Perversion the Social Relation

The Masochist Social Link 117subject's scatological (excremental) identification, which equals adoptingthe position of the proletarian who has nothing to lose. The pure subjectemerges only through this experience of radical self-degradation,when I let/provoke the other to beat the crap out of me, emptying me ofall substantial content, of all symbolic support that could confer on mea minimum of dignity. Consequently, when Jack beats himself in frontof his boss, his message to the boss is: "I know you want to beat me; but,you see, your desire to beat me is also my desire, so, if you were to beatme, you would be fulfilling the role of the servant of my perverse masochistdesire. But you are too much of a coward to act out your desire,so I will do it for you—here you have it, what you really wanted. Whyare you so embarrassed? Are you not ready to accept it?" Crucial hereis the gap between fantasy and reality. The boss, of course, would havenever actually beaten up Jack: he was merely fantasizing about doing it,and the painful effect of Jack's self-beating hinges on the very fact thathe stages the content of the secret fantasy his boss would never be ableto actualize.Paradoxically, such a staging is the first act of liberation: by means ofit, the servant's masochistic libidinal attachment to his master is broughtto the daylight, and the servant thus acquires a minimal distance towardit. Already at a purely formal level, the fact of beating up oneself rendersclear the simple fact that the master is superfluous: "Who needs youfor terrorizing me? I can do it myself!" It is thus only through first beatingup (hitting) oneself that one becomes free: the true goal of this beatingis to beat out that which in me attaches me to the master. When,toward the end, Jack shoots at himself (surviving the shot, effectivelykilling only "Tyler in himself," his double), he thereby also liberateshimself from the dual mirror-relationship of beating: in this culminationof self-aggression, its logic cancels itself; Jack will no longer haveto beat himself—now he will be able to beat the true enemy (the system).And, incidentally, the same strategy is occasionally used in politicaldemonstrations: when a crowd is stopped by police ready to beatthem, the way to bring about a shocking reversal of the situation is forthe individuals in the crowd to start beating each other. In his essay onSacher-Masoch, 4 Gilles Deleuze elaborated in detail this aspect: far frombringing any satisfaction to the sadistic witness, the masochiste selftorturefrustrates the sadist, depriving him of his power over the mas-