ABSTRACT
Attention to male masochism heightened at the turn of the twentieth century as it was named as both a symptom of and an explanation for a historical crisis in masculinist subjectivity and liberal politics. In this chapter I will explore the hermeneutic value of masochism as it informs the cultural logic of liberalism. I use sexual violence as a marker, or point of reference, for thinking about the contemporary condition of gendered relations of power supported by this logic. I turn to Friedrich Nietzsche for an elaboration of how masochistic desire, not named as such by Nietzsche, but certainly, I will argue, recognizable in his theory, is imbricated in masculinist, twentieth century, political subjectivity. Through this reading of Nietzsche I suggest that sexual violence can be interpreted as a reactive response to the radical decentering of the subject of power in modernity rather than a proactive behavior of an always already coherent and self-authorizing fi gure of dominance. The paradoxes of liberal, modern subjectivity should be taken into account as we struggle with ending sexual violence. Otherwise, we risk investing masculine norms with a coherence and solidity they do not possess. We will thus miss opportunities to subvert and perhaps transform those norms into something that we experience as more liveable.
