sade and the problem of closure: keeping philosophy in the bedroom

SADE AND THE PROBLEM OF CLOSURE: KEEPING PHILOSOPHY INTHE BEDROOM

On July 2,1789, Sade made a megaphone out of a piece of tin pipe and cried out to the public from the small window of his cell in the Bastille, declaring that prisoners were about to be slaughtered on the inside. His ploy very nearly worked. De Launay, the warden, was so concerned about the possibility of riot that the very next day he requested Sade’s transfer to Charenton, and the prisoner thus narrowly missed being freed by the Revo- lutionary forces that were to take the prison less than two weeks later.’ The Bastille incident was quintessential Sade: a voice of provocation sounding from the most sequestered confines offered by the powers of repression. The authorities were just beginning to learn their lesson: they could shut Sade away, but they couldn’t shut him up.

This anecdote is to some extent emblematic of the more general problem Sade posed for late eighteenth-century society in his literary production, the radicalness of which arises from his simultaneous participation in and hostility to the eighteenth century politics of enclosure and exclusion. As Michel Foucault has demonstrated, the Classical age had mastered the art of excluding from society its undesirables, be they the criminal, the deranged, or the physically or politically abnormal.2 But Sade, half grand seigneur, half Revolutionary, straddled the boundary between the social and the antisocial. His contacts and influence made total seclusion impossible. As much as the authorities, egged on by Sade’s venomous mother-in- law, tried to hermetically seal the marquis behind the walls of his cells, he always managed to make himselfheard. Sometimes this was in the form ofa more or less secret correspondence, by which (among other things) he arranged a series of escapes. Twice he eluded the death sentence. These escapades resulted in his internment in increasingly secure quarters, measures which smacked of surprising severity for someone of Sade’s modest infractions. What becomes clear is that Sade was not merely a victim of the ancien regime’s official moral code. First of all, his earliest offenses - including sodomy, blasphemy, lacing candies with Spanish fly, and adul- terous relations with his sister-in-law- were generally overlooked in Sade’s time when the perpetrator was a nobleman3 Second, Sade was imprisoned under three separate governments of very different ideological platforms: the ancien regime, the Revolutionary Convention, and the Empire. The threat Sade posed - whatever it was - seems to transcend individual ide- ologies. Indeed, insofar as ideology is always an essentially closed struc- ture, Sade’s refusal to submit to physical, legal, or literary containment would seem to threaten the notion of ideology as such.4

What emerges from this rapid overview is that Sade made a career out of upsetting the notions of closure and enclosure that were so essential to the Classical age, and this tendency marks his literary production as well. More

Neophdologus 15 (1991) 519-528

520 Scott Carpenter - &de and the Problem of Closure

than a mere reflection of this practice, his writing was constitutive of it. At times writing remained Sade’s only connection with the outside world, and while awaiting the opportunity to smuggle packages out, he had saved whole manuscripts from confiscation by hiding them in cracks in the prison walls. More than a mere symbol of his irrepressibility, Sade’s writings reenacted the problematization of closure that had rendered the author so undesirable, and this literary reenactment was to draw censure that would outlive its author: regularly banned throughout the 19th century, Sade’s works faced their last court challenge in 1957 when the publisher J-J Pauvert produced the Oeuvres comple’tes.

This problematization amounts at least to a challenging of the classical desire for totalization and wholeness, and of its concomitant policy of excluding those elements which frustrate this desire. Sade’s relationship to the Classical age is profoundly ambiguous. Both product and victim of his era, he might be said to write with both hands, demonstrating thematically a desire for closure while simultaneously resisting it. Somewhat super- ficially such a conflict might be cited in the difficulties Sade experienced in simply drawing his works to a close. The plan for Les 120 journe’es de Sod- ome was structuraily typical of the Enlightenment in that it proposed an exhaustive, encyclopediccataloguing of 600 passions, but only a quarter of these were ever brought to completion. More dramatic was Sade’s con- tinual re-opening of the novels in the Justine cycle as he expanded Les Znfor- tunes de la vertu into Justine, later enlarging it for La Nouvelle Justine, to which he appended the massive Histoire de Juliette, sa soeur.

