Zovem se mazohizam: Vanda i Leopold fon Zaher-Mazoh - ime, žena, žanr
My Name is Masochism: Wanda and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch - Name, Woman, Genre

Summary/Abstract: This paper deals with the autobiography of Wanda von Sacher-Masoch, notorious masochistic heroine, who spent ten years in a marriage with Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the “father of literary masochism”. The necessary context for this research is provided by Krat -Ebing’s medico-forensic study Psychopathia sexualis, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s masochistic novel Venus in Furs, Deleuze’s “gynocentric” (re)vision of masochism and Foucault’s analyses of the discursive history of sexuality in western “confessing” societies. h e specii c issues of proper name, truth, privacy and identity involved, in the case of Wanda von Sacher-Masoch’s Confessions are related to the characteristic features of the specii cally women’s experience of writing. Thus, I analyse her “confessional pseudonym” as a double i ction that suggests the ambivalence of establishing female identity at the crossroads of literary i ction and i ction of the social institution of marriage. (Inter)textual strategies of Wanda von Sacher-Masoch’s autobiography are organized as a female counterpoint to Sacher-Masoch’s masochistic lifestyle and narrative, but also as a counterpoint to her own previous “masochistic authorship” under the pseudonym of the heroine of Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs - Wanda von Dunajew. In her late autobiographical Confessions Wanda von Sacher-Masoch tells the masochistic story not as a i ction but as a pressure of i ction on the real life and demystifies male masochistic fantasy as oppressive and restrictive. Different status and value of authorship and statements in the autobiography as a documentary genre allows Wanda von Sacher-Masoch to strengthen privacy and daily life as political spheres, which sets her text in a dynamic relationship with the social environment and feminist movement of the time. Yet, for the same reasons her anti-masochistic autobiographical work may be perceived as still masochistic, based on the conservative, truth-seeking, mimetic genre that conforms to the relational dei nition of woman’s identity.

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