> He is actually the precursor of Freud in his writing down
> in creative terms the symptoms of a mental disease.

I don't buy this image of de Sade as a patient clinician chronicling the
extremes of human evil for the edification of future generations. That
implies a humane detachment; I don't think de Sade is about detachment. It's
like declaring that although Marx's view of the world is fundamentally
misguided and evil, all Marx himself was actually doing was showing us what
it would be like to have that view of the world - so that Marx would be the
"analyst", and marxists the "patients". Are sadists, then, the "patients" of
de Sade?

> I find difficult to believe that any among you really feel
> induced to behave in a sexual criminal way because of Sade's suggetsions.

I'm not attributing to de Sade's text the power to induce evil thoughts or
evil actions, although as an ideologist he does provide those intent on evil
with a rationale. Or to put it more strongly: as an ideologist, he provides
those intent on pleasure with a rationale for committing evil in the pursuit
of it.

> He might stimulate boredom, more than anything and produce actually those
> desired effects that are seen in Northern civilized countries like Sweden
> where the legalization
> of pornography (while attracting tourists from the less civilized
> countries ) produced an evident reduction
> in all the sex-related crimes.

The reason being that sex-related crimes such as the production of
pornography cease to be crimes when the production of pornography is
legalized. Oh, and it becomes even harder to get a conviction for rape,
since sexual violence becomes increasingly normalised (the juries have all
seen the pornography, they "know" that "no" means "yes"), so those
statistics go down too. If pornography really meant sexual freedom, the
first thing it would mean would be more rapists being caught and convicted;
that is, it would communicate as its first and paramount message a loathing
of rape, an imperative to respect the physical and sexual boundaries of
others, and a vigorous debunking of any and all attitudes that took such
boundaries lightly or argued that it was acceptable or even sexy to invade
them by force. That is: it would repudiate de Sade.

> I do not understand why all this bitterness against Sade. One might
suggest
> that this is caused by a
> hidden and maybe threatening sense to be aroused...by what he wrote.
> Let's say, unwillingly stimulated.....
>
> Can you put your hand on the fire that this is not the case?

I've read my way through Burroughs - I'm quite used to having my pulse
quickened one way or another. But so. So Sade is a manipulative writer who
gets at something that many if not all of us suffer from somewhere in the
recesses of our psyches. Well, Goebbels was pretty good at that too.  I
suppose you could argue that he was merely objectively demonstrating the
human propensity for responding to appeals to Race and Fatherland and
Crushing The Filthy Jew. And Ted Kaczinski's Unabomber manifesto should be
valued for showing us the unpleasant consequences of a certain way of
thinking about nature, society and the psychology of individual motivations.
And the people he blew up - well, not all of them died, and they weren't all
too hideously injured, and anyway doesn't the State do much worse things,
and how can you identify Kaczinski's *writing* with his *acts* anyway, don't
you see how crass and literalistic and puritannical and censorious that is,
and anyway those who hate Kaczinski and repudiate his ideas and his actions
are merely uncomfortable because he reminds them of their own hostility and
resentment towards the societies they live in...

- Dom



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