David Allison Sade's Itinerary of Transgression David Allison I would like to address the nature of transgression and its logic or itinerary in Sade's work. If this task is somewhat speculative and incomplete, it perhaps mirrors the foundational incompleteness of the more than sixteen extant volumes of Sade's writings. For a more exhaustive, if not definitive, resolution of the very issue of transgression, the analysis would have to continue the debate between Derrida and Foucault over the validity of Bataille's celebrated account of transgression, which in turn draws upon the earlier work of Roger Caillois. 1 The first concern, however, is to try to ascertain to what extent 'transgression' is really a concept in the strict sense. While it can assume a variety of grammatical forms (noun, transitive or intransitive verb, adjective or adverbial form), the noun derives ultimately from the Latin verb transgredi, which means, to step (trans) across (gred1). In its transitive verbal form, the OED defines 'to transgress' as follows: 'To go beyond the bounds or limits prescribed by a law, command etc'. Or, to break, violate, infringe, contravene, trespass against'. To this, it adds: 'To offend against (a person); to disobey. To go or to pass beyond (any limit or bounds)'. In its noun form, the citation continues: 'The action of transgressing or passing beyond the bounds of legality or right: a violation of law, duty or command; disobedience, trespass, sin'. 'The action of passing over or beyond (in the etymological sense)'. Or, 'The refusal to be limited'. More conventionally, perhaps, transgression is held to be synonymous with the following: trespass, violation, infraction, breach, infringement, contravention. Further, it is held to be analogous with such terms as encroachment, invasion, entrenchment, slip, lapse, offense, sin, vice, crime. It immediately becomes evident that 'transgression' is no ordinary word. It seems to represent what Leibniz would call a musterrol/e of characterisations or qualities: for example, a veritable roster or calendar of types and specimens. The examples or instances of its use-simply as enumerated in the OED entry-concern or deal with the following abstract cases: bounds, limits, prescriptions, laws, commands, conventions, duties, statutes, constitutions, doctrines, goals, 132 Sade's lfinerary of Transgression paths, boundaries, proportions, sequence or formations. The general subject matter to what these cases or concerns would refer, are the following-again, from one dictionary citation: property, civil law. constitutional law, ecclesiastical or cannon law, human will. Divine will, the human subject, human conduct, geology, music and manners. This abstract and general range alone, would provide a dizzying basis for a classification of transgression. And add to this a discussion of precisely what nature, conduct or humanity alone might entail. and the most astute numerologist or taxonomist would quickly be left speechless. Again, in its most succinct lexical formation: to transgress is to pass beyond any limit, any boundary. And what is defined by a limit? a boundary? Precisely that which has discrete form, discrete identity. We seem hard pressed, then, to speak about transgression in any precise sense. What, for example, would constitute a strategy for finding examples of transgression? That is, how would we identify transgression. or acts of transgression, in the first place? This task would surely raise the problem of the hermeneutic circle: we would have to presuppose a rather definite concept of transgression in order to discern its particular instances. Quite simply, one would have to know, one would have to presuppose, the nature of what one is looking for. prior to being able to identify something as an example of it. Alternatively, is transgression perhaps something other than a concept in the strict sense-is it perhaps a vague notion? An idea, disposition, or state, which assumes identity only in name. only nominally? Would this nominal unity therefore be established on the basis of gathering various features of resemblance? Thus, the nominal unity of the term would find its basis in metaphorical usage, or in a certain figurative use of speech (for example, by turning to the analogy or simile). Would there be a family resemblance of features? Perhaps a general metaphorical or morphological sameness to the varied uses of what passes for transgression? One striking feature of this term. this so-called concept of transgression. is that in each pretended case of its use, it seems to acquire sense from the object of its operation. Thus. I transgress something or someone. If I transgress the law, I am a law-breaker. If I transgress divine command, I am a sinner. If I transgress one's person, I am perhaps an assailant or a rapist. 133 David Allison Do that to another's property and one is a trespasser;. to another's ownership of property, and one is thereby a thief. Those who transgress codes of social conduct are termed barbarians or churls; civil conduct, criminals. Transgress proper etiquette or manners and one is a boor. Do that to statistically conventional behaviour, and one is usually deemed insane. I f transgression were to be operated upon conventional speech, discourse itself would become incomprehensible: it would risk grammatical unintelligibility. The transgression of conventional sexual conduct or identity constitutes deviance or perversion, as would the transgression of .ethical codes constitute immorality. Now, surely, these terms carry a negative import, even if, to be most generous, this might only amount to a rhetorical indictment. The question of negativity, however, arises in at least two senses: 1) Negativity arises in the attitude that we assume in the face of such transgressions as rape, insanity, theft, boorishness, etc. In this case, it is a matter of our judging certain transgressive acts negatively. Yet-fo llowing for a moment the nominal sense of transgression-would there not equally be transgressive acts we might well consider in positive terms, acts which we would most likely lend our approval? Perhaps there are 'good' or estimable types of transgression: indeed, to transgress the limits of the status quo, understood as progress? For example, technological, economic or political progress? Perhaps liberation from institutional forms of repression, such as racism, sexism, economic _or political bondage? Liberation from institutions of repression-taxes, titles, penal incarceration. the madhouse or even educational tracking, for instance. Freedom. in this case, would signify release from a variety of binds. restrictions, codes, norms. etc, that were not felt by the individual or by the society to be in his or its best interests. And transgression in this positive attitudinal sense thus raises the second question concerning negativity. Secondly, each case of transgression seems, as we said, to be governed by its object. What the sense or meaning o f each transgressive act is seems to come from without. from a limiting exteriority. 2 Here, the very operation of transgression seems to encounter, precisely, its limit. In what case, transgression-it might be argued-is its own limiting case. That is, transgression would seem to be the negativity which governs the field of 134 Sade's lfinerary of Transgression possible operation itself*whether this field be ethics, morality, sexuality, religion, civil law etc. It would appear that this sense-transgression as negativity-would probably be .the principal consideration for our everyday use of the term. At least, that is what would seem to be the case. In other words, transgression seems to stand or fall on its association or identification with one or another kind of negation. But, and this is precisely what is at issue. is this negative or negating function simply coextensive with the already existing field of operation? Does the limit of the operational field dictate the range and extent of negativity, or, does negativity dictate the limit of the operational field? If what is at stake in the notion/idea/ or concept of transgression is simply the play of negation or advantage in attempting to pursue it-for it could be understood merely as rejection, denial, violation or negation-then one would simply be immoral, irrational, unbalanced, unthinking, illogical, unhealthy, noncooperative, insincere, immodest, unconventional and illegal. Or, a sinner, deviant and coward. In such cases, negativity would be inscribed within its field and by its field as surely as the function of denial, invalidity and contradiction would be found only within a system of logic: as subduction and negation are within mathematics, as ellipsis and negation lie within conventional grammar. In short. transgression would operate as a system-bound rule of operation or deviation. And again, it would be the limit case of its own field. What would the positively construed attitude have to say about the second kind of negation: for example, the limit case? Ideally, both the negative and the affirmative kinds of transgression could occur within the field of operation: progress, reform or development as affirmative modes need not leave the region of play or operational engagement. New acts might be developments or refinements of earlier types: innovative social or political developments would thereby still remain under the domain of societal or civil codes. In such a sphere, emotional or sexual differences, for example, might not only be tolerated, but might well be accommodated to existing structures of social and cultural organisation. 