Interview with Cassandra Troyan

at The New Inquiry

"For the masochist the relationship to one’s desire is always negotiated through a liminal libidinal space traversing the opposing thresholds of dominance and control. It enables a framework for looking outside the conventional expectation of trauma as a context, mediator, and influence of the masochist’s ‘abberant’ behavior. One of the central hopes in KILL MANUAL is an attempt to rethink the power of the bottom, or what it means to willingly choose to enter spaces of subjugation when multiple domains of life are already operating through mechanisms of policing or force. I think the masochist can teach us about instruments of survival and building new possibilities for reciprocal desire through re-organizing spaces of intimacy, power, and control as they relate to appetites or subjectivities unfit for the habitual spaces of capitalist fantasy."