The Commerce of Peoples Sadomasochism and African American Literature

Representations and coverage of sadomasochism (S & M) have become quite common nowadays, whether we see them in the fashion industry, commercials, the news, television, film, the Internet, and so on. But in the population at large, and in the academic community as well, it is still persistently stigmatized. This marginalization, along with its ambivalently persecuted status, is a result, significantly, of a nineteenth-century legacy. This legacy begins with Richard von Krafft-Ebing's designation of sadomasochism, along with gay and lesbian desire, as a perversion, and continues in current popular and expert (mis)understandings.

Biman Basu is associate professor in the Department of English at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York. His research and teaching interests include African American literature, globalization, and postcolonial and diasporic studies. He has published in several journals, and he directly addresses sadomasochism in a course he teaches, "Power, Desire, Literature." More generally, he is interested in what he sees, as an emergence of different continental and national styles of sadomasochism and their social and political implications.