(Dis)pleasures of Pain: Deprivitizing and Coping with Chronic Pain through BDSM

Sammanfattning

This study aims to explore how the relationship to pain and the body can differ in different context, and how the relationship to pain can change depending on how you interact and engage with it. The foundation of this study is the accounts from nine semi-structured interviews with BDSM practitioners living with chronic pain, this study focuses on the internal processes of embodiment as well as how interpersonal and intersubjective processes can lay hand to create embodiment through reclaimed agency and control. Using the works of Merleau-Ponty’s and Turner’s theory on embodiment, as well as theory on the phenomenology of pain, the analysis brings to light ways in which pain can be used to help mend the fragmentation often experienced by chronically pained people. The findings also bring to light the importance of community, care and intimacy, including what obstacles might be present in to reaching it.