This resistance to conclude would appear incongruous in a literary corpus that, as Barthes and others have convincingly demonstrated, thematically privileges closure. The chateau de Silling (in Les Cent vingt journkes), for example, figures as the libertine sanctuary par excellence and serves as the model for the isolated chambers of the Justine novels (DeJean, 279-90). Regulated by a strict code ofrules, impenetrable from the outside, inescapable from within, the chateau de Silling seems to represent the ideal of absolute closure. However, even within this paradigmatic fortress, the forces of confinement are not inviolate. Infractions of the rigid code are regularly noted, and at one point even an escape is contemplated.5 Further- more, although the return route is described as impracticable without the wooden bridge burnt upon arrival (I, 63) sixteen members of the troupe inexplicably make their way back to Paris (I, 449). In Justine this “leakage” is even more flagrant, for the progression of the novel relies on Justine’s repeated escapes from the supposedly secure confines of libertine society.

One witnesses, then, in Sade a conflict between a plan or theory of closure and the practical impossibility of this theory’s adequate application, and this conflict appears in the various dimensions of literary history, philosophy, textual themes, and language itself. Present throughout Sade’s work, it emerges most forcefully in a text that explicitly tries to join theory and practice, that works to introducecommentaryinto the sanctuary oflib-

Scott Carpenter - Sade and the Problem of Closure 521

ertine activity. La Philosophiedans le boudoir, written between 1782 and 1789, is a sort of

libertine complement to Rousseau’s Emile. It presents the sensual and moral re-education of the young Eugenic de Mistival who, having recently completed her convent education, has come secretly to Mme de Saint-Ange for initiation into the ways of libertinism. During the course of the seven vaguely theatrical dialogues that take place in her boudoir, Mme de Saint- Ange enlists the aid of her brother and lover, the Chevalier de Mirvel; that of a libertine maestro, Dolmance; and that of a few servants as the need arises. Eugtnie’s education will consist of a thorough indoctrination into libertine theory, punctuated by involvement in a series of increasingly scabrous acts. Inserted within the fifth dialogue is a vast political tract, or pamphlet, entitled “Francais encore un effort si vous voulez etre republicains,” which serves to summarize the teachings of Dolmance. The tale ends in paroxysm when Eugenic’s mother arrives to rescue her daughter, only to be tortured by her and subsequently infected with a deadly pox.

Meticulously constructed, the dialogues never deviate from the lessons at hand, and at the outset they seem to conform entirely to the classical aes- thetic of wholeness, even satisfying the unities of time, place, and action. Even the political pamphlet that occupies a quarter of the text corresponds precisely to Dolmanct’s libertine theories. This rigorous adherence to nar- rative unity is the first sign of Sade’s commitment to a classical mode of domination. illustrating the paradoxical nature of a libertinism that has nothing to do with freedom. In spite of accepted beliefs, it becomes clear that libertinage is neither reckless nor merely sensual: the crescendo of staged and timed orgiastic events is the result of precise organizatioi+.

The drive toward closure manifests itself here as a concern for self-sufli- ciency or independence, for the “perfection” of the libertine-in-training. Eugenic’s education can only be rounded out by an understanding of the theoretical foundations of libertine practice. Thus, as the players catch their breath after some travauxpratiques, Eugenic says,

. ..Asseyons-nous et jasons un instant; je n’en peux plus. Continue2 mon instruction, Dol- man&. et dites-moi quelque chose qui me console des excis od me voili livrke; iteignez mes remords; encouragez-moi.

