PART III — Chapter 3: The Re-Cognition of Consensuality

The uprooting Weil experienced in factory work introduced a shift in her conception of freedom: as she began to see the human condition as not just one of inexorable struggle, but of slavery, her notion of freedom shifted from a negative freedom from constraints to a positive freedom to obey. She referred to the latter, a particular kind of relational freedom, as “consent”.

“Simone Weil”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

This chapter outlines the second, positive step in our experiment. What is opposed to kyriarchy, which is dominance over the unwilling, is consensuality. We must seek our political, ethical, and spiritual commitments through consensus, through horizontalism, through immanent and democratic coming-together. To re-cognize this state of being — which is a becoming-common — is to experiment in a world which has only existed in blips across Earth’s history. Special attention will be paid to BDSM as an experimental practice of transforming dominance and submission into an ethical, consensual sphere. We must make a practice of harnessing our destructive desires, imbued in us from our own oppression, into something that is creative, healing, and inspiring. It is not merely enough to question Man’s hegemony; we must overcome it, and, in turn, access our highest potentials, especially in those aspects of life, such as sex, which have been belittled and made small and simultaneously exploited to the point of hyperreality. To do this means connecting the body to other bodies, of reconstructing the commons, in a manner that doesn’t shame, hurt, or abandon its participants, their bodies and their spirits.

As an alternative to modern uprootedness, Weil presents a civilization based not on force, which turns a person into a thing, but on free labor, which in its engagement with and consent to necessary forces at play in the world, including time and death, allows for direct contact with reality.

“Simone Weil”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Consenting is a manner of redirecting force, a proposition that can only be done in good faith. Consent made in bad faith is manufactured (Chomsky); it is not true consent, but rather the result of fear, terror, and unfathomable violence. To limit and put a stop to this, we must learn what consent is, we must practice it, we must realize what it means to be free. The interesting thing about consent is that it only works when all parties are operating in good faith. Consent on one end but not on the other is not consent, but rather another machination of kyriarchical power. The credit-ego consents to the state, but this consent is in bad faith as it does not include the consent of all parties involved (i.e. the victims). The credit-ego feeds off bad faith; it is his staple. To imagine a consensual world requires the de(con)struction of the kyriarchical one. In preparation for this we must practice consensuality; we must anticipate a world through which consent can be made in good faith, in which domination is only a tool of self-care rather than one of systematic oppression.

In the forthcoming sections of this chapter, I will explore “1. Consensuality as a Mantra” and “2. Communication, Safety, and Healing Trauma: BDSM as Praxis”.