Book description
Representations of consensual sadomasochism range from the dark,
seedy undergrounds of crime thrillers to the fetishized pornographic
images of sitcoms and erotica. In this pathbreaking book, ethnographer
Staci Newmahr delves into the social space of a public, pansexual SM
community to understand sadomasochism from the inside out. Based on
four years of in-depth and immersive participant observation, she
juxtaposes her experiences in the field with the life stories of
community members, providing a richly detailed portrait of SM as a
social space in which experiences of "violence" intersect
with experiences of the erotic. She shows that SM is a recreational
and deeply gendered risk-taking endeavor, through which participants
negotiate boundaries between chaos and order. Playing on the Edge
challenges our assumptions about sadomasochism, sexuality, eroticism,
and emotional experience, exploring what we mean by intimacy, and how,
exactly, we achieve it.
"Newmahr's decisions to use passages of creative
representation to convey 'felt' experiences, as well as to use her own
body as an instrument of intellectual inquiry to such an extent, bring
a sense of depth and presence to the book that is often sorely lacking
in such work." -Katherine Frank, author of G-Strings and
Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars and Male Desire
Staci Newmahr is an ethnographer. Her work plays with
intersections of risk, eroticism, and gender. She is currently
Assistant Professor of Sociology at Buffalo State College.
