Conflict of interests?

[evesdream]

This book is on my personal reading list. Has anybody else read it?

Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty & Venus in Furs
by Gilles Deleuze, Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch, Jean McNeil(translator)

Alternate title: Masochism: an interpretation of coldness and cruelty

What's intersting is that he argues that a genuine sadist and a genuine masochist are at cross-purposes.

In his stunning essay, Coldness and Cruelty, Gilles Deleuze examines the work of the late-nineteenth-century German novelist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. He shows that masochism is something far more subtle and complex than the enjoyment of pain, that masochism has nothing to do with sadism; their worlds do not communicate, just as the genius of those who created them - Masoch and Sade - lie stylistically, philosophically, and politically poles apart. Venus in Furs, the most famous of all of Masoch's novels, belongs to an unfinished cycle of works that Masoch entitled The Heritage of Cain.

 

[white_mage_goddess]

I haven't read the book, but I have heard this argument and it makes sense to me. From my understanding, the basic idea is that a GENUINE sadist is likes to give pain. If the person recieving the pain is enjoying it on some level, then a genuine sadist ceases to enjoy giving the pain, because it is no longer pain, but rather pleasurable. Its sort of paradoxical.

It sort of like that scene in "Little Shop of Horrors" where steve martin plays the sadistic dentist who gets pissed off when his new patient shows that he ENJOYS the pain that's being inflicted.

 

[Guest]

 

[evesdream]

What you said makes perfect sense WhiteMageGodess, I've never thought of it quite like that before.

"Little Shop of Horrors"... I do know of a sadist who feels assaulted abused when this happens, as if pleasure is being wrested from him against his will-which in a sense, it is...

 

[Guest]