135 David Allison Affirmatively transgressive acts would be little different from reformist gestures in this case. The limits which define positive and negative operations would remain basically unchanged-- or, at mbst-somewhat expanded ciccording to an already inscribed pattern or code of systematic organisation. In this sense, the difference between heresy and heterodoxy might amount to little more than such reforms as those proposed by Martin Luther: for example, a protest-ant re-formation. Following this line of thought, it might appear that transgression-in either its negative or affirmative modes-- nonetheless remains bound by its limits, since the limits. which in each particular case are addressed, are themselves circumscribed by the very field which defines them. In the simplest terms, negativity is bound by the values positive and negative, and by the respective region or field of application. Thus, a positive transgression nonetheless invokes the field in which it operates. And, this is precisely why a rapist is a term of moral reprobation, or 'atheist' a term of religious reprobation, or *schizophrenia' a term for the mentally maladjusted or dis-functional. Hard it is to escape the field of negativity, precisely because negativity-whatever we may think of it-is one of the structures of the field. So far, then, we seem to hesitate to assign a positive conceptual value, some value or mark of content, to the seemingly ampliative character of transgression. Rather, we have been speaking of it as a notion, perhaps, one that had to be discerned across a variety of cases. The word seems to derive its sense from the object and field of the so-called 'transgressive' operation. Further, we have been discussing, without really settling, the issue as to whether *transgression' is in fact system-dependent: for example, whether transgression is simply bound by the rules which govern a field of operation-- even if it be simply to negate or to violate these rules themselves, these taboos and prohibitions. Or, should we ask, as 'ampliative*, does transgression reinscribe these rules of governance and limit within a wider field of play, or, finally, whether it suspends the rules themselves by which the field of play is properly identified and denominated. Which is to say, there seem to be three possible options to our understanding of transgression so far: l) that it is system and function-bound. 2) That it is system and function-expanding, for example, that it is 136 Sade's Itinerary of Transgression 'ampliative'. 3) That by its operation, system and function are themselves fundamentally altered, volatilized: disrupted and essentially changed. Alternatively, and more modestly, perhaps, these three ways of viewing transgression might simply point up that we have but barely sketched out the domain of a discourse, without assigning a very precise sense to the terms of that discourse. To come to the point of decision, we would ultimately have to examine instances or cases of what passes for transgression. We would have to examine various discourses about transgression, and raise the issue as to whether or not it can called a concept, a notion or a sense-unity at all, and finally, to try to point out within which context it makes sense even to talk about transgression either about a specific case of transgression, or about transgression in general. If the latter, what is the compass, the arena, the deployment of transgression? What does it include or exclude as its multifarious operation? Might general transgression include, within its own reservoir of possibility and operation, the formal identity of the language we use to denominate it? In which case, can it-to call it 'it'-be spoken about, written about, enunciated, recorded or even remembered? Recall our itinerary. More commonly, perhaps, we tend to think of transgression as being motivated, as having some purpose for its initial operation-commonly, I say, if we think of the usual, lexically defined instance of this word. 'Little Francine was raped by someone' -there must be a reason! 'Young Herbert outraged the entire community by his unspeakable acts'-why would such a nice boy do that? Motivation and purpose: these seem to characterize what passes by the name 'transgression' in almost every possible case, whether we initially view transgressive acts as negative or as positive testaments. Perhaps the most positive sense of transgression could be expressed in the rather sympathetic terms of liberation or freedom. To free oneself from fetters of one kind or another, to overcome an undesirable condition, brought about by external powers, to liberate oneself from, perhaps, an unjust fate. Of course, it will be under the rhetoric of just such cases that we are wont to ascribe heroism, courage and tragedy to the human situation. We know that for the mythology of Hesiod and Homer, 137 David Allison the fates guarded the portals of eternity, weaving out their web of constraint, governance and ultimately, of subjugation-the subjugation of humanity and even of the Gods as well. Fate or fortune-the words are identical-govern our affairs. One knows this familiar lament all too well. It is that in the face of which one is powerless. It is our condemnation. Nonetheless, it occasionally smiles on the hero, on the tragic hero, or, even on the person who presumes to unravet its divine fabric. By the period of the Italian Renaissance and, following that, the European Enlightenment, however, that fabric had become somewhat threadbare. Galileo, Copernicus, Bacon, Hobbes and Machiavelli were the first to more accurately divine the pattern to this web: it was relatively consistent in warp and weave, it employed the primary colors, and it operated according to the inexorable order of mathematical exactitude. It only remained to fully assess the myriad details, the rules, the complex web of causal affinities in order to understand the very operations of fate: but by the period of the Enlightenment, fate or fortune-what Machiavelli termed 'sweet mistress fortuna'-was itself held to be coextensive with the entire natural order. We are familiar enough with this historical period of thought to recognise it as exemplary of the modern age, having brought us the teaching of the mathematical mastery over nature. But, why, one asks, should one master nature? Machiavelli responds: 'Such that we may make provisions to ensure our own well-being in the face of its cruel and intemperate demands'. Descartes, likewise, responds: 'Such that I may enjoy all the sweetness and felicity this world has to offer'-and not, one might add, to be crushed by it. We should remember that, for Descartes, the highest branch on the celebrated 'tree of knowledge', is morality. And what, for Descartes, is morality? He defines it, quite simply, as 'the art of living well'. The motivation for mastering nature would thus appear to be transparently obvious. I ts means, perhaps less so. Ultimately, it is by something entirely unnatural, that one conquers nature, that we can become 'the masters and possessors of nature'. This unnatural means of overcoming nature is art: that is to say, artifice, technique. For Descartes, this will be the art of reasoning well, that is, by fo llowing a non-natural method, guided by the rules of mathematics. His two earliest works 138 Sade's Itinerary of Transgression constitute this claim: the Regu/ae and the Discourse on Method argue that analytical geometry is fully adequate to describe and to explain the whole of physics, mechanics and dynamics-- for example, the entire natural order: fate. Inhabiting the age of Descartes-as we well do-this is barely an issue for us. Quite simply, we believe it. We are the masters and possessors of nature. In somewhat * more contemporary terms, it is frequently heard said that, 'we want it all and we want it now'. Even better, perhaps, 'we expect it all and we expect it now'. From the situation we occupy, then, three teachings of Descartes have been passed down to us, and precisely, constitute our age as our ageand we with it: l) That we determine the ends and purposes of nature by our own will. That is, we become the source of value for the world-- no longer is it attributed to the dreary fates or to the God of the Levant. Our human will dictates the value importance of anything in the world. 