MmeDESAINT-ANGE.JZelaestjuste;ilfautqu’unpeude thtorlesucc6de8lapratique; c’est le moyen de faire une kolitre parfalte. (III, 489)

Dolmance and Saint-Ange insist throughout on the importance of closure and self-containment. Thus, in the tradition ofthe libertine sanctuary, Mme de Saint-Ange’s secret boudoir is divided from the world: “on Cgo- rgerait un boeuf dans ce cabinet que ses beuglements ne seraient pas entendus” (III, 552). Indeed, the overriding concept in libertinism is, not surprisingly, that of satisfaction, both in the sense of fulfilling desire and in the corresponding tilling of gaps, of orifices. Just as Dolmance tills in the lacunae in Eugenic’s bourgeois education, so he orchestrates the scenes in which she learns to make use of every orifice and recess her body has to

522 Scott Carpenter - Sade and the Problem of Closure

offer. Dolmance and Mmede Saint-Ange go to lengths to advise her on this point:

DOLMANCE. - I1 me semble qu’il devrait entrer deux ou trois vits de plus dans le tableau que vous arrange2 madame; la femme que vous placez comme vous venez de le dire ne pour- rait-elle pas avoir un vit dans la bouche et un dans chaque main?

Mme DE SAINT-ANGE. - Elle en nourrait avoir sous les aisselles et dans les cheveux. elle devraiten avoir trente autour d’elle s’ildtait possible; il faudrait, dansces moments-la n’avoir, ne toucher, ne dtvorer que des vits autour de soi....(III, 458)’

Furthermore, dramatic development in La Philosophie dam le boudoir depends on the full sexual exploitation of a given number of participants. Once the initial triad hasaccomplishedall possible configurations, a need is createdforanewplayer. Happily supplementing thegroupis thechevalier, Saint-Ange’s brother and sometimes mate. Dolmance indicates that he arrives just in time to respond to a new demand, that of a practical demonstration:

Tiens, chevalier, nouseduquonscettejolie fille, nous lui apprenons tout ce qu’il faut que sache une demoiselle de son age, et pour la mieux instruire, nous joignons toujours un peu de prati- que a la thiorie. 11 lui faut le tableau d’un vit qui d&charge; c’est oti nous en sommes: veux-tu nous donner le modele? (III, 455).

The demonstration given, the foursome engages in some of the strenuous sexual gymnastics typical of Sade, which result in a new satisfaction, and a renewed need for expansion. For this they enlist Augustin, Mme de Saint- Ange’s provincial but well-equipped gardener. As the numbers increase, so does the level of violence: the Chevalier accepts the job of brutally raping Eugenic, which precedes her sensual beating by DolmancC and her “impal- ing” by the gigantic Augustin. In this context it seems natural that thephilo- sophical discussion should turn to the heightened pleasure of victimization, and even murder. With the current configurations exhausted, and this new desire kindled, a victim is sought. The felicitous arrival of Mme de Mis- tival, Eugenic’s mother, will provide one, and her torture satisfies this last impulse as it, too, marks the drive toward closure, bringing into action all six of the players.

Yet the increase in violence is more than just a dramatic heightening of action and obscenity, corresponding to a desire to kpater le bourgeois (although this is undoubtedly present as well). This escalation is instead a symptom of the conflict that subtends Sade’s strange utopia.

On one hand Sade imitates the gesture of exclusion effected by the dominant ideology, and he seems to strive for a closure so complete that it would lead to virtual autonomy and selfsufficiency. The closed space of Mme de Saint-Ange’s boudoir serves not only to protect, but also to conserve. In the Sadean dream of plenitude, nothing is lost, and libertine activity-in spite of what would appear to be quite exhausting antics - is not one of unchecked dkpense. Although the regular introduction ofcharacters serves as a sort of dramatic refueling, the “Sade machine” strives to function like a


perpetual motion machine. The very number of orgasms (and they are best counted by the score) attests to a conservation of libertine energy. Bodies are not mere vessels expelling their fluids, but insofar as they are generally joined, they become vases communicants: fluids pass back and forth, but are never to leave the closed system. Thus, as DolmancC instructs his pupil in the art of fellatio, he insists on the absorption of his semen: “Avale!. . . avale, Eugtnie, qu’il n’y en ait pas une goutte de perdue!” (III, 453). Dolmand himself works at this recuperation of fluids, devouring what the Chevalier has deposited into Eugenic (III, 543). In the bodily chains that Dolmance arranges, this recuperation can be instantaneous: “Ce bougre-lam’s rempli de sperme!... maisje vous l’ai bien rendu, madame!...” (III, 468). Even pleasure itself is passed back and forth: “Ne serait-il pas ntcessaire, a present, qu’EugCnie, dirigte par moi, apprit i rendre ce que vous venez de luipr&er, et qu’elle vous branlat sous mes yeux?” (III, 403).

