‘Sono masochista?’: Patrizia Valduga’s Lezione d’amore and the Poetics of Masochism

ABSTRACT In Lezione d'amore (2004), Patrizia Valduga voices a woman, who suggests she is a masochist, and her male partner as they progress through their sexual encounters. This essay makes three claims: first, reading the collection alongside the work of Jack Halberstam and Kaja Silverman, I argue that Lezione d'amore instrumentalises the voice of the male partner/‘torturer' in telling the masochist's story. Secondly, the collection exposes the power of clichés surrounding masochism, challenging Deleuze's literary aesthetics of sadism and masochism through form and language. Thirdly, Valduga implicitly parallels the masochistic speaker – who paradoxically cedes power in order to gain it – with the position of the poet herself, who claims to speak from a position of lesser authority, only then to insert herself amongst the greats of the Western canon. Lezione d’amore represents a woman subject who submits to the cultural and physical force of masochistic play – and invites us to watch.