Healing narratives and BDSM discourses

When I attended the 2019 Kink conference in Prague (see my take on this conference in this post) I first presented some ideas on the “healing narratives” in BDSM discourse. I had read Barker, Gupta and Iantaffi’s chapter in the edited volume Safe, Sane and Consensual (a book that is a must-read for any kink researcher, and is listed on my “resources for Kink researchers” page) and was fascinated by a problem they posed: the relationship between the pathological discourses on BDSM and the healing narratives. They stated that when talking about BDSM as healing, one runs the risk of suggesting that all people who engage in BDSM are in need of healing. Which would reinforce the pathological associations with these practices, associations that we have just started to move beyond.

And this problem got stuck in my head. And stayed there, in the back, simmering and developing… Until I realized that what is called “healing” in healing narratives, usually looks very different from what is considered “healing” in the pathological discourse. In the second sense, we’re talking about curing (mental) illness, whereas “healing” in BDSM can relate to a wide range of issues, such as trust, self-esteem and emotional maturity.

What now?

So, a little over a year ago, I talked about healing in Prague and used a film and a tv show to explore my ideas about the different meaning of the concept in the context of BDSM narratives. And I used Foucault’s book The Birth of the Clinic to explain how these two different ways of thinking about Healing developed in our society and are influenced by changes in the medical discourse.

For the past year, I have continued tweaking and developing these ideas, and today, finally, I sent the chapter to the editors of the book that this paper will be a chapter in. This volume, with chapters from authors who were at this first interdisciplinary Kink conference, will be published in the Emerald Interdisciplinary Connexions series in 2021. And I couldn’t be more excited!

With this project, as well as any other project I’m working on, I can always use your feedback. So if you’d like to read it and give me some pointers, just send me a message. As a thank you, I will acknowledge you personally on my website, with a link to your personal website attached. And if you want more updates on my projects, just look in the sidebar and subscribe to the newsletter!