>De Sade would have us
>sympathise with the rapist if he were caught and punished, and would make us
>indignant with those responsible for his punishment for committing brutal
>acts for some other purpose than pleasure (or for disguising, to themselves
>and others, the pleasure they actually receive from the commission of brutal
>acts). At least, he would say, the rapist is a) honest with himself, and b)
>following natural rather than unnatural (i.e. moralising) impulses. To which
>I would say: fuck "nature" (this is perhaps why I am also not an
>animal-lover). Or: you believe in *that* crock of Romantic shit?
Again Dom, I think you've missed the point...was Sade looking for
empathy? Hard to imagine. What about the contradictions? Or are they
to be passed over, willynilly?
One has to remember that One Hundred Days of Sodom, written during the
French Revolution, has been described as the "first full expression of
the horror of liberty".
Is nature really a crock of romantic shit? I think it's about to assert
its primacy; unless you're with those who believe that climate change is
an invention of anti-business pinko scientists.
But, seriously, and to move the subject on a bit from tedious argufying
on one point, what do you think of Genet? Do you level the same
accusations there? Certainly a wanker, but perhaps too literally for the
abuse to have any point. Funeral Rites, say, is an unabashed celebration
of the eroticism of Nazism, in which the ultimate expression of sexuality
is imagined as death. It is also the book which contains one of my
favourite phrases of Genet, and one I take as a basis for a human
morality: in discussing murder, he cites it as an absolute crime, and
says "one cannot multiply absolutes". Which statement makes considering,
say, the Holocaust a dizzying exercise.
Best
Alison
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