2) We accept it as a fact, as a very condition for our modern existence, that our human knowledge interprets the world according to the pattern we have selected-in our case, mathematics. 3) What follows, in consequence, is the fact that nature itself becomes something quite different for our age-quite different from the conception of nature, prior to the Enlightenment. Nature itself, nature in itself, is no longer held to possess value, meaning or purpose-except for, apart from, that value, purpose and meaning with which we humans have chosen to invest ,it. All this follows from Descartes: as the earth replaced the sun for Copernicus, so does the human replace God for our modern age. When the Marquis de Sade writes, some 150 years later, however, he shows that the new teachings of the Renaissance and Enlightenment still remain incomplete in their extension, for they are, strictly speaking, limited to the precise domain of the natural sciences. If human will replaced the divine order, this was only effective, it seemed, on the level of scientific theory- this, even despite the benefit of an ever-increasing number of practical inventions and applications (for example, as 139 David Allison catalogued in Diderot's Encyclopedia) . What Sade saw practiced, however, was the very opposite o f a newborn and unfettered human freedom. Rather, Sade shows how the ancient religious and moral teachings, together with their restrictions, their taboos and prohibitions, etc. -Sade shows how the ancient moral teachings continued to forbid the effective practice, the effective reawakening o f human freedom. If God was no longer in control of physics and dynamics, he seemed, nonetheless, to continue to control the minds and bodies of humanity in general. 'The light of stars takes years . . . ' Sade's task, then, is to dramatically finish the work of Descartes: to complete the work of the Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers, and to bring the doctrine of absolute mostery and freedom down from the level of theoretical physics and dynamics, to the practical level of daily life. Namely, down to the level o f the individual's freedom: so as to permit the individual to act as she or he chooses. Thus, Sade claims to engage the doctrines of the new sciences so as to bring about their concrete expression on the level of ethics and morality. In short, he is concerned to understand and to explain how it is we act. At the very height o f the Enlightenment, Sade draws his conclusions for the forthcoming secular age: a hundred years before Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche. Sade, like Raskolnikov, declares: 'If God is dead, then everything is permitted'. For the individual, or for humanity at large, for that matter, there is no rule, no law, that is absolutely justified or universally justifiable.3 Nothing from without can legitimately restrict our freedom to act, nothing can properly be said to determine how or why we should act, other than our own will, our passions and inclinations. In fact, for the modern political state, freedom itself is the beginning and end of human action: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, whatever the latter might consist. We recall that in the High Middle Ages, the authority for the religious and political administration of Europe, was St. Thomas Aquinas. In the Summa Theologica he writes: 140 Now it is evident that the world is ruled by divine providence, that the whole community of the universe is governed by the divine reason. Therefore, the very notion of the government of things in God, the ruler of the universe, has the nature of a law Sade 's Itinerary of Transgression ( . . . ) Law is a rule an d the measure of acts, whereby man is induced to act or is restrained from actin g: for law (lex) is derived from the term 'to bind' (ligare) , because it bin ds one to act or n ot to act.4 This was a sent iment about which Sade felt quite strongly. Un derstan dably so, since he was bound in p rison for some twentyseven years of his life. Lik ewise, it is un derst andable that he wrote in defen ce of p ersonal freedom, an d t hat he n ot only attacked the notion of confinement, restriction, an d constraint, but that he att ack ed t he institution of law it self. F or every law claims submission of t he individual. The human subject is p recisely, thereby, that which is subjected. In view of his heritage, and in consequen ce of his own subjection, Sade is p erhap s the single most uncompromising revolutionary in the tradit ion of Western thou ght: he attack s, he lay' s siege to, the D ivine L aw, to the Eternal Law, to the Natural Law, and to the H uman Law. It is for this reason that Sade is not the p altry libertarian , who only wants to negotiate free p assage in and among the necessary rules of order, con vention, and social j ust ice. Rather, he i s a libertine: t he only value consists, ultimately, in his p ersonal exercise of freedom-from any an d all con straints, limits, bon ds. Thus, his highest act is the total destruction, the tot al ann ihilat ion , of these constraints themselves, these laws, rules and duties that bind, that rest rict and con strict his personal freedom. Sade is no longer content to live comfortably un der t he domin ion of order. for order itself constrains an d dictates on ly certain p ossibilit ies of p ersonal act ion . Order itself crushes-it deforms or reforms its 'other' -in its ceaseless demand for conformity, assimilation an d submission . Sade' s writ ings about transgression or revolution , are thus statements in t he strongest sense,. t hey are ' doctrines' in extremis: they deman d the comp lete overt hrow of any vestige of order. H is revolt or transgression tak es p lace, in each case. accordin g to the p articular typ e of restrict ion that i s imp osed on his freedom, Thus, Sade variously p roposes blasp hemy, immorality, crime, incest , murder, violation , lies, slan der, theft, rapacity, irrationality, sodomy, hate and every other k ind of violence, p erversion or aberration con ceivable-each of these a sp ecific and considered tactical op erat ion to serve t he strategic mo vement of the libert ine's transgressive iti nerary. 1 4 1 David Allison Now, all this is n ot to suggest that we cannot profit from a con sideration of Sade. On the contrary, h is peculiar style of excess teaches us a great deal about the tenor of modern l ife an d th ought. Like m an y strictly contem porary thin ke rs, Sade teaches the doctrine of in dividual freedom : and for h im -that is to say, properly speakin g. for the libertine- this mean s absolute freedom or liberty: absolved from all const rain t. Somewhat differently, perhaps, this is the m odern foun dational doctrine of m astery itse lf: the m astery formerly possessed by fortuna, God or Nature. But n ow, with Sade, this drive to m astery assumes a m ost deliberate progression. One does n ot . for in stan ce, start off as a m aster. For Sade, we can poin t out at least eigh t stages in th is progression t o absolute m astery, to absolute freedom, eight stages of transgression , or. e ight tran sgre ssive operations-- each of which m ay be con ceived as a pmticular art or teachin g. 1 ) . First, an d as a prelimin ary step. the libe rtine m ust e stablish power ove r h imself. Mastery begin s with the art of se lf-m astery. The libe rtine m ust first free h im self from h is o wn weaknesses-he must overcome h is own weak sentimen ts-sentiments which would preven t the growth an d consolidation of h is own power. Thus, the libe rtine m ust start off with what is closest to h imself, with wh at is already with in h imself, n amely, with h is apparently