"about", part 2

[sophiaserpentia]

I'm still a bit mildly stunned by the moment yesterday of fully grokking, as if all at once, that the real essence of the writings of the Marquis de Sade was not sexual deviation, but the rich doing whatever they want to poor people without any sort of consequence or accountability. (Well, okay, I was helped along to this epiphany by Grant Morrison.)

It is fascinating that the class aspect of these seminal writings rarely ever comes up at all in modern discourse about sadomasochism. Not surprising, but fascinating.

Comments

[lassiter.livejournal.com]

Yes indeed. He sets up a complex tableau of who is doing what to whom (usually archbishops, vicars, or rich lords doing horrid things to servants or street urchins_, and then while every one is pumping away, they deliver 20-30 page long soliloquies on why it is just and proper that those with power do whatever the heck they want to with the powerless, for such is God's will, etc. Pointed and vicious satire though it be, a single 100-page novel would have sufficed to get the point across.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I feel like I'm years late to this party. But I don't honestly think about Sade very often.

[kellcrow7.livejournal.com]

And the silly truth of it was, De Sade vastly preferred the company of the urchins and servants, to that of his contemporaries.
For which I can't say I blame him.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Robert Anton Wilson repeatedly mentioned that aspect in discussions of Sade.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Hmm, it's been a while since I've read either.

[ankh-f-n-khonsu.livejournal.com]

Yes.

Have you read much de Sade?

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say I've read much. I read The Bedroom Philosophers and pieces of other of his writings a long time ago.

[ankh-f-n-khonsu.livejournal.com]

In that case, if you're interested in delving further into his philosophy, I highly recommend Francine du Plessix Gray's At Home with the Marquis de Sade: A Life.

[lapidus-93.livejournal.com]

I think that it is probably more realistic to take his writings as most people do at first blush, that is as motivated by classically "sadistic" sexual impulses. This is my reaction upon reading something like "Philosophy in The Bedroom."

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Well... I'm beginning to wonder to what extent sadism and class/race privilege are intertwined. To what extent do we fail to fully explicate the nature of sadism if we leave out consideration of privilege?

And bear in mind I draw a distinction between someone who tops during rough sex and someone who takes actual delight in seeing someone suffer.

[usha93.livejournal.com]

Before reading through the responses, I nodded my head wisely, agreeing that the class aspect was very rarely noted.

Then -- ohh! -- I realized the statement was intended as an indication of Sade's "exposing" this aspect through his writings about nasty Bishops and such, and not as an indictment of Sade's own way of life.

See, the man himself actually fits the description: wealthy nobleman who picked up young prostitutes and other poor low-class women and men, and did whatever he wanted, with and to them, without consequence or accountability...until he managed to piss off his peers, the other wealthy, high-class, socially protected sorts. That's what led to his imprisonment.

It always surprises me that so many folks seem to view him as some sort of revolutionary against the system -- he was the system.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

You are right. I do not see him as a revolutionary at all. Although in a way he did a service to posterity by recording the kinds of things that were happening that no one talked about.

Steven Pinker made some interesting points about the history of violence and the evolution of non-violence in human thought. People today have a hard time imagining just how violent places like London or Paris were during the late Medieval period, how violent the Romans and Mongols and Aztecs actually were, and how drastic the change was from then to now.

[ankh-f-n-khonsu.livejournal.com]

uhhh... I think that's a rather superficial reading of what he was trying to do and and what he did, as well as totally dismissive of the social milieu he was born into.

To say de Sade wasn't any sort of revolutionary seems socio-historically unreasonable.