Dear Peter,

of course, it is only a matter of ideology.
De Sade's words in that self-apology states the right of men to decide for
themselves.
I do not think that at his time the state did better and De Sade's idea of
violence is no less a rape
that those acted during and in spite of the French Enlightment and
Revolution.
A change in a nation ethics always implies a rape (of previous value) and
in a way De Sade was persecuted not only for his impudent use of obscenity
but because he threatened some value (decency).

I like the Philosophy of the Boudoir not because it is licentious but
because it contains
the germs of both the anarchist thinking which was rather useful to our
recent xxth history and the exact mirror of our decaying civilization.

I do not regard De Sade's work as a pornographic. I read it metaphorically
and
see it as arethorical tool for reflection.
I think to be without De Sade's theorization it would be to be impoverished
in a way.
He is another piece in the Western collage of irriverentism, started with
the satirical writers,
Catullo, Marziale, Boccaccio (no less pornographic and offensive and
sometimes even macabre),
Chaucer, Rabelais, etc. (with all their counter-morality, which also serves
to celebrate the Church & State's
Ones in
If I remember well - what Barthes admires in De Sade is the ability to
transform into rules his own complex erotic codes, a sort of "arbre du
crime", meaning that he was able to organize it into a text, into a poetics.
I ask you: until what age would you filter the access to De Sade's writings
to students?

( I myself am I marxist-moralist who makes students study Brecht , Verga,
Dante (civil literature) but my favoured authors are Beckett and Jonesco).

Erminia

----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Riley <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, August 26, 2000 12:21 PM
Subject: Re: De Sade's manners of thinking


> But, erminia, isn't that much the same as saying "I've got to rape people,
> I can't help it. Authoritarian laws  try to suppress my freedom."   What's
> needed is understanding, rather than emulation.  I don't on the whole
> believe that people have no choice.
>
> /Peter
>
>
>
>
>



%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%