This interdisciplinary event brings together clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Avgi Saketopoulou, artist and researcher Andrea Rimon, and pro-domme Sophia Rose for a lecture and discussion exploring the concept of traumatophilia.
Traumatophilia refers to the fact that we are drawn to touching our wounds, even to reopen them. Individuals might seek out to engage with past trauma not out of some pathological impulse but to brush up against it, making contact with what is opaque and unrepresentable in the self. This may, in turn, open pathways for psychic and emotional transformation. Building on ideas from Saketopoulou’s book Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia, the discussion highlights how traumatophilia, in conjunction with her concept of limit consent, offers new ways to understand kink as a practice for working with traumatic material.
Unlike affirmative consent, which Saketopoulou argues overpromises, limit consent is not something we “exercise” or something that is “done” to us: it has more to do, rather, with surrendering to an other or, more precisely, with surrendering to the opacity in the other and to the opacity in ourselves. Limit consent, in other words, dares into those gray areas where desire, risk, and uncertainty intermingle. This concept challenges rigid binaries of consent and non-consent, proposing a nuanced framework for exploring the complexities of relational and erotic experiences.
The discussion also introduces Saketopoulou’s idea of exigent sadism, a form of sadism that emerges not as careless cruelty but of a queer form of cruelty that also involves the sadist’s own vulnerability as well as a measure of support for the other. Exigent sadism is an ethical variant that stages the necessary and imperative parameters for the other to endure something difficult. This is an urgent, relational call to engage with the other through intense and sometimes painful experiences. Together, these concepts create a fertile theoretical foundation for rethinking consent, risk, and the generative possibilities of engaging with trauma through embodied, relational, and creative practices.
Event Details
Date & Time: March 2nd, 2025, 5.45 pm – 7.45 pm CET (Berlin time)
Format: lecture/discussion (virtual)
Audience: LGBTQIA+ & FRIENDS
Language: English
Minimum knowledge level: –
What to bring: pen & paper
Class recording: yes, the recording will be available for 30 days to the conference participants.
Accessibility Note
The workshop and discussion are held in spoken English with automated captions in English which are provided by Zoom. Communication within the class can be had via chat but also people can come on mic and speak. If you participate in this workshop and need more assistance, i.e. someone reading out the chat, etc, please message us at info@karada-house.de beforehand.
What else to know
After your successful ticket purchase, you will be sent an email with the Zoom login data for this event.
If you cannot afford this event, please check the ticket option “solidarity” for reduced ticket prices. If that is still too much or they are out of stock, feel free to send us a message via info@karada-house.de