sin gular emotion s-h is sentimen tal values, or, what Sade refers to as the ' alleged in stin cts' . To gain selfcont rol. self-maste r 1y, h� has rid h im self of the alleged or socalled 'natural in st in cts' , such as the instin cts or sentiments of patern ity, m aternity, fami ly devotion . filial love etc. Wh at seem to be the in stinctual em otion s of n atural life must first be overcome, because they would only serve to re str ict the libertine' s d rive to m aste ry; they would place limits on the expression of h is own passion s, h is real in stincts. urges, wills, energies an d freedom. Not on ly does Sade den oun ce the in stin ct for domestic family life , but he proposes to replace fam ily life itself with incest. Marriage, for the libertine, is termed the ' h ymeneal bon d' , an d it is ce rtain ly not the product of any re al love or affection-emotions or sentiments which , in any case. would serve to weaken or to deflect the libe rtines' s own drive to m aste ry. Sade h as one of h is characte rs, Dolm an ce, in Philosophy in the Bedroom, m ake followin g rem ark: 142 Sade's Itinerary of Transgression What is it we see? Reciprocal hatred; children who, even before reaching the age of reason, have never been able to suffer the sight of their fathers; fathers sending away their children because they could never endure their approach. Those alleged instincts are hence fictions , absurd; self-interest only invents them, usage prescribes, habit sustains, but never did Nature engrave them in our hearts. Tell me: do animals know these feelings? No , surely not; however, 'tis always them one must consult when one wishes to be acquainted with nature. 0 Fathers! Have no qualms regarding the so-called injustices your passions or your interest leads you to work upon these beings, for you nonexistent, to which a few drops of your sperm has given life. To them you own nothing, you are in the world not for them but for yourselves; great fools you would be to be troubled about, to be occupied with anything but yourself; for yourselves alone you ought to live. And you, dear children, you must be persuaded also that you own nothing to those individuals whose blood hatched you out of the darkness. Pity, gratitude, love-not one of these sentiments is their due; they who have given you existence have not a single right to require them from you; they labor for themselves only, let them look after themselves .5 2). Second. By removing this kind of restrictive instinct and emotion, and by denouncing the closest bonds-the family-as specious, the l ibertine finds himself l imited, checked, at another level. one that is far more extensive than the family unit. Thus, he must next assert h is mastery over people in general, that is, over conventional society as a whole. This project demands the cultivated exercise of cruelty on the part of the libertine. He must guarantee the effective submission of other ind ividuals, precisely to ensure that they remain weak, that they not be a threat or limit to his own mastery. 3). Third. More importantly, perhaps, one's concerns are not exclusively preoccupied with individuals . Rather, it is the province of customs and manners, for example, morality, which binds people together into a more powerful and dangerous organisation. Consequently, for the libertine, it is these customs which must suffer his attack. Custom or convention forms individuals into a group and renders them collectively dangerous to the libertine. Also , these customs themselves are 1 43 David Allison socially restrictive to the libertine. They continually impose taboos and bonds upon the ind ividual, there prohibiting his own free action. Thus, Sade repeatedly attacks the customs and morality of a people, claiming that they are entirely arbitrary, unnatural and unfounded-in short, they are simply relative codes-relative, as he says, to a patch of geography, of terrain. One particularly personal, i f not recurring, example he cites is to be found at the end of his 'Notes Concerning my Detention': 'So long as any French soi l is left on the globe, it will forever be recognisable by the corruption practiced upon it' .6 4). Fourth . But with the violation of custom and habit, a new basis of social coherency and social justification is revealed, one that again severely restricts the libertine, namely, law itself. Thus, the libertine is compelled to attack the legitimacy of civil law by showing that it, in turn , is fully arbitrary: that civi l law. just as much as manners. customs and habits varies from country to country. place to place. time to time. tome to tome. To counter the restrictive effects of civil law, Sade shows that the law itself is fully unjust and unjustifiable-that it doesn't merit compliance. In consequence, he counsels fraud to overcome the unjust law. The civil law, he says, supposedly exists for the weak; but the civil contract deprives the weak of what little they do have in the first place. Alternatively, and at the same time, it deprives the strong the right of acquiring more. As such. the law is contradictory, and benefits no one. As he would claim in Justine. the truly intelligent person is he who ( . . . ) lashes out against the social contract. he violates it as much and as often as he is able, full certain that what he will gain from these ruptures will always be more important than what he will lose if he happens to be a member of the weaker class; for such he was when he respected the treaty; by breaking it he may become one of the stronger. 7 5) Fi fth. Society. nonetheless. claims to justi fy the civil order: ostensibly, it justifies the state and its laws by calling upon a transcendent foundation-by invoking a deity. by recourse to theological argumentation . for example. by claiming divinely ordained rights and principles, divinely sanctioned human laws. by claiming equality in the face of God and by the precedent of Holy writ. Thus. civil law would typically justify itself by appeal to the authority of Divine Law. 144 Sade 's Itinerary of Transgression The li berti ne, therefore, sets out to deny t he existence of God: to disprove the di vi ne, i ndeed, t o ridi cule i t , t o show the pain and sufferi ng t hat religi on in fact cause s the indi vi dual t o endure-and, c ertai nly, this i s the very axi s of hi s novel, Justine. To overcome or to correct t he limitations i mposed by rel i gion, Sade appropri ately teaches blasphemy. 8 But blasphemy is not only a temporary vi ctory, a pyrrhi c victory, on the way to complete mastery and freedom, a victory gained largely by flight . Blasphemy i s only tactical stage because i f theology is itself but the product of a f rail human psychology, i f God is only a fict ion of weak minds, then t he claims of reli gi on are easily dispensed wit h. Reli gion as t he foundation of law, law as the foundation of society' s manners and custom s-all t his can be easily dissipated. One need not struggle agai nst mankind' s pettiest fears, because they simply reflect and rei nscri be the weakest elements of soci ety at large. To seriously wage war with religi ous taboos and beliefs, and to remain at thi s level of discourse and blasphemy, would be to concede the i ssue of mastery. It would be to depend upon t he reli gious beli efs of other people-hardly one' s equals-t o depend on their child-like delusions for one's o wn attempt at victory, one' s own liberation. Rather, t he libert ine derives pleasure and strength from hi s mastery over society and t heir si lly beli efs: the li bert ine hi mself accordingly becomes solitary and uni quely soverei gn- di vi ne.9 6) . Si xth. To remove himself from all senti mental, fami ly, social, ci vi l and reli gi ous rest ricti ons, Sade mak es t he libert ine attain equality with nature at large. U p unti l now, each stage of his progress towards the att ai nment of mast ery, hi s path t o absolute freedom, had been j ust ified by appealing to nature. But at thi s stage of hi s evolut ion, the libertine now concei ves hi mself to be on the same level as nature itself . H e wi llfully embra ces all that exi sts: he pursues all thi ngs, every acti vity, every thi ng, and not Just pleasant di versi ons or excesses. H e welcomes pai n , sufferi ng, j oy, fi lth, happi ness, wealth, abuse, degradati on, every act , every deli ght , every torture. 