"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

[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.