Masochism

In his stunning essay Coldness and Cruelty Gilles Deleuze provides a rigorous and informed philosophical examination of the work of late nineteenth-century German novelist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Deleuze’s essay, certainly the most profound study yet produced on the relations between sadism and masochism, seeks to develop and explain Masoch’s “peculiar way of ‘desexualizing’ love while at the same time sexualizing the entire history of humanity.” He shows that masochism is something far ...