May 13, 2022

Body modification has been used throughout history to both facilitate a ritualistic passage into a culture’s socio-religious system and express a defiance against dominant norms. While much of contemporary mainstream body modification has become anesthetized, the affective experiences of pain, ecstasies, altered states of consciousness, and intimacies, are celebrated within BDSM and extreme body modification practices. Piercing, hook and suspension, saline infusions, scarification, corseting, stapling, subcutaneous penile pearls, and blackwork tattooing, are some tools and techniques used within BDSM contexts. In this presentation, Dr Fareed Kaviani will reveal how destructive discourses, such as pathologisation and colonialism, have shaped perceptions of body modification and its eroticisation. By drawing on sociological theory, Fareed will explore the history of body modification and sexuality and present several contemporary examples from his interviews with BDSM practitioners and participants where body modification was employed to manifest pleasurable pain.