Black Woman, Fetishist, and Slave: Racial Politics, Whiteness, and Colonial Memory in BDSM

Abstract

This article analyzes consensual slavery relationships and race play practices within BDSM, based on an ethnographic study conducted among the fetish community of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. Taking as a case study a controversy triggered by the public circulation of images and accounts involving an interracial Master/slave couple, I examine the ways in which race occupies a central place in BDSM practices and how these practices unsettle the question of colonial memory as a traumatic legacy. I argue that, although race play is often regarded as the most evident expression of the articulation between race, sexuality, and colonial memory, this centrality ultimately obscures the ways in which whiteness also structures the BDSM field. Drawing on scholarship on BDSM, Black feminisms, and whiteness, I contend that the controversies analyzed reveal an unequal economy of racial visibility in which race is readily identified in interracial scenes and race play practices, while certain aesthetics and scenes associated with the fetishization of whiteness tend to be perceived as neutral and unmarked, and thus are not equally recognized as race play.