Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Domination, mastery and control

These words, mentioned together in reference to ocularcentrism, and to an apparent audiocentrism, in the quote that centres the previous blog entry, sound odd in an M/s blog, especially a blog that seems to promote, at least for the participants mentioned, a full 24/7 power exchange. Sound odd because they are spoken of in a derogatory fashion. Sound odd because they are applied in conjunction with people who would otherwise seem to be anti-coercion, anti-domination ...
But domination and mastery, surely, are not exactly synonymous. I can dominate all I want and not gain mastery over a thing. By the same token I can have mastery over something I didn't dominate to begin with.
It's a truism in BDSM that the submissive makes the dominant, in that without the submissive behaviour dominating behaviour would look irrational and ridiculous. No doubt. What about that point where the "Dominant" asks the submissive to accept him/her as his/her "Master", for the submissive to become an all out, flat out, totalized slave?
The totalizing, that would seem to be related to the gigantic, to the massive in other spheres. If we live in an age of gigantic, totalizing machination how does this universalized fate fall down to the particulars, the individuals, to us?
To jump to it without any explanations, or justifications, we will make the assumption that the description of the wage-slave and the bourgeois, having not properly been superseded, are still applicable. That we fall into one or the other or both haphazardly without really seeing the distinction between them or the advantage one might contain. The wage-slave no longer sees the results of his labour in nature modified, he simply assists in producing a cultural product. The bourgeois doesn't see his ideas realized in material, he just contributes to the ideas that eventually end up commercialized and vulgarized to the most popular detail. Neither is really involved in struggle except that of struggle with the massive itself. A lifetime fight against being overwhelmed and dropped behind by the gigantic totalization of our society and the remnants of individuals that one finds in it.
Back to our modest little M/s trio. I have asked, and received the gift of absolute obedience, of total slavery to my person, my being, and not to anything I represent, hold, own or command. I have given the gift of total responsibility, not to ideals, or for some teleology in a future that only exists assuming history hasn't in fact stopped already, but to two people whom I have chosen to be responsible for, for the rest of my life on this planet.
This is the particular. Laws against M/s relationships can't, of course, take the particular into account. But perhaps if you know someone involved in a relationship that is set out, set apart from the massive, you might understand it.

Mitdasein

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