Serializing Masochist Subjectivities: Mapping Intensities from Deleuze’s Masoch to Macho Sluts and Fifty Shades of Grey

In this article, I investigate the masochist practices and relations presented in the Fifty shades trilogy by E.L. James and Macho sluts by Pat Califia through the lenses of Coldness and cruelty—Deleuze’s essay on masochism—as well as the further developments of his thoughts on masochist relations as presented in the texts written with Guattari, expressly Anti-Oedipus (in terms of the development of their thought on the body without organs) and A thousand plateaus (as a further exposition on the BwO, but this time directly related to masochism). In particular, I am interested in the relationship of desire—and also sexual desire—to the capitalist machine, as well as the kinds of masochistic literatures and subsequent practices and affective registers that are produced in such a context. Finally, I begin to look at the affective structures needed by masochistic literatures, relations and practices for fomenting becomings that initiate subjectivities where each series is defined in terms of its haecceity so that subjective desire is not reduced to capitalist production.