This opposition to loss, especially when it has to do with the loss of sperm, is quite properly a resistance to dissemination in any form. That this resistance extends beyond the realm of bodily fluids and into the body of language is evidenced by the presence of the lengthy political tract, “Fran- cais, encore un effort si vous voulez etre republicains,” which is inserted in the text to serve as a consolidation of Dolmanct’s intermittent teachings; “Voild ce qui s’appelle un Ccrit t&s sage,” says Eugenic, “et tellement dans vos principes... que je serais tentee de vous en croire l’auteur” (III, 536). More important, there is a tendency in Sade to try to restrict the dissemination inherent to language itself. Barthes has discussed how Sade disdains the suggestive deferments of the “strip-tease” (Barthes, 127); indeed, his determination is to present the body stripped of all veils, in all its imme- diacy. In contrast to some of his earlier writings (see the snake in “Le Ser- pent”), La Philosophie dans le boudoir generally disdains sexual symboliza- tion and strives to narrow the gap between sign and referent. In short, in Sade, ilfaut appeler une chatte une chatte. Or better, one would avoid conventional language, with its ambiguities and deferred meanings, altogether. The ideal Sadean act takes place in silence.

The drive toward total closure requires such measures. Classical thought posited the sign as an absence, as a mark pointing to a meaning, or referent, that is always elsewhere (Les Mats et les chases, 78). Sade desires to create an enclosed, self-contained language, one that does not point “away” or “outside” of itself, and the only way to achieve this is for him to rupture the hymen that marries the signifier to a conventional signified. Dolmance’s instruction works to methodically annihilate reference and signification, convincingly demonstrating to EugCnie that words such as God, law, right, and wrong point to nothing, and have no existence except in the materiality ofthe words themselves. Similarly, the normally reliable bond between sign and referent, which would assert that words such as brother and lover are not interchangeable, is violated by the fact that the Chevalier is both of these to his sisters. Sade further devalues referents as he arranges carnal


scenes that become nearly impossible to picture:

DOLMANCE. - Attendez, que je dispose cette jouissance dune maniire un peu luxueuse. (Tout s’exkute ci mesure que Dolmance indique.) Augustin, &tends-toi sur le bord de ce lit; qu’Eugenie se couche dans tes bras; pendant que je la sodomiserai, je branlerai son clitoris avec la superbe t&te du vit d’Augustin, qui, pour menager son foutre, aura soin de ne pas d&charger; lecher chevalier, qui, saris dire un mot, se branle tout doucement en now ecoutant, voudra bien s’etendre sur les Cpaules d’Eugtnie, enexposant ses belles fesses ames baisers: je le branlerai en dessous; ce qui fait qu’ayant mon engin dans un cul, je polluerai un vit de chaque main; et vous madame, aprts avoir et6 votre mari, je veux que vous deveniez le mien; revitissez-vous du plus Cnorme de vos godemichts... arrangez-vous cela autour des reins, madame, et portez-moi mamtenant les plus terribles coups. (III. 483-4)

Finally, conventional language proves inadequate for the representation of what Sade construes as meaning itself. In the midst of one of Mme de Saint-Ange’s orgasms, the narrator interrupts her onomatopoeic groans to comment on the monotony of a language that fails to capture the jubilation of the moment: “Augustin, Dolmance’et le chevalierfont chorus; la crainte d’&re monotone nous empkhe de rendre des expressions qui, dans de tels instants, se ressemblent toutes” (III, 468). Similarly, when Dolmance leads Augustin off into the next room, the act he is to perform entirely escapes referential language - “mais, en verite, cela ne peut pas se dire” (III, 544) - and thus cannot be represented in the text.

