The S&M man can? Thinking about submission and the submissive soldier –A response to Jesse Paul Crane-Seeber (2016)
Prompted by Jesse Crane-Seeber’s (2016) recent intervention, ‘Sexy Warriors: the politics and pleasures of submission to the state’, this rejoinder examines the political and epistemological implications stemming from Crane-Seeber’s central arguments. Focusing on the issue of consent vis-a-vis sexual pleasure, this response argues that it is politically dangerous and epistemologically unwise to construct an analogism between the pleasure(s) of the consensual Bondage, Dominance, Sadism, and Masochism (BDSM) relation and the ‘pleasures’ of military service. It support of this argument, it will be shown that the relation of the soldier to the state is one that cannot replicate the respectful and politically egalitarian relations of the consensual BDSM relationship. Furthermore, it will also be shown that despite his well-founded attempts to identify the phenomenological pleasures associated with military service, what Crane-Seeber (2016) actually succeeds in identifying are the ‘spectacular’ pleasures which Anglo-American societies direct towards the image of the soldier and not the soldier qua experiential being. Final thoughts will also be given to how we can build upon the ideas furnished by Crane-Seeber, such that we can begin to effectively map the pleasures which do attend one’s military service.
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