BDSM as a Playful Learning Site for Qualitative Complexity

Abstract

Through an autoethnographic and transdisciplinary discussion of BDSM practice, the article articulates BDSM as a performative playful space with high potential for experiential learning, where conventional ways of sensing, feeling, thinking, valuing and acting, and social rules and hierarchies are rendered uncertain, negotiable and full of possibilities. BDSM can foster a sensibility to qualitative complexity through a heightened corporeal, sensual, emotional and (aesth)et(h)ic experience. It trains a potent sagacity that may be further mobilized in social learning processes, eventually helping us navigate beyond today’s unsustainable times.