ABSTRACT
Finding appropriate SM attire proved an arduous task. In the fetish boutiques of the Marais, chic latex suits cost at least €300 ($400), far more than author was able or willing to spend. A Second-hand clothing store boasted a large collection of leather garments: these he could afford, but not fit into: the available sizes were either too small or too large. The clothes he wear are part of the dialogic production of his narrative. Ethnographic research requires engagement in mutual acts of what he will term "ethnographic exposure," the fraught conditions of bodily and personal co-presence on which anthropological illumination is predicated. The complexities of ethnographic experience, however, challenge this straightforward reading; BDSM practices disrupt these significations in ways central to their experiential efficacy. The author highlights how semiotic and phenomenological dimensions are mutually constitutive through a discussion of several ethnographic encounters in which issues of clothing—theirs and mine—figure prominently.