1 0 Sade here reinterprets nature in a way that is somewhat di fferent from the traditi onal vi ew. For Sade, nature is preci sely the sum of forces of creation and dest ruction. Indeed, to create, one must forci bly dest roy. Thus, for Sade, there is no 1 45 David Allison natural order as such to be maintained, no natural reason, no natural purpose, no natural ends. What is natural, then, is quite simply, everything that could p ossibly be. As Bishop Butler would so succinctly exp ress th is: 'All th at is, is and not another th ing' . To wit, nature as partes extra partes, in a p erp etual state of motion, of dynamic transformation. Indeed, th is is far from th e rationally ordered and p urp osive view of a traditionally conceived nature. So, with the libertine, th ere is nothi ng more natural than th e destructive violation of what was formerly called natural law-- th e God-given reason and p urp ose that p urp ortedly structured th e entire universe and th e constitution of the h uman species. By appealing to his newly formulated natural order, Sade will h ave sodomy rep lace the sanctified form of p rocreation. Likewise, bisexual i ty and h omosexual ity, because they exp ress natural urges, are more natural than what was formerly called sex by nature: for example, conventional sexuality-its practice , and the identity of its particip ants. In keeping with th is new found view, contracep tion and onanism disp lace mere birth -- and abortion and murder serve to transgress wh at religion had for so long venerated as ' natural' life. In one of his characteristically exculpatory accounts, S ade would equate criminality itself with his account of nature, both of th em seen as the extension of mech anics: The p ri mary and most beauti ful of Nature' s qualit ies i s motion, which agitate her at all times, but th is motion is simply a p erpetual consequence of crimes; sh e conserves it by means of crime only; the p erson wh o most nearly resembles her, and therefore th e most perfect being, necessarily will be the one wh ose most active agitation will become the cause of many crimes. S ince it is p roven th at sh e cannot rep roduce without destructions, equilibriu m must be p reserved; it can only be p reserved by crimes; th erefore, crimes serve Nature; if they serve h er, if she demands them, if sh e desires them, can th ey offend her? And who else can be offended i f she i s not? 1 1 7) . Seventh . Yet, for Sade, even this seemingly total abandonment of restrictions, this complete overcoming of taboo, law, form, identity, order and natural limitation, etc. , even th is seems to be inadequate because the libertine would 1 46 Sade's Itinerary of Transgression unwittingly become a slave to nature itself, to nature herself. Indeed, nature permits-it encourages, it is identical with-- every conceivable violation and excess. Thus, nature seems to exercise her authority even here, even in the deepest and most excessive throes of criminality. And while the natural order so conceived might hardly be thought to be at all repressive or restrictive, nonetheless, for Sade, even this is felt to be an impediment to his concept of a total freedom or sovereignty . He therefore feels compelled to overcome nature itself. But how can one plausibly do this? How can one overcome or transgress nature? Especially, nature as it is conceived by the likes of someone l ike Sade?-for example, according to a rather casually conceived E ighteenth century mechanistic view. Sade seems to present three ways of overcoming nature so conceived: thereby, to gain absolute freedom for the libertine: a). The first way is by teaching, and by adopting, the cultivated practice of apathy. Neither a question of creation nor destruction, neither production nor depletion: rather, the libertine finally attains a state of rest and passivity-he continually needs whips, chains, implausible devices, greater and greater tortures and spectacles to increase his jaded state of apathy. In short, the libertine denies nature any kind of recognisable or typical activity, by refusing to participate on its terms. And at this state, the initial distinction between * real' and 'alleged' needs-or, between natural and conventional-- becomes abandoned. b) . The second approach Sade takes in his attempt to transgress nature is to replace it with what could only be unnatural-the life of the imagination. And, for Sade, the imagination is the highest faculty, the highest capacity of mankind. The libertine acts out of the imagination in order to impose what is thoroughly fictive, unnatural, in the place of the real and natural. Nature thus becomes recreated in the image of the debased and perverted libertine ' s imagination. * c) . As a third strategy, Sade seeks to reverse the very conditions of man's natural existence . No longer shall health inspire happiness, but now, continual shock, disruption, and violence . If health is also equilibrium, harmony, proper proportion, reason and balance, then this shall be overturned and made unstable, unbalanced and degenerate by excess of everything, by-as Bataill e would have it-plethora. 147 David Allison 8) . We reach the eighth stage of the Sadean itinerary. In the end, we could say that Sade's libertine achieves al l he has set out to attain-that he overcomes all opposition and becomes free, unfettered. But the only limitation he cannot overcome is death itself. He comes closest to surpassing that most human mark of finitude, however, in Juliette, when he says, What I should l ike to find is a crime, the effects of which would be perpetual, even when I myself do not act, so that there would not be a single moment of my l ife, even when I were asleep, when I was not the cause of some chaos, a chaos of such proportions that it would provoke a general d isturbance so formal than even after my death its effects would stil l be felt. 1 2 Also, one can find much the same state purpose in Justine: for example, the well known passage where Sade compares one of his characters to . . . those perverse writers whose corruption is so dangerous, so active, that their single aim is, by causing their appal l ing doctrines to be printed, to immortalize the sum of their crimes after their own lives are at an end : they themselves can do no more, but their accursed writings wil l instigate the commission of crimes, and they carry this sweet idea with them to their grave. 1 3 A third instance in Justine, where the l ibertine l iterally experiences the del ight of transport in overcoming the l imitations of death, is the occasion of the game played by the infamous cad Roland, the old game of 'cut-the-cord ' . In this case, the petit mart of jouissance effectively becomes an out-oflife experience: 1 48 Roland is stimulated by a few of his usual caresses; he climbs upon the stoo l , I put the halter round his neck; he tells me he wants me to curse him during the process. I am to reproach him with all his l ife' s horrors, I do so; his dart soon rises to menace Heaven, he himself give me the sign to remove the stool, I obey; would you believe it Madame? Nothing more true than what Roland had conjectured: nothing but symptoms of pleasure ornament his countenance and at practically the same instance rapid Sade's Itinerary of Transgression jets of semen spring nigh to the vault. When 'tis all shot out without any assistance whatsoever from me, I rush to cut him down, he falls, unconscious, but thanks to my ministrations he quickly recovers his senses. 1 4 We recall a striking fact about the Marquis de Sade: he was imprisoned for a period of twenty-seven years. We could say that the cause for his imprisonment was simply the fact that he was certifiably , impossibly mad. These two considerations go a long way to explain why he was obsessed with the notions of constraint, restriction, limitations and his almost Satanic obsession with power. In short , it is perhaps understandable why he was so concerned with his own absolute freedom, l iberty or mastery. Psychopathology and rhetorical hyperbole aside, however-- and granted . they are difficult to minimize in Sade's case-his itinerary of transgression nonetheless reflected one of the major themes of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought: that of autonomy and self-determination. Certainly, autonomy as the transformation of the subjected individual, but also, by virtue of his participation in the French Revolution, Sade joins the modern historical movement of national self-determination, which so consciously sought to incarnate these very ideals. At once striving for a rigorous personal autonomy, yet finding himself bound by the conflicting demands of the still-emerging nation state, Sade embodied the often times painful contradictions of modernity in his own person : not the least of which was his repeated incarceration by the revolutionary regime itself, much less his fortuitous liberation from its death-sentence by the guillotine (/ 'arret de mort) . 