philosophical conversations

Sade, Klossowski, and Psychoanalysis

Your post provided a lot of food for thought yesterday, Gary. You are right that Sade gestures toward a mode of eroticism similar to that of Bataille, in that he aims at a bodily experience that transgresses socially 'endorsed' sexuality... In fact, he aims not only to exceed, but to offend 'procreative' sexuality through the act of sodomy, by prodigally planting his 'seed' in shit. Against this, however, we also find in Sade a curious deference to the Law of Nature, to which the characters in his books frequently avow their service, by taking part in the destruction that is a necessary counterpart to flourishing.

What I find interesting about Sade is this interplay between transgression and his allegiance to the law. This tension is reflected also in his use of writing—a most general medium—as an attempt to express his irreducible difference; the desire that he will not give up for the sake of fitting in. Klossowski takes this up in his book Sade My Neighbour,

"The peculiarly human act of writing presupposes a generality that a singular case claims to join, and by belonging to this generality claims to come to understand itself. Sade as a singular case conceives his act of writing as verifying such belongingness. The medium of generality in Sade’s time is the logically structured language of the classical tradition; in its structure this language reproduces and reconstitutes in the field of communicative gestures the normative structure of the human race in individuals. This normative structure is expressed physiologically by a subordination of the life functions, a subordination that ensures the preservation and propagation of the race. To this need to reproduce and perpetuate oneself which is in force in each individual there corresponds the need to reproduce and perpetuate oneself by language. Whence the reciprocity of persuasion, which makes possible the exchange of individual singularities in the circuit of generality. This reciprocity is brought about only in conformity with the principle of identity or of noncontradiction, which makes logically structured language one with the general principle of understanding, that is universal reason. (SMN, 14)"

Through language one’s body serves the species, trading with other bodies to reinforce the normative structure that best serves generality: thus the species is perpetuated. But were we to draw attention to the under-belly of language or reason—to those ‘monstrous’ elements that present reason with an image of itself that it refuses to recognise—then propagation of a different kind would take place, and would threaten to replace ‘healthy’ language and morality. According to Klossowski, Sade’s project involves acquainting reason with its inhuman face, and thus giving rise to the destruction and reorganisation, rather than reproduction, of the species. Klossowski elaborates Sade's effort to disclose in writing the excess that cannot be recognised by the community, by inventing a society of criminals... That is, the reader becomes a co-conspiritor with Sade, against reason and the moral community. This is also rather like the complôt that he identifies in Nietzsche's writing...

I think I've probably said enough for now, given that it's my first post, and I'm a bit technophobe. Gary, with regard to Beauvoir 'making Sade safe' by aligning him with psychoanalysis, there is also a tendency to make psychoanalysis safer than it has the potential to be. I would think that the excess to which you refer is precisely what psychoanalysis allows us to imagine (the beyond of the pleasure principle and sublimation, both of which are taken up by Lacanian psychoanalysis in particular). But you're right, there is always a tendency to domesticate figures like Sade, and to render neutral what makes them most interesting.

Posted by Jo Faulkner at November 12, 2004 11:17 AM | TrackBack