"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.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

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

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

Yes.

Have you read much de Sade?

[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."

[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.