1 5 To get a clearer perspective on this subject who is the agent of transgression, we are again drawn to the nature of the libertine as cast by Sade-particularly in regard to the defining role played by his 'otherness' , that in relation to which transgressive agency is directed. From Fichte through Kojeve, it has become relatively commonplace to understand the very interiority of the modern subject through its relation to the other. Bataille, for example; develops his understanding of 'inner experience' according to what he terms the 'principle of continuity' . 1 6 Simply stated, the principle of continuity holds that we can describe what any individual is or is not , in terms of that individual's continuity 1 49 David Allison with other people (the intersubjective dimension), contin�ity with oneself (the constituted ego identity), continuity with the prevailing morality, with the prevailing thought of an age, with the environment. With those whom one trusts, with what one believes, continuity with the ensemble of civil and cultural codes, or-in brief-continuity with one's place in the world (the domain of general acculturation). In each case, we say that one is continuous or discontinuous with respect to something else-with respect to society, time past, humankind in general. ideology, value, nature and culture. Now, we don't usual ly employ the term 'continuity' when we talk like this, but we do use other words for the some kind of relation: we say, for example, that someone is *well-adjusted', 'at ease', ' integrated', 'normal', 'conventional', that he 'gets along' and is well or poorly- 'adapted', etc. We may also say, for example, that we ' identify' wi th something, that we 'associate' with others, or that we ' relate' to them in some fashion. 'Adjust', ' identify', ' integrate', 'associate', ' relate': these terms mean that we unify, that we become one, with our surrounding world. Such an analysis tends to make us think in terms of others, i n terms of what is outside us. We are well -adjusted because we are continuous with what i s not us. What is peculiar in these cases i s that to account for the specificity of the subject, we seem to have totally abstracted from the very uniqueness and individual i ty of ourselves-from what we are, deep down inside. Who is this me which must undergo the process of adjustment, identification, integration or association in the first place-and continual ly thereafter? Sade asks the question, and his answer is, nothing but energy: sheer, unrestrained, unlimited energy. Energy without form, without order, wi thout reasons, excuses or justification. Now, the terms Sade uses to describe this energy are several: most importantly, they are desire, passion, shock, pleas�re, pain, excitation, orgasm, flood etc. Each of these terms is unique in that of itself it has no l imits, no specific nature, form or identity. When one strips everything away from oneself, all conventions, all definitions, codes and restrictions, what results? Unrestrained energy that expresses itsel f as action, as desire, as passion etc. , and in an infinity of ways. 1 7 Thus, at the very start of Philosophy in the Bedroom, the positively divine libertine, Mme. de Saint-Ange (Madame Holy Angel), says: 150 Sade's lfinerary of Transgression I h ave discovered that when it is a question of someone like me, born for libertinage, it is useless to th ink of imposing limits or restrains upon oneself-impetuous desires immediately sweep th em away. In a word, my dear, I am an amphibious creature; I love everyth ing, everyone, whatever it is, it amuses me. I sh ould like to combine every species. 18 H ere, especially , we see th is drive to unite, to combine, to be continuous. But th ere is a significant difference in th is case. Mme. de Saint-Ange is not going to combine on th e level of them, of the other, of society , morality and religion. No sh opkeeper mentality th ere. A real Iron Lady, sh e-and certainly one of th e maj or figures in Sade' s repertory of libertines. Sh e wants continuity, but on a quite different level-h er own level. Continuity on the level of what is h er own, h erself. And, her imperious continuity is centrifugal, not centripetal! Wh at is th is level of self for Sade? We have already noted it: energy-a fully consuming passion, desire, pleasure, ecstasy. All these terms, which are themselves formless and without restriction. all these terms wh ich point to the level of the most personal. intense. core sense of self , all these are really expressions of wh at we call sexuality, eroticism, life energy as primary process, as libido, as power. Wh at th e libertine wants, then. is the free fulfillment, th e unrestrained exercise of all these desires, these primary drives and pulsions. Th us. sexuality is the strongest. the most intense, most personal performance of continuity- to be associated with . identified with , integrated with-anyth ing. U nity or continuity, in th is case, is dictated from with in, from the intensely personal drives and desires. wh ich furrow and invest exteriority with deligh t. Th is comes from within and not, repeat. not from without. Th us. th e only th ing truly important to th e libertine is h imself. or, equally, h erself-wh ich explains wh y the libertine continually exercises a sovereign and confident self-a ssertion, a complete and fulfilling egoism, an unremitting subj ectivism wh ich seeks no approval, req uires no consent. and tolerates no resistance. All value derives from the unique and sovereign libertine: the exterior obj ect stands as noth ing. Selfish , vain and totally despotic. 1 5 1 David Allison At this point in our reflection, there emerges the great contradiction-the contradiction of all contradictions-the great wall of China: it is the contradiction between the individual and the state, the private and public, the self and other, the I and the Thou, the subject and the object. In short, it is the general contradiction between the me and the non-me-- which is to say, the you, the they, the them, the it, the system , the rules, God, the trap, jail, and the madhouse. We know what Sade wants and we know who wins, who will always win. Social continuity stands in the way of personal continuity. Social continuity requires taboos, restrictions, prohibitions, mores and laws. Society, in short, limits the individual' s very life, his freedom to act out of himself. The individual's life thus becomes broken, fragmented, made discontinuous by the demands of social continuity. Society thereby forces the individual into isolation- into a situation that frustrates his very attempt to be autonomous. We have already seen how these restrictions and prohibitions assume a systematic order for Sade: internal ized instincts led to the family; the family led to society; society led to morals and manners; morals and manners led to law; laws led to theology; theology led to reason; reason to nature. Each move in this series was a justification for the previous move, the previously attained stage. Thus, society ultimately justifies itself by appealing to what is ' natural'. Furthermore, we saw how Sade attacked each justification in turn, even to the point of upsetting or volatilizing the very notion of nature. Thus. he effectively eliminates the source, the cause, the origin of these-to him-painful taboos. He eliminates the underlying reason or justification for any taboo, any restriction or inhibition. In short, Sade is perfectly content to get rid of anything that stands between the libertine and his own expression of natural instincts . that is, . his own so-called ' inverted' or volatilized nature-which is neither rational nor theological. Nature here becomes a reflection of the libertine' s own energy, his own passions, desires and destructive cruelty. Simply by reading Philosophy in the Bedroom, one could easily divine what would become of social continuity-much less, community-were Sade to implement his stated project. Now, the traditional way of defining the individual according to social continuity would 1 52 Sade 's Itinerary of Transgression be the following (for example, according to an ascending order of justification), and this i s contrasted with Sade's position: TRADITIONAL V IEW SADE'S VI EW 1 ) ind ividual 1) individual (libertine) 2) sentiments 