“I want you to hit me as hard as you can”: BDSM as Queer Sensuality and Radical Community Formation in Fight Club

Abstract

My thesis explores dynamics of queerness, alternative community formation, and radical violence within Fight Club in order to categorize the activity taking place within the Fight Club space as BDSM. Firstly, I categorize the homoerotic violence taking place within Fight Club as “queer” through its use of non-heteronormative BDSM. Then, in the following chapter, I focus on three aspects of community restructuring taking place in Fight Club. I describe the Fight Club space as one where friendships, rather than romantic relationships, emerge, where care is readily exchanged between members, and where consensual (rather than non-consensual) violence is used. These three communal elements are discussed in conjunction with BDSM theory in order to prove that the Fight Club community functions, fundamentally, as a transgressive BDSM collective whose ethos goes against patriarchal heterocapitalism. Finally, my conclusion discusses the halting of the BDSM dynamic in Fight Club through a comparison between the Fight Club space and its nefarious counterpart, the Project Mayhem space. Ultimately, my thesis aims to provide nuance on the dynamics occurring in Fight Club in order to highlight how transgressive this space truly is, as I believe critics have overlooked the highly radical potential of the activity taking place in Fight Club.