A few words of wisdom from Artemidorus, a 2nd century diviner...

On a woman's submissiveness: "A man having sex according to Aphrodite's norms completely controls the body of his compliant and willing sexual partner." (Artem. 1.79)

On a woman's enjoyment of the sexual act: "To have intercourse with a willing and submissive woman - one not reluctant regarding sex - is a good thing for a man." (Artem. 1.78)

I'm fascinated by Foucault's analysis of the Panopticon and its relationship to D/s. His idea that the effects of coercive power are limited and that total control - turning a subject into an object, creating a docile body - comes from making a person subtly internalize his/her own subjection is insightful. I strive to create situations where a submissive is aware of my surveillance of her behavior and that transgression will result in corrective action. Eventually, the omniscience of the observation makes her limit her own actions in response...

I've been thinking about Simon Weil's elegant analysis of the central theme of the Iliad in L'Iliade ou le Poème de la Force:

"The true hero, the true subject, the center of the Iliad, is force. Force as man's instrument, force as man's master, force before which human flesh shrinks back. The human soul, in this poem, is shown always in its relation to force: swept away, blinded by the force it thinks it can direct, bent under the pressure of the force to which it is subjected. Those who have dreamed that force, thanks to progress, belongs to the past, have seen the poem as a historic document. Those who can see clearly that force, today as in the past, is at the center of all human history, find in the Iliad its most beautiful, its more pure mirror."

Weil defined force as "what makes the person subjected to it into a thing."