As Dolmance dismantles the notion of linguistic reference, he privileges the materiality - one might say the corporeality - of the signifier. Indeed, characters in La Philosophie dans le boudoir only have meaning as bodies, and then only when they have been inserted into what becomes an unusual kind of “signifying chain,” whose meaning, in the form ofjouissance, is not “elsewhere,” but is immediately present in the body once the chain is complete. In this configuration, Dolmance acts as the master syntactician of Sadean language. His philosophy does not transcend the material world, but anchors meaning in the enclosed presence of the bedroom.

The problem in Sade’slibertine world, however, is that the utopian plenitude is never quite complete, is never fully realized. There remain throughout traces of a lack, of a dissatisfaction, of a gap that calls to be filled. This is not just the gap implied by Sade’s own narration, which becomes unavoidably referential as it points us to a bedroom which is not present around us. It also mars the closures within and constituting the libertine sanctuary. The perpetual motion machine requires the elimination of entropy; however, no single assemblage of bodies is capable of meeting this condition. There is always a loose “end,” a body that is disseminating pleasure without recuperating it:

Mme DE SAINT-ANGE. - Bien, mon cher Dolmanct, mais il vous manquera quelque chose.

DOLMANCE. - Un vit dans le cul? Vow avez raison, madame. Mme DE SAINT-ANGE. - Passons-nous-en pour ce matin: nous l’aurons ce soir; mon

frere viendra nous aider, et nos plaisirs seront au comble. (III, 437) DOLMANCE. - Voihi une des bonnes jouissances que j’ai eues de ma vie....


Mme DE SAINT-ANGE. -Ah! ne m’en parlez pas; j’en suis inondee. ELJGENIE. - Je n’en peux pas dire autant, moi! (III, 468)

EUGENIE. - . . . je mews de plaisir!. Mme DE SAINT-ANGE. - Sacredieu! je t’en livre autant, je decharge!... LECHEVALIER.-II n’estplustemps;monfoutrecouledansleculdelabelleEugCnie...Je

memeurs!... Ah! sacre nom d’un dieu! que de plaisirs!... DOLMANCE. - Je vous suis mes amis... je vous suis... le foutre m’aveugle Cgalement... AUGUSTIN. - Et moi done!... et moi done!... (III, 477)

The constant gap prompts the entrance of the characters, each of whom is summoned in an attempt to close the circle.g Such a circle, however, would be an ultimate, unsurpassable limit, and it is clear that Dolmance is not drawn to such a barrier. Restrictions are valuable only to the extent that they are not absolute (Bennington, 42-3). Resistance, as that which defines a physical (or here: sexual) object, is clearly desirable: the tightness of Eugenic’s virgin orifices heightens her pleasure (and that ofher partners) as she is “perforated” by the progressively larger members of Dolmanct, the Chevalier, and Augustin. However, total resistance would destroy pleasure, as “penetration” and “perforation” would no longer be possible. Total closure could only be understood as deathlo.

This becomes apparent at the story’s climax, when the libertine sanctuary suffers an intrusion, and one which attempts to reassert conventional representation. When Mme de Mistival enters the scene and orders Eugenic to obey her, she invokes her legal and moral rights as a parent. Nowhere is the emptiness of conventional language more evident, for the power implied by these rights resides, unfortunately, elsewhere, and once in the bedroom, Mme de Mistival exists only as a body at the mercy of a more immediate authority. Originally condemned to death by her daughter and the other libertines, Mme de Mistival would appear destined to serve as the example of Dolmance’s and Sade’s ideal of total closure, occurring appro- priately at the close of the novel. Yet this first sentence is not carried out. Instead, Dolmance has his valet, Lapierre, inject Mme de Mistival with his diseased semen, and the contaminated openings are sewn shut to prevent evaporation. Furthermore, her lips are sealed in effect by the letter of authorization issued by her libertine husband.

