Session 9: Cruel Sexualities?
6th Global Conference
Tuesday 10th November – Thursday 12th November 2009
Salzburg, Austria
“’I simply am not there’”: Sadism and (the lack of?) Identity in Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho
Sabrina Sahli
English Department, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Sadism is commonly assumed to be differing from the norm. Ironically, Ellie Ragland-Sullivan’s, Lacanian, definition of a sadistic subject is that, failing to complete the Oedipus complex and thus stuck in a state of disavowal of castration, he/she „believes he/she is the phallus, the object of desire that can fill the Other’s lack and thus speaks the word of law“ (241). Thus, the perverse subject probably tries harder to become part of society than the ‘normal’ subjects. However, this paper argues that the relationship between the perverse subject and society is more complicated: for him/her, perversion is a way to act out his/her hatred for the Other, in this case the Symbolic order, as will be shown by means of the example of Bret Easton Ellis’ “American Psycho”.
Due to sadism’s relation to the invocation drive, the perverse subject conceives of him-/herself as being the instrument by which the Other can hear and make itself heard. This accounts for the protagonist’s (Patrick Bateman’s) desperate need to be part of the society in which he lives, which in this case may be considered equal to the Symbolic order. At the same time, precisely because of his perversion and the ensuing incomplete Oedipus complex, he fails to undergo a complete subjectivation, a fact that causes his hatred for the obviously lacking Other, as it fails to incorporate subjects like him. By means of torturing and/or killing representatives of this society, he can act out this hatred.
Proposing a reading of “American Psycho” grounded in Lacanian psychoanalysis, this paper shows how this conception of perversion can serve as a useful analytical tool to understand how the social and the private – sexual – space interlink.
This paper should not take more than 20 minutes, and, if possible, an overhead projector would be useful.
Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)
Sade’s Doctrine of Destructive Creation
Caleb Heldt
Department of Philosophy, University of Warwick, Coventry, England, United Kingdom
Within human activity there exists an indelible drive to create, and this is of course not limited to man’s material existence, in his engagements with worked matter, but extends to interpersonal relations as well. Perhaps the most fundamental of these relations is that which subsists between persons in the sexual act, namely procreation. But the sexual act’s creative potential is not bound by reproduction alone, and this is testified to by the provocative interpretation of sexual activity as put forward by the Marquis de Sade who avidly rejects that the sexual act’s productive possibilities are ultimately procreative. He likewise rejects that sex should in any way be associated with love, which posits the Other as pure subjectivity and as such places that Other in a preferential position in relation to oneself. Indeed, for Sade the Other’s subjectivity must be denied; that is, she must be reduced to pure objecthood. So what underlies this callous refusal of the Other’s subjectivity in Sade’s eroticism? What is at stake? What does he fear losing by affirming the Other’s subjectivity rather than denying it? It is not freedom, as is commonly believed, at least not in the sense in which it has been so vaguely conceived by Sade’s interpreters in the past. Rather, it is the ability to create in its most purified form. It is not man impressing his desires on canvas or stone or wood, but on the human form itself. For Sade, the sexual act is the medium par excellence in which man can express his insatiable, and all but inexplicable, desire to create.
Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)
The Reading of Sade in French Philosophy: On Sexual Enjoyment, Ttransgression of Taboos and Identity
Lode Lauwaert
Higher Institute of Philosophy, Leuven, Belgium
It is known that the medical and psychological thinking in 19th and 20th century was interested in the novels of Marquis de Sade. But it is quite obvious that some fifty years later a lot of French philosophers also were interested in Sade. The question of course is why Sade can still be meaningful today in contemporary philosophy. Or, in other words: which philosophical question can originally be answered or explored by a accurate reading of Sade?
In our presentation we will focus on the readings of Sade by Bataille and Blanchot because these first interpretations of Sade are less known than those of for example Lacan and Deleuze. We will try to argue that it still can be meaningful to read them.
In the first part of our presentation we will try to answer the very naïve question: how did Bataille and Blanchot read Sade? This part is meant as a short summary of their philosophical readings.
In the second part we will argue that these philosophical readings of Sade can open some new perspectives in psychology. More specific: Bataille posed that in Sade nature and reason are very closely linked. This idea has some important consequences for the clinical practice of both cognitive psychology and psychoanalysis.
In the third part we will argue that Bataille and Blanchot read Sade because they were interested in the nature of sexual enjoyment. They used Sade in a hermeneutical and phenomenological way: with Sade they want to clarify some hidden aspects of sexual enjoyment. We will argue that sadistic enjoyment can learn us something about: the relation between sexual enjoyment and the transgression of taboos; the role of mental and emotional activity in sexual enjoyment; the link between sexuality and the constitution of identity.
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