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Masochistic self-shattering challenges an economy of the self mat aims at efficiency and productivity. In line with Sigmund Freund, some theoretical approaches assume a 'death drive' to explain the pleasure in self-destruction. Moreover, they highlight the difference between a destructive and a productive way of self-shattering. But how can a clear-cut line be drawn between the two? Very often, self-harming behaviour is described as destructive, whereas BDSM practice is portrayed as a positive transcendance of masochism's destructive impulses. This article discusses two fictional works, Elfriede Jelinek's novel The Piano Teacher (1983) and Steven Shainberg's film Secretary (2001). Both works address the issue of self-destruction and present shared sadomasochistic practice as an attempt to find a way out of a destructive dynamic of aggression directed towards the body and the self. However, whereas The Piano Teacher qualifies masochism as a failed attempt to recuperate female agency in a patriarchal world, Secretary portrays masochistic self-shattering within an erotic relationship as a possibility of successfully overcoming self-destruction and integrating into society, yet with a queer twist. The author discusses whether the dialectic of recognition can recuperate its critical negativity whilst foregoing the risk of self-destruction. He concludes by suggesting a diverse economy of an assemblance of shattered selves, which undoes the hegemonic pattern of the homo oeconomicus.
"The Destructive Instinct" and Masochistic Excess
No-one is expected to seek self-destruction. Because of this common assumption, Sigmund Freud held self-preservation to be a basic instinct. Yet the devastation wrought by World War I and its traumatic impacts later led Freud to change his mind. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) and later in Civilization and its Discontents (1930), he assumed the existence of a "death drive" that paradoxically tends to self-annihilation through self-conservation. Apart from other phenomena like "the ubiquity of non-erotic aggressivity and destructiveness" (Freud 1995, vol. 21, 120), Freud regarded sadism and masochism as paradigmatic manifestations of "the destructive instinct" (Freud 1995, vol. 21, 119). In particular, Freud depicts masochism as a destructive dynamic that tends towards self-destruction (ibid., 170). However, the death drive is not entirely manifested in masochism, for the death drive is then already subject to eros. As Karmen MacKendrick observes:
Here the death drive (in its pure unextrc-jected form, as the organism's drive...