In spite of this grotesque suturing job, the rape of Mme de Mistival con- stitutes another kind of “leakage.” Injected with a libertine pox, she is sent back out into society, the very incarnation of the libertine contaminant that is leaking into and corrupting the social body. Paradoxically, it is a con- tagion that, by infecting society, purifies the libertine practice, just as Lapierre is to be cured by infusing his illness into such a healthy specimen: “Lapierre,” says Dolmance, “foutez cette femme-la; elle est extraordinaire- ment saine; cette jouissance peut vous gutrir: le rembde n’est pas sans exem- ple” (III, 557). This improbable cure could only be realized by relativizing the standards for measuring health and illness: in an infected society,


Lapierre would figure as normal, and libertinism would be the law of the land.

It is precisely the fear of this kind of leakage, and of the subsequent contamination, that dictated the constant repression of Sade and his work. For Sade undermined the presuppositions and underlying categories of classical thought, and as Robert Darnton has illustrated, this challenging of the limits that constitute meaning is an exceptionally dangerous practice - especially in a society that had so successfully protected the way it organized the world by reducing its challengers to silence.” Most of the undesirables of the Classical age were easily and effectively repressed because they failed to appropriate the discourse of the society that had excluded them; they led separate existences in asylums and prisons. Excluded, Sade nevertheless maintained his voice in society, attacking it from within, and perverting the morality of the society that had produced him. However, far more unsettling than the threat of a leakage of Sadean morality was the possibility of such a leakage into the realm of politics or ideology. In La Philosophie dans le boudoir this was a very real considera- tion, for in fact, Mme de Mistival is not the only object to escape from the confines of the boudoir. There is also the novelistic account, the book, La Philosophie darts le boudoir, which is itself injected with a venom, that of its political tract.

“Francais, encore un effort si vous voulez etre republicains” is atypical of Sade’s libertine treatises in that it addresses the general public rather than the secret community of libertines. Unlike the code of rules drawn up in Les 120 jour&es de Sodome, which operated as a social pact within the libertine community, “Francais, encore un effort. ..” calls for anarchy in the fullest sense of the term. Sade is writing against the grain of the original social pact, the contrat social, which was Rousseau’s device for guarantee- ing order in society. For Rousseau, each individual surrendered his own sovereignty only to the extent that he gained sovereignty over his fellow man, thus establishing a kind of balance and interdependence among men. Sade’s pamphlet urges a return to a state ofnature preceding any such pact, one that distributes power not according to any “divine right” (the nominal justification of the ancien rkgime) or even according to organized democ- racy (the theoretical goal of the Revolutionary forces); instead, Sade’s utopia is governed by what he sees as the law of nature, which is to say no law at all. Might makes right. According to “Francais encore un effort” such might could never be institutionalized in the form of any kind of regime: instead, power is decentralized and would change hands often, with each successful challenge mounted against it. It is the antithesis of society as both the ancien regime and the philosophes had conceived of it, devoid of ethical considerations. Thus the subjugation of women, which Sade describes as part of this utopia, arises less from any moral stance than from the premise of superior masculine strength. Advocating the abolition of law (after all, the author argues, murder helps to check overpopulation and


theft helps to redistribute wealth [III, 533, 5081) and the dissolution of social bonds (for marriage can be seen to constitute an immoral act of “pos- session” [III, 524]), the tract follows the example of Lapierre’s pox, threat- ening to circulate within and corrupt the body politic. This is not just a threat to the ideology of the ancien regime, or to those of the Revolution or the Empire, but to the very notion ideology in general.

Fredric Jameson, in The Political Unconscious, has characterized ideology as an essentially closed system. ** A strategy of containment, it tries to impose itself as right, moral, healthy, and authoritative, and any politics of leakage or contamination must be viewed as dangerously subversive. Sade is doubly so, for beyond denouncing a particular form of repression, he res- ists all attempts at containment. His strategy is very nearly counter-ideological, for the theories expounded in “Francais, encore un effort...” undermine the current dominant culture, and they aim to undercut the very possibility of ideological hegemony. For ideology is an irreducibly social construct, and Sade’s political pamphlet pushes for a dissolution of the codes and bonds that constitute the social body, leading to the return to “nature.“i3 Herein lies Sade’s threat to society, more radical than anything envisioned by the philosophes. Clearly no regime could tolerate such an unpalatable program unless it could neutralize it by containment or exclusion, and as La Philosophie dans le boudoir so admirably illustrates, Sade always struggled to prevent this neutralization.

