Full subjugation needs performed enjoyment tinged with visible traces of real misery.

Evidence

To understand work now, consider the pornographic practice of bukkake. Here, men ejaculate in women’s faces, and the women are required to act as if they enjoy it, to lasciviously lick the semen from their lips as if it is the most delicious honey. What’s being elicited from the women is an act of simulation. The humiliation is not adequate unless they are seen to be performing an enjoyment they don’t actually feel. Paradoxically, however, the subjugation is only complete if there are some traces of resistance. A happy smile, ritualised submission; this is nothing unless signs of misery can also be detected in the eyes. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1709

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to ch 68’s kept claim that irony can function as performed disavowal, and to the affective-labour coercion theme running through the book. — connects to: Sadistic enjoyment requires victims who can really suffer yet lack full moral status — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 782; Forcing meaningless acts on a person produces existential disgust and despair.; Bourgeois postmodern despair is constitutive and casually combined with private pleasures. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 610
• SEED: Could seed an essay on ‘affective labour and the visibility requirement’ — why being seen to want to work has replaced actually working, with the bukkake comparison as the sharpened lens.

Broader Connections

• Sadistic enjoyment requires victims who can really suffer yet lack full moral status #expands (0.85) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 782
• Bourgeois postmodern despair is constitutive and casually combined with private pleasures. #expands (0.80) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 610
• Forcing meaningless acts on a person produces existential disgust and despair. #qualifies (0.75)