2) X (alleged) 3) family 3) X (fictional) 4) society at large 4) society of l ibertines ( jokes) 5) morals (manners) 5) laws (capricious and few, if any) 6) laws 6) morals (manners) 7) theo logy 7) X (blasphemy) 8) reason 8) X (desire, passion) 9) nature 9) nature ( inverted, volati lized) Nature. then. for Sade-the base of his whole system, becomes the justification for the individual's action-for h is personal continuity, h is unrestricted fulfi llment of desire, passion etc. Natural principles therefore dictate morals and manners: on this basis his proposed revolutionary government wol,lld institute laws, but laws in accordance with the ways people-- that is. libertines-would in foct behave, laws based on how l ibertines do act, not on how people in general should act. Thus. society becomes a society of libertines and the individual is free to be himself or herself. In other words. everything drops out except the libertine himself and an inverted nature. But. because nature is i tself either formless or has an infinity of forms-nature. thus, as unprincipled polymorphous perversity-- it to.o , drops out of the equation. Ultimately, nature is itself overcome by the imagination, by exhaustion, excess, apathy and art. Thence goes its own agency: likewise, passes any imposition of bind or constraint, for example, of law- of legitimation or justification. In the end, the libertine acts out of himself, out of his own delight in the senses: the imagination opens an ever-widening palate for his tastes, for the progressively intense exercise of his drives, eschewing the natural for the infinity of the fictive, rendering it-in turn-fact. deed . In one sentence of the Philosophy in the Bedroom, Sade effectively sums up h is entire system: ' Every principle is a judgement. every judgement is the outcome of experience, and experience is only acquired by the exercise of the senses'. 153 David Allison What kind of unity or continuity, then, does the libertine achieve in the end? Again, the continuity of uninterrupted sexuality, of a totalizing libidinal cathexis-once all those taboos are removed, ignored, avoided or destroyed. The libertine's art is to increase sexual appetite and desire in a vertiginous spiral, becoming intensely physical, exteriorized and universally imposed-a kind of physical ex-pression of the formerly private drives. And-formless, beyond all reason-eroticism would never again be the same. This would be a divine madness, total transcendence in immanence, akin to the prophetic, blasphemous and poetic elements of the Platonic account in the Phaedrus, or to the Dionysian 'witches brew', as N ietzsche recounted it in The Birth of Tragedy. The libertine's cathected enjoyment would increase 'a thousandfold' in the 'immense melting pot' of 'transspeciating' nature. as the Comte de Bressac would proclaim. Thereby, the libertine overcomes his isolation: through desire's union. Or, through the delirium of madness or excess-whether in intense physicality or, in continually writing himself deeper into his own plot of madness. And, in just such a plot, everything that stands between the l ibertine and nature, that is, between two notions of the inside. everything must collapse: laws, morality, sentiments, family, society, reason and religion. All these now stand as nothing to his logic of transgression. They all have equal value, which is to say, quite arbitrary value-for the now 'divine Marquis' -precisely because they have no value of themselves in their otherness. As the nefarious Mme. Dubois would conclude, 1 54 One must never appraise values save in terms of our own interests. The cessation of the victim's existences is as nothing as compared to the continuation of ours, not a mite does it matter to us whether any individual is alive or in the grave. ( . . . ) For there is no rational commensuration between what affects us and what affects others; the first we sense physically, the other only touches us morally, and moral feelings are made. to deceive; none but physical sensations are authentic ( . . . ) thus. not only do two hundred louis suffice for three murders, but even thirty centimes would have sufficed, for those thirty centimes would have procured a satisfaction which, although light, must necessarily affect us to a much more lively degree than would three men murdered, who are nothing to us. ( . . . ) A little more philosophy in the world would soon restore all to order. 19 Sade 's Itinerary of Transgression NOTES l . The principle text in question is Bataille's Eroticism, English translation, M. Dalwood (London: Calder, 1 962), but especially central would be his Inner Experience, English translation , L . A. Boldt (Albany: SUNY Press, 1 988), and his Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1 9271 939, English translation . A. Stoekl . C . Lovitt and D. Leslie (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press , 1 985) . Derrida 's essay ' From a Restricted to a General Economy: a Hegelianism Without Reserve* . is to be found in his Writing and Difference, English translation, A Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1 978) . Chapter IX, pp. 251 -257 and Foucault 's text, 'A Preface to Transgression' , is to be found in his Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, English translation, D. Bouchard, (Ithaca: Cornell University P ress), Pt. I , Ch. l , pp.29-52. The discussion would also have to include, among many of his works. the important ' Sade' essay, by Maurice Blanchot. which appears in The Marquis de Sade: Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, Eugenie de Franval, and Other Writings, English translation, R. Seaver and A . Wainhouse (New York: Grove Press. 1 965), pp.37-72, as well as Pierre Klossowski's Sade My Neighbour, English translation, A. Lingis, ( Evanston: Northwestern University Press. 1 99 1 ), and his ' Nature as a Destructive Principle' . in The Marquis de Sade: The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings, English translation. A . Wainhouse and R. Seaver (New York: Grove Press , 1 966), pp.65-86. 2. Recall. that for Bataille, the experienced sense of transgression came largely from within, that is, from the intensified desire provoked and induced by the fearful taboo or prohibition. Nonetheless . the taboo or prohibition was itself initially imposed from without. 3. More strongly, the very terms which constitute universality itself-totality, the transcendental . the absolute, law, reason and identity-as an intelligible system or as a system of control, these are the terms which Sade is concerned to evade, to deconstruct, to dissimulate. 4. Summa Theologica I, Question 9 1 , article l ; Question 90, article l . 1 55 David Allison 5. Sade, Philosophy in the Bedroom, op. cit . . p. 354 6. Sade, Justine, op. cit . . p. 154 7. Sade, .Justine , p. 494 8. Here we see one of Sade's recurrent tactics: to contravene the universal law or premise by invoking the particular fact. The empir ical alone is real. The example of blasphemy should bring to mind the occasion for Sade's initial imprisonment: the invagination o f a crucifix and confessional wafers he performed upon a young provincial girl. The degree of r idicule he draws upon rule governance, however, is perhaps nowhere more evident than the comminatory set of rules devised by the 'society of the friends of crime' in the One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom, whereby human actions is 'governed ' or ' legislated': merely by the number of agents (storytellers. prostitutes, vil lains. homosexuals. hags, children) multiplied by their collective number of members and or ifices: this factor by the production and multiple exchange of their respective secretions and emissions. The society 's laws are but the temporary coincidence of the libertine's caprice, as is membership itself. 