This simultaneous obsession with and subversion ofclosure was to mark the battles Sade waged against even those forces that supersede ideological repression and physical continement: most notably, the absolute closure of death. Popular memory, largely inspired by Man Ray’s famous portrait of the marquis, would have Sade embrace the silence of the tomb. The legend placed at the bottom of this painting, borrowed from Sade’s last will and testament, reads: “afin que les traces de ma tombe disparaissent de dessus de la surface de la terre, comme je me flatte que ma memoire s’effacera de l’esprit des hommes....” But the line ends with an ellipsis; even Man Ray’s quotation of this supposed embrace of closure is not closed. Predictably, Sade had appended an exclusion: no trace should subsist in the minds of men: “except& neanmoins,” he continued, “du petit nombre de ceux qui ont bien voulu m’aimer jusqu’au dernier moment et dont j’emporte un bien doux souvenir au tombeau.” Of course, the trace that remains is Sade’s writing, texts like La Philosophie dans le boudoir, which were to continue to circulate and infect. In the end, it was this intractable politics ofcontamina- tion that predicated his repression by all sectors. Ironically, if only Sade’s orgies, philosophy, and political epidemic had been successfully and hermetically sealed in the Bastille, in the grave, or in the bedroom, they would have remained entirely harmless.

Carleton College SCOTTCARPENTER


Notes

1. Foraccountsofthisevent, seeGilbert Lily, VieduMarquisdeSade(Paris: J.-J. Pauvert. 1982), 376-79.

2. See Michel Foucault, especially Histoire de lufolie ri l’cige classique (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), and Surveiller etpunir (Paris: Galhmard, 1975).

3. See Ronald Hayman De Sade (New York, Crowell, 1978), pp. 48,51. On the possible political motivation of Sade’s imprisonment, see pp. 64,99,115.

4. Fredric Jameson defines ideology itself as a strategy of containment, The Political Unconscious (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell UP, 1979). 52-3.

5. Sade, Donatien-Alphonse-FranGois, LRs Cent vingt journPes de Sodome, in Oeuvres compl&es, vol. I (Paris: J.-J. Pauvert, 1986), 415(a fine), 423 (planned escape). All references to Sade’s work will be to this edition (first ten volumescurrently available) and will be included in the text.

6. “Lapratiquesadienneestdominteparunegrandeid~ed’ordre,“RolandBarthes. Sude. Fourier. Lovolu (Paris: Seuil. 1971). 32. On the notion of law m Sade, see Geoff Bennington. “Sade, Laymgdown the Law,” T/;e Oxford Literary Review, 6, No. 2 (1984) 38-56. -

7. Cf. Barthes, 133: “La saturation de toute l’etendue du corps est le principe de l’erotique sadienne.”

8. Barthes cites a more dramatic example: “Olympe... r&unit, dit le moine incestueux de Sainte-Marie-des-Bois, le triple honneur d’Ctre a la fois ma fille, ma petite-fille, et ma niece.”

9. See Barthes, p. 133 10. Death is, however, part ofthe libertine ideal; the ultimate adventure consists ofexpen-

encing this total resistance either vicariously (by victimization), or by trucage (as in Roland’s experimentation with hanginginJustine). Ofcourse, death always liesJust beyond the reach of experience, and it is m this sense that it figures as the “only master” of the hbertine (Maurice Blanchot, Lautrkamont et Sude [Paris: Minuit, 1963]), 43.

Il. Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre (New York: Basic Books, 1984). 12. The Politzcal Unconscious(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell UP, 1979). 13. Sadedoesnotentirelyescapefromideologyby thisrecoursetowhatheseesas”natura1

law”; it is one of the defining characteristics of ideology that it tries to assert its own self-evi- dence, its own “naturalness.” Thus Balzac, writing a generation later and from the opposite end of the political spectrum, will also us nature as a paradigm for human society.

sade and the problem of closure: keeping philosophy in the bedroom

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