Play, Pain and Religion; Creating Gestalt through Kink Encounter; Robertson

Alison Robertson [+–]

The Open University

Alison Robertson is a research associate with at the Open University. She is interested in the places where the lines commonly drawn between categories (such as ‘religious’ and ‘non-religious’) become blurred or ambiguous and in how such blurring affects the ways people look at the world. Her research interests, other than kink, include lived and personal religion, edgework, and self-inflicted or positive experiences of pain.

Play, Pain and Religion is the first consideration of the practices associated with BDSM (bondage, domination, sadism and masochism) in the context of religious studies scholarship. The focus is an exploration of BDSM experience as it emerges from the complex interactions of kink activities and relationship.

Experiences categorised by BDSM practitioners as ‘religious’ and ‘spiritual’ are commonly described in the same terms, and given the same value, as descriptions of experiences which are not so categorised. Play, Pain and Religion examines practitioner accounts of BDSM experience alongside those practitioners’ personal identification with these terms. This book argues that the significance of a given experience is not located solely within any intrinsic quality ascribed to it but in subsequent constructions around the nature and meaning of the event. It examines some such constructions, moving away from absolute definitions of religion or religions to consider the religious as an active process of meaning-, world- and story-making. By using this ‘religioning’ framework, this book examines ways in which BDSM can potentially be used in such processes.

Play, Pain and Religion is a valuable resource for scholars of religion and of kink, for people interested in the complexities of ascribing meaning and value to human behaviour, and for kinksters interested in their own kink and why it is they do what they do.

Prelims

List of Figures viii

Chapter 1

Introduction: Processes of Religioning [+–] 1-13

Establishes a picture of what BDSM is and involves and places BDSM within the category of the religious. Summarizes the chapters of the book.

Chapter 2

Setting the Scene [+–] 14-31

Chapter 2 outlines the choice and usage of the term BDSM and its relationship to its wider context of culture, law and sex. It clarifies what constitutes the category of behaviours with which the remainder of the book is concerned and establishes some of the contextual frames within which my research participants both practice and understand their practice.

Chapter 3

What it is that we do: Experiential Accounts of Play [+–] 32-39

Chapter 3 offers, without comment, descriptions of BDSM experience. This is included to assist in addressing the question of how exactly play might progress and what happens within play-spaces, and to avoid the sense of ‘yes, but what do they actually do?’ which can be left by definitions alone.

Chapter 4

The Play Experience (1): Making Play-Spaces [+–] 40-59

Chapter 4 introduces the concept of play as the core activity of BDSM; it is not a single thing but a process of combining many different activities into unique scenes. Beginning with participants’ understandings of the imperfect term ‘play’, and the ideas that are communicated by it, the chapter outlines the intimate, relational and dynamic processes of play. Through the actions of the players a cycle of sensation and response is created, carving out a space that feels qualitatively different from ‘ordinary’ or ‘everyday’ spaces and is therefore experienced as distinct. The fact that the lifestyle couples among my research participants also engage in play and experience it in this qualitatively different way is significant and helps shape an understanding of play as ‘an Experience’ – a set of events, sensations etc. around which a line can be drawn to mark them off from the flow of everyday experiences. Play can be seen as performing aspects of the self and relationship explicitly that might at other times be suppressed, hidden or simply less overt.

Chapter 5

The Play Experience (2): Inside Play-Spaces [+–] 60-79

Chapter 5 (the second play chapter) explores the nature and qualities of experiences which take place inside the spaces shaped by play. The limited literature which exists on ‘spiritual BDSM’ locates the spiritual possibilities of kink wholly within its potential to create experiences of transcendence. I certainly agree that BDSM has this potential, but my research suggests that many qualities scholars have ascribed to exceptional play events are common to any successful play, and transcendence is only one of a range of possible peaks of experience. Other important elements within the experience of play-spaces include the forging and expression of relationship and intimacy and a sense of deep connection between play partners. These, together with the sense of being immersed in another world, contribute to the sense of BDSM as gestalt.

Chapter 6

Subcultural Identity: Kink in Context and in Clothes [+–] 80-105

Chapter 6 considers what constitutes a subculture and the utility of this concept in relation to the BDSM community. Kink, and all of the different strands which feed into a sense of it as gestalt, takes place within the wider context of society. That contemporary society is hypermodern, continuing the trends of modernity to what might once have been considered extremes. This chapter explores kink in this context, in relation to issues of subculture, identity, style and authenticity.

Chapter 7

Kinky Bodies [+–] 106-129

Chapter 7 considers the nature of the body and its involvement in the creation of experience. Bodies are presented as multi-sensory, with senses braided together into a synaesthetic dynamic whole rather than separate from one another. Movement/animation as the foundation of bodily experience is explored in the context of BDSM and the complexities of kink experience are drawn out. The idea of the medium as the message (McLuhan, 1964; Seligman et al., 2008) – that the meaning, purpose or point of BDSM play is to play – is introduced here, to indicate the importance of bodies in their full multi-sensory kinetic reality as part of the gestalt of BDSM.

Chapter 8

Exploring the Edge [+–] 130-151

Chapter 8 considers the role of edges and limits within BDSM play, suggesting that BDSM allows the exploration of many different kinds of edges and boundaries, including the transgression of social norms. This kind of exploration is part of what contributes to perceptions of BDSM as powerful and transformative when play is placed within its wider cultural context.

Chapter 9

Kink Ritualizing [+–] 152-178

Chapter 9 draws together the idea of the medium as the message with boundary exploration and the expression of relationship. It presents BDSM as a process of ritualising, that is a deliberate engaging in practices which contribute to processes of religioning. The ways in which a sense of gestalt is expressed all speak to this – the medium is the message; the point of play is to play. To experience the self as whole and embodied, to explore and transgress boundaries, to forge relationships and experiment with trust and reliance on another as a means of understanding the self and world in which one finds that self are elements which contribute to a sense of kink as gestalt in the same way a successful ritual becomes gestalt. It is other than the simple sum of its parts. It is not concerned with the symbolic or the abstract; rather the point of doing it is to do it, to have done it to know that one has done it, and to retain the potential to do it again.

Chapter 10

Conclusion: Gestalt Kink, Gestalt Religion [+–] 179-186

Chapter 10 presents the idea of BDSM as a gestalt, involved in a lived process of religioning. It also suggests ways gestalt might contribute further to the study of religion and religious practice.

Appendix A

A Kink Glossary 187-189

Appendix B

Research Participants 190-196

End Matter

References 197-204

Index 205-213

Reviews

Broadens the approach to the study of BDSM by emphasizing the need to encounter BDSM on its own terms and beyond its associations in popular imagination, namely, that its primary function is sexual gratification. ... Engaging and accessible, and it will especially interest non-specialists given its breadth of subject matter.
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Play, Pain and Religion

Creating Gestalt through Kink Encounter

Alison Robertson [+–]

The Open University

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