9. The model o f d ivinity operative in Sade (for example, when the narrator identifies himself with it) is also ironic, and largely patterned on Descartes' God of the Meditations-- for whom the divine truths were dependent on the divine will. What results from such a position and for God, so conceived, is deftly stated by Pierre Bayle, and quoted in Leibniz, in his Theodicy. paragraph 180: 'The consequence of this doctrine will be, that before God resolved upon creating the world he saw nothing better in virtue than in vice, and that his ideas did not show him that virtue was more worthy of his love than vice. That leaves no distinction between natural right and positive right; there will no longer be anything unalterable or inevitable in morals. ( . . . ) (Also) it opens the door to the most exaggerated Pyrrhonism: for it leads to the assertion that this proposition. three and three make six, is only true where and during the time when it pleases God: that it is perhaps false in some parts of the universe; and that perhaps it will be so among man in the coming year'. Leibniz continues his remarks in paragraph 1 86: 'Through this a rtifice, the eternal verities, which until the time of Descartes had been named an object of the 1 56 Sade's lfinerary of Transgression divine understanding, suddenly became an object of God's will. Now the acts of His will are free, therefore God is the free cause of the verities. That is the outcome of the matter. ( . . . ) But if the affirmation of necessary truths were actions of the will of the most perfect mind, these actions would be anything but free, for there is nothing to choose. ( . . . ) (And) that was preserving only the name of freedom' . In a letter to Malebranche, June 1 679, Leibniz states the reason for Descartes' ironical characterization of God: ' I am told that Descartes established so well the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, I fear that we are deceived by such beautiful worlds. For the God or perfect being of Descartes is not a God such as one imagines, and as one would wish, that is to say, just and wise, doing all things for the good of the creatures so far as is possible, but rather he is something approaching the God of Spinoza, that is to say, the principle of things, and a certain sovereign power called primitive Nature, which puts all in action, and does all that can be done; which has no will nor understanding, since according to Descartes he does not have the good for the object of his will, nor the true for the object of his understanding. For he did not wish that his God act according to some end, and it is for that reason that he excluded from philosophy the quest for final causes, under this clever pretext that we are not capable of knowing the purpose of God' (my emphases) . 1 0. Nietzsche would later articulate this state of personal dispossession in his doctrine of the 'Dionysian ' attitude in his Birth of Tragedy, and in his early essay, 'The Dionysian Worldview" . For an extended discussion of Dionysian 'dispossession ' , cf. D. Allison , 'Nietzsche Knows No Noumenon", in Why Nietzsche Now, Ed. D. O'Hara (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), pp.295-3 10 1 1 . Justine, p. 520. 1 2. Juliette, English translation, A. Wainhouse, (New York: Grove Press, 1 968), p. 525. 13. Justine, p. 6 1 1. 1 4. Ibid. , pp.687-88. 15. On July 27th. 1794, Sade was scheduled to be executed. The Jacobin bureaucrats, however, had misplaced his prison admission papers, so he could not be located by the bailiff and be brought to the guillotine by the execution detail. Twenty-one of his fellow prisoners were not so fortunate. 1 57 David Allison 1 6. G. Bataille, Eroticism, op. cit. Cf. esp. his Introduction, and Part One, 'Taboo and Transgression'. 1 7 . This reduction of the traditionally conceived 'natural' world to the domain of the formless, a domain without order, parallels the entire Cartesian project, whereby the Aristotelian account of nature-as informed-is reduced to that which, of itself, has no form, and is thereby precisely ' elemental': the reduction of all things to the celebrated 'wax' example in the Meditations . Since wax is an 'element' and ordinarily thought of as a ' thing', it has no proper ' form' at all, save the abstract property of extension. The Cartesian project, like Sade's, is to begin from the imagination, and to impose an entirely unnatural determination upon nature: for Descartes, this ' art' is precisely mathematics, his mathesis universa/is. For Sade, it is the reduction to the elementally formless, out of which desire will multiply its incarnations to infinity, in the ecstatic play of transgressive energy. 1 8 . In Justine, op. cit. , p. 1 87 . 1 9. Justine, pp. 49 1 , 695 . 158 Reading the Lack of the Body Reading the Lack of the Body: The Writing of the Marqu is de Sade Kathy Acker I am using this essay to do two things. To read a short passage from Philosophy in the Bedroom by the Marquis de Sade . To read one of his tales. The more that I write my own novels, the more it seems to me that to write is to read.

'Ifie 'Divine Sade eaitea 6y: '1Jeepal(9{p,rang S awfiney assistant eaitor: .filmy !Hans on PLI 'Warwic{Journa{ of Pfiifosopfiy 'University of 'Warwick. 1994 Pub l ished February 1994 © Deepak N a ra n g Sawhney fo r PL/ Warwic k J o u rna l of Ph i losophy, with the exceptio n of ' Reading the Lac k of the Body: The Wri t ing of the Marquis de Sade ' by Kathy Acker. Al l r ights reserved . Apart from any fair deal ing for the purposes of private study, resea rch , crit ic ism or review, as perm itted u nder the Copyright Act , no part of th is publ icat ion m ay be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system , o r transm itted i n a ny form o r i n a ny means electron ic , mechan ica l , photocopying or otherw ise_without pr ior written permiss ion of both the editor of th is edit ion and the author. Cover i l l ust rat ion , The Marquis de Sade, by B i lberste in . Cover des ign by Amy Hanson . ISBN l -897646-0 1l Br it ish L ibrary Cata logu ingin-Publ ication Data . A cata logue record for th is book is ava i lable fro m the Brit ish L ibrary. P ri nted by V & J System Pr inters Coventry 7 15428 i i CONTE NTS Acknowledgements A Manner of Thinking Deepak Narang Sawh ney Seven Mirrors of Sade: Sex, Death, CAPITAL and the Language of Monsters Stephen Pfo hl Sade and the Theatre An n ie Le Brun t ra ns lated by Just in Barton A Turning Point in the Sadean Novel : The Terror Luc ienne F ra ppier-Mazur Sade Contra the Supreme Being Ph i l i ppe Sol lers t ra ns lated by J usti n Barton and Amy Hanson Madame de Sade and Other Problems M arga ret Cros land Sade: Critique of Pure Fiction Cather ine C usset Sade's Itinerary of Transgression David Al l i son Reading the Lack of the Body: The Writing of the Marquis de Sade Kathy Acker Contributors List V 7 35 5 1 67 95 1 1 5 132 1 59 1 75 i i i iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First ly , many tha nks to the Ph i losophy Department at the Un ivers ity of Wa rwick fo r thei r continued support of PL/. In part icu lar, I would l i ke to recognise Nick Land , Keith Ansel l - Pea rson and Andrew Benjamin for the i r personal and profess iona l g uidance. Just in Barton deserves ample credit fo r h is ete rnal o pt imism and two excel lent translations that took nearly an eternity to perfect . A lso Matteo Mandar in i for his inspi red c ritic isms and iron fist . And M ichae l Carr fo r h i s eag le eyes and s ingu lar ab i l it ies when I needed the m . Special tha nks to N ick M idgley and Adrian Wi ld ing for a l l the behind the scenes work that no one re members is i m portant. Mostly I wou ld l i ke to acknowledge Amy Hanson . my assistant editor. co-consp i rato r and friend . We were partners in th is endeavou r from the very beg inn ing and The Divine Sade would not have come to fru it ion without her. F ina l ly . I wou ld l i ke to thank Sonia Momita fo r her love and support and for buying me The 120 Days of Sodom. V eaitea 6y '1Jeepaf(9{p,rang Sawliney PLI 'WarwiclJourna{ of Pliifosopliy The Divine Sade, the first compi lat ion of essays o n the M a rqu is d e Sade C 1 7 401 8 1 4) pub l i shed in Great Brita i n , i s a g round break ing and innovat ive vo lume . With contributors ra ng ing from Kathy Acker to Ph i l ippe So l le rs , The Divine Sade p resents an expans ive ph i loso ph ica l explorat ion of this c o m pel l ing fig ure. Fu rthermore , The Divine Sade exa m ines the h istorica l , l iterary , re l ig ious and theatr ica l framework of Sad e ' s work , and inc ludes t rans lat ions o f Ann ie L e Brun and Ph i l ippes So l lers ' essays prod uced specifica l ly fo r th i s i ssue . Kathy Acker Read ing the Lack of the Bpdy: The Writ i ng of the M arq u is de Sade David Al l i son Sad e ' s I t i nerary of Transgress io n Margaret Crosland Madame de Sade and Othe r Pro b lems Catherine Cusset Sade : C rit ique of Pu re F ict ion Lucienne FrappierMazur A Tu rn ing Point in the Sadean Nove l : The Terro r Annie Le Brun Sade and the Theatre Stephen Pfohl Seven M irro rs of Sad e : Sex, Death, CAP ITAL a n d the Lang uage of M onste rs Phi l ippe Sollers Sad e Contra the Supreme Be ing I S B N l -89 7646-0 1 l �'!LI