Amok Journal Sensurround Edition by Stuart Swezey

Since living asphyxiophiliacs seldom present themselves to the psychiatric establishment for clinical diagnosis and treatment, almost all available “scientific knowledge” of this phenomenon has been accrued by forensic experts observing death scenes that is, this category of person has been retroactively constructed as an already-silenced (self-silenced) subject. The label “asphyxiophilia” is also used in the fields of sexology and psychiatry as an umbrella term for various manifestations of voluntary oxygen deprivation in the service of erotic pleasure. These most usually involve a form of asphyxiation such as strangling, hanging, or plastic bag asphyxia. Īmongst these categories, the term “auto-erotic fatality” is a construction of forensic science used to describe an apparently accidental death resulting from dangerous self-inflicted practices designed to enhance sexual pleasure during masturbation. A person dying in unusual circumstances becomes the object of an inquiry to ascertain both cause and mode of death, whereby experts arriving at a death scene have in mind certain categories that they subsequently use to help “explain” the type of death concerned (murder, suicide or misadventure). The interface between the two, central to certain strands of continental philosophy such as the writings of Georges Bataille, is articulated practically and authoritatively by forensic science in its role of making meaning out of ambiguous scenes of solitary death. It is to psychiatric and forensic experts that society allots the task of interpreting the nature and function of some of the most intimate and complex of human experiences, among them manifestations of sexuality and conditions of death. THE ICONOGRAPHY OF AUTOEROTIC ASPHYXIATION:įROM FANTASMATIC FETISH TO FORENSIC FACT The Iconography of Autoerotic Asphyxiation Samuel Ray Jacobson | January 26, 2020

Amok Journal Sensurround Edition by Stuart Swezey