she takes art, from Glenn Ligon's I Feel Most Colored -that is part of the book cover- to Kara Walker's End of Uncle Tom to solidify the shift from objecthood and the specters from slavery, and bring new possibilities with pain. A couple quotes that struck with me through this last part and I think clearly express the end position are: "Would such a pleasure [in abjection] be a form of the (black) power that we are investigating -which is to say, would such pleasure be a way to resist, or work with or work through, the challenges presented by a process of racialization through sexual degradation?" (Musser, 2014, p. 165) and, when talking about The Attendant: "In this way S&M functions as a therapeutic repetition of the past in order to open possibilities in the present." (Musser, 2014, p. 168). Some of the critiques of this same art as rehashing scenes from the trasatlantic slave trade for spectacle are a really good analogy to seeing the thesis of the book as radical/controversial. The idea that we could work through pain and masochism to liberate ourselves instead of antagonizing them is a huge thing and completely novel to me that this could be theorized in such a way so for that this book holds a special place in my studies.

[Declan · Rating 4 out of 5]

(read for class)

[aerialxav · Rating 3 out of 5]

Introduction. Not a fan.

[Madeleine · Rating 5 out of 5]

musser's text is really singular in its work right now--i have not found a more thoughtful reflection on the intersections of race, gender and sado/masochism after looking for months. her theories on sensation and power as a way of knowing identity are actually pretty singular in her field and reading folks like bersani and biman basu i still have yet to find someone who speaks of sensation and power in a way that brings in/contributes to discussions in contemporary critical race/queer theory on affect, kinship, and the generative possibilities of reckoning with pain and power.

[Gail Hamner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sophisticated analyses using "empathetic reading" (from G. Deleuze) to suss out the sensational and affective dimensions of sadism and masochism as these sexual practices inform and transform gendered, racial, and colonial wounds.

[Jennifer Doyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really, really loved this book. Super helpful, esp. in prepping to teach challenging material centered in race-play, s/m, submission etc. Frank, smart, packed with insight.

[Lukas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so INTERESTING and fascinating to read. It is worth returning to the future. I am so into the research Musser is doing as an academic, and this book - her first - really inspires me to look into this vein of sexuality, race, and other concerns. Expect me to read her work on brown jouissance.

[Laurie Marhoefer · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing and brilliant book.