Promotional Information

In this lively ethnography, anthropologist Margo Weiss studies the pansexual BDSM community in the San Francisco Bay Area. She became active in the Society of Janus, a large organization of BDSM practitioners in the South Bay, mainly composed of white, reasonably well-off, and otherwise primarily heterosexual participants. Weiss finds that BDSM practice is not as transgressive as the participants imagine, nor is it simply reinforcing of older forms of social domination. Instead, through an analysis she calls performative materialism, she shows how fantasy play depends on pre-existing social hierarchies, even as it also participates in a commodification of desires.

Table of Contents

A Note on Terminology vii
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction. Toward a Performative Materialism 1
1. Setting the Scene: SM Communities in the San Francisco Bay Area 34
2. Becoming a Practitioner: Self-Mastery, Social Control, and the Biopolitics of SM 61
3. The Toy Bag: Exchange Economies and the Body at Play 101
4. Beyond Vanilla: Public Politics and Private Selves 143
5. Sex Play and Social Power: Reading the Effective Circuit 187
Appendix. Interviewee Vignettes 233
Notes 241
References 269
Index 291

About the Author

Margot Weiss is Assistant Professor of American Studies and Anthropology at Wesleyan University.

Reviews

"In what Weiss calls circuits, readers see the complex interactions among beliefs, experiences, fantasy, freedom (laws/rules), individualism, opportunities, and public expectations in sexual performance... The analysis of these circuits is quite fascinating and could be expanded outside the BDSM scene to explore sexual fantasy and performance in any affluent, educated, tech-savvy culture. Recommended to readers interested in human sexuality." Scott Vieira, Library Journal "I cannot emphasize enough how vital the analysis in Techniques of Pleasure is. Margot Weiss reveals the half-lie of 'safe space' in the BDSM world and, in doing so, artfully unveils the half-lies that propel ideas of 'agency' and 'choice' in neoliberal culture." Annalee Newitz, author of Pretend We're Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Popular Culture "Techniques of Pleasure is a wonderful, theoretically significant, and ethnographically rich book. Margot Weiss contextualizes the development of the Bay Area's BDSM scene, analyzing contemporary BDSM as bio-political practice. Examining the complex connections between discipline and freedom, subject formation and subjugation, power and play, Weiss extends feminist and queer theoretical debates about identity, community, sexuality, gender, race, and the nature of power. This book breaks new theoretical ground in relation not only to BDSM but also to questions of personhood, political economy, and embodiment in late capitalism." David Valentine, author of Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category "In debunking some myths that continue to surround BDSM, Weiss contributes to an honest and nuanced conversation about how power dynamics really work within a scene that plays with power for pleasure." - Lisa Downing, New Formations, 2013 "Techniques of Pleasure," Weiss' book-length investigation of San Francisco's kink community, although there are other examples, ranging from father-daughter incest to Nazi guard-prisoner scenarios. These encounters aren't described in much detail - instead, they're used as passing evidence of the depths of politically incorrect play that she observed, or heard about, during the three years spent observing this world." Tracy Clark-Flory, Salon "Margot Weiss, author of the ethnographic study, Techniques of Pleasure, visits Mr. S and many other venues of S-and-M play, unknowingly recalling the quest for pleasure offered at Mrs. Berkley's salon... her book is a useful scholarly monograph on how once perversions of the select have become indulgences of the many... Weiss's book needs to be read as a case study of this new sexual culture, an anthropologist's exploration of a distinct sub-set - the San Francisco S-and-M scene - of this revolution." David Rosen, The Brooklyn Rail