'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'
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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'
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Justine et Juliette
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December 23, 2004
Hi Gary,
 You write in a previous entry:
So those who deny their darker desires and natures and try to be moral and virtuous are the ones most likely to behave badly, while the people who are socially condemned as immoral because they give free expresion to their dark desires who often display true virtue. The former live their lives within a rigid moralism and behavioral codes and have a supercilious social pretense. These paragons of society -- the priests and moral straightners -- act behind the facade of their pious sanctity to perform the cruelest, most despicable acts, sexual and otherwise.
That is de Sade is it not? Justine, suffers for her virtue, while her sister Juliette profits through debauchery. Justine is punished for her virtues - chastity, piety, charity, compassion, prudence, the refusal to do evil, and the love of goodness and truth.
I find the relation between Justine and Juliette in Sade's texts really interesting, but perhaps not as oppositional as it might seem. In keeping with your description of Sade as a radical materialist, there's a sense in which Juliette is simply more realistic, or more in tune with nature, and her own nature, than Justine. Reading Justine, I found it very frustrating that she seemed simply incapable of learning a lesson: certainly that her morals were so incorruptible (or inflexible)—but also that time and again she had to reveal the entire story of her pathetic life to her next "maître", as if he were her confessor. It seemed to me that in this way Sade rendered her complicit in her own victimisation; perhaps like a masochist, deriving pleasure from the cruelty inflicted upon her, but unconsciously (or dishonestly). The difference is that Juliette does so honestly.
Maurice Blanchot, in his essay Sade, which appears at the beginning of my copy of Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings (Grove Press), suggests that Justine and Juliette each present a different response to the same circumstance:
...the two sisters' stories are basically identical, ... everything which happens to Justine also happens to Juliette, ... both go through the same gantlet of experiences and are put to the same painful tests. Juliette is also cast into prison, roundly flogged, sentenced to the rack, endlessly tortured. Hers is a hidwous existence, but here is the rub: from these ills, these agonies, she derives pleasure; these tortures delight her... those uncommon tortures whihc are so terrible for Justine... for Juliette are a source of delight... Thus it is true that Virtue is the source of man's unhappiness, not because it exposes him to painful or unfortunate circumstances but because, if Virtue were eliminated, what was once painful then becomes pleasurable, and torments become voluptuous. (pp.49 - 50)
Juliette is not outside the sphere of suffering—nor is she a stoic—but rather, she embraces and enjoys suffering by taking the other's perspective upon it (like the Greek whom Nietzsche exhalts for being able to view hardship from the eyes of the gods, with tragedy). She is in this sense a sovereign individual who (again in Blanchot's words) "is able to transform everything disagreeable into something likable, everything repugnant into something attractive" (50). In this way, she is truly an artist.
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So does Juliette actively renounce Virtue then? Would it be accurate to say she radically appropriates, or borrows the jouissance of the other? Or is there a realm she inhabits somehow outside, or divorced from the assured *sovereignty* of any *self*? I seem to recall Blanchot breaking away from Bataille in some important ways, but can't recall exactly how this was accomplished.
I wonder if maybe there is no better antidote to the current state of superficially sex-crazed academic/cultural affairs (as Terry Eagleton would have it) than to engage in open discussions of precisely these works.