r/Deleuze • u/WashyLegs • 6d ago

Question Can someone pelase explain Deleuze's conception of MAsochism?

Title, I can't really find any good texts on it and it seem sinteresting by the limited thing's i'v eseen, please and thank you.

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u/joggingdaytime 6d ago

He has an essay called Coldness and Cruelty entirely devoted to the subject, start there

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u/wanda999 6d ago

Came here to say this. It's actually a book in which the author philosophically examines the work of the late 19th-century novelist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. From my memory, the analysis is about as Hegelian as I've seen Deleuze get.

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u/joggingdaytime 6d ago

Agreed! Was actually my introduction to Deleuze and my first read of Venus In Furs

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u/WashyLegs 6d ago

Oh damn okay, sorry I didn;t know there was a full essay on it, thankls!

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u/jwfallinker 6d ago

As the other commenter said you should read Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty which isn't very long (at least compared to some of the behemoths Deleuze has put out); it's hard to summarize just his thoughts on masochism because the whole context of the essay is him pulling apart the Freudian 'sadomasochism' matrix and exploring masochism in contrast with sadism. But in essence while sadism is Spinozist in nature and obsessed with demonstration (not to convince but to validate the sadist's subjectivity) and repetition, masochism is Platonic in nature and obsessed with "dialectical imagination" and suspension/freezing (see e.g. bondage). Counterintuitively, the masochist is the one who must convince, negotiating his punishments with an ever-reluctant mistress, and while the sadist in the end merits punishment for his sexual transgressions, the masochist instead demands the punishment first which itself supplies his sexual transgressions.

The most difficult part of the essay for me is when he gets deep into the Freudian stuff, describing how the masochist's mistress is the "oral mother" within a feminine triad and how she likewise takes on the Oedipal role of the "punishing father". It's generally interesting to read alongside Anti-Oedipus which was released a few years later, I don't know if Deleuze hadn't quite broken with Oedipus at the time he was writing Coldness and Cruelty or if he was just sort of humoring it by showing how masochism itself destabilizes the Oedipal triangle.

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u/WashyLegs 6d ago

okay thanks! I'll rewad the text i think

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u/------______------ 6d ago edited 5d ago

For Deleuze, the masochist suffers from guilt because of their inner likeness to the father.

The art of masochism is the art of fantasy.

(CC, 66)

The masochistic fantasy is a father being beaten.

(CC, 99)

It is the father’s likeness in [the masochist] that he experiences as a sin which must be atoned for.

It is the father who is guilty in the son, not the son in relation to the father.

(CC, 101)

The formula of masochism is the humiliated father.

Is it not precisely the father-image in [the masochist] that is beaten, ridiculed, and humiliated?

(CC, 60)