Reading, Writing, and the Whip
Reading masochism as a literary phenomenon means exploring several layers of relationships—of literature and performance, of textuality and subjectivity—and the relationships among various practices of reading. I start with Krafft-Ebing and his practices of reading, examine the relationship between...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2008
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| In: | Year: 2008 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Summary: | Reading masochism as a literary phenomenon means exploring several layers of relationships—of literature and performance, of textuality and subjectivity—and the relationships among various practices of reading. I start with Krafft-Ebing and his practices of reading, examine the relationship between literature and practice, and end with an exploration of diagnosis and writing. Rousseau's Confessions exemplifies these rich layers, as a text with a life and readership of its own and as writing exercise, and exemplifies what Michel Foucault termed a technology of the self. The link I am forging between Krafft-Ebing and Foucault's technologies of the self offers a reevaluation of Krafft-Ebing and pre-psychoanalytic studies of sexuality. History has not been kind to Psychopathia Sexualis. Historians of psychiatry describe this compendium of sexual perversity as a footnote in Krafft-Ebing's otherwise illustrious career as a leading Austrian psychiatrist.. |
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