Andrea Beckmann

Conditions of domination: reflections on harms generated by the British state education system

Education in Britain increasingly appears to serve a very narrow notion of pedagogy, partly reflecting the ‘conditions of domination’ generated by the rise of the new managerialism in the delivery of public services. In the name of economy, efficiency and effectiveness, social progress is increasingly seen to lie in achieving continual increases in ‘productivity’, realised through giving management the absolute freedom to arrange its resources in whatever way it feels appropriate. At the heart of this critical reflection on these contemporary developments lies a concern for the role of education in democratic development, as well as the various harms that are the direct result of a profoundly reductionist and dehumanising ‘education’ system. The article concludes by outlining some alternative possibilities for more humane and democratic pedagogical processes.

Alternative Readings of Consensual ‘SM’

This piece of work has demonstrated, through the deconstruction of some of the major organizing, ‘naturalized’ (thus depolitized) and ‘normalizing’ concepts of ‘truth’ about ‘body’, ‘sexuality’, ‘perversion’ and ‘pain’ that serve to stabilize the social construction of ‘Sadomasochism’, that these are reductionist concepts and do not capture the dimensions of ‘lived bodies’. As these limiting and deterministic concepts continue to be internalized by many and remain predominant within the public sphere as well as part of many expert discourses and practices (e.g. psychologists, psychiatrists, sexologists, teachers and last but not least legal professionals), they are a crucial part of contemporary ‘conditions of domination’. This is particularly obvious when the individual and social harms (facilitated and ‘legitimated’ by such normalizing ‘truth’ conceptions) that were generated by the entire Operation Spanner, its subsequent proceedings, judgments and the disappointing decision of the European Court of Human Rights, are considered. These harms stand in no comparable relationship to the ascribed harms of the consensual ‘SM’ that had to stand trial.

Deconstructing ‘Normalizing’ Concepts

This chapter attempts to describe the ‘historical field’ within which the social construction of ‘Sadomasochism’ was and remains possible and describes the major conceptual frameworks of order that underlie the emergence and enforce the permanence of the label of ‘Sadomasochism’. The different sections of this chapter introduce the reader to the theoretical, conceptual and analytical tools that are used throughout.

Challenging Claims of a Non-violent Modernity

The previous chapter, in analysing signifiers of the social constructions of ‘Sadomasochism’, demonstrated how these are intimately connected with power relationships and illustrated how public representations of ‘SM’ bodily practices contradict the ‘subjugated knowledges’ and ‘lived experiences’ of practitioners of consensual ‘SM’. These contradictions were evident in the examples presented and, in particular, in my discussion of the distinction between the practice of ‘torture’ within consensual ‘SM’ as opposed to how torture is conventionally understood and represented. In this chapter the broader social meanings of both the social censure of ‘Sadomasochism’ on an ideological-symbolical level as well as the socio-cultural meanings of the social phenomenon of consensual ‘SM’ ‘body practices’ are analysed. The chapter begins by discussing the concept of ‘civilization’, represented in its highest form by the ‘Enlightenment’ and its supplementary construction of ‘wilderness’, which serve as a point of departure for an explorative reflection on the socio-ideological operations of these constructed dualisms and their relation to the ‘bodily practices’ of consensual ‘Sadomasochism’. Inherent contradictions within these dualisms and within conventional interpretations of consensual ‘SM’ that are based on the modern ‘order of things’ (Foucault 1971) are noted and then compared to the ‘lived experiences’ of consensual ‘SM’ practitioners.

The ‘Field’: ‘Lived Experiences’ of Consensual ‘SM’ and ‘Subjugated Knowledges’

In this chapter I explore the ‘lived realities’ of consensual ‘SM’ and its ‘subjugated knowledges’. The first section presents an overview of the research methods I applied within the empirical part of the research on consensual ‘SM’. The following sections introduce the reader to the subjects of my sample and also illustrate the different social reactions towards the label of ‘Sadomasochism’ and how they impact on individual lives. Topics around which data accumulated that was collected during interviews and ‘participant observation’ provide the ‘grounded’ structure of the next sections. These are: modes of self-understanding; motivations for the engagement in consensual ‘SM’; consensual ‘SM’ on the Scene in London; the learning processes of consensual ‘SM’; and, changes within the Scene around consensual ‘SM’ in London.

Consensual ‘SM’ as a Spiritual Practice and the Experience of ‘Transcendence’

In Chapter 5 I argued that the contradictions inherent to modern dualisms are mirrored by the conventional, misleading interpretations of consensual ‘SM’. These were demonstrated to be completely detached from the ‘life-world’ of consensual ‘SM’ that relates to other, broader socio-cultural phenomena and meanings. This chapter focuses on one specific, additional potential deeper meaning that consensual ‘SM’ ‘bodily practices’ might have for some practitioners.

‘Sadomasochism’ — a Social Construction and Its Use

Chapter 3 introduced and discussed the meaning of consensual ‘SM’ ‘bodily practices’ for my interviewees and analysed the ‘subjugated knowledges’ contained within these ‘bodily practices’ and thus within the ‘life-worlds’ of consensual ‘SM’. This chapter demonstrates that representations of the label ‘Sadomasochism’ are not fixed but flexible, thus allowing for attachments with diverse signifiers. “However, temporary meanings may emerge, both contingent and partial. Sadomasochism inhabits meaning by means of incomplete and historically specific attachments with other signifiers, for example violence, martyrdom, suffering, which in turn form attachments with each other, and with other signifiers. This conceptualization of sadomasochism accords with what Derrida calls the ‘dissemination’ of the text” (Valier 1994: 1).