The French word Jouissance derives from the verb jouir. Jouir means to “have pleasure in, to enjoy, to appreciate, or to savour.” The derived noun, jouissance, has three current meanings in French: it signifies “an extreme or deep pleasure;” it signifies “sexual orgasm;” and in law, it signifies “having the right to use something.” The word becomes relevant to cultural and literary studies through its usage by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) to signify the condition or bliss, arrival, merging with the other, which can be associated with orgasm (Clark, The Literary Encyclopedia). Jouissance, for Lacan,
36 “And if narration plays a primary role in sadistic orgies and easily awakens senses upon which flesh-and-blood objects cease to act, the reason is that these objects can be wholly attained only by their absence” (Beauvoir 32, italics mine). Moreover, “Sade’s originality seems to us to reside in his extremely firm claim to found man’s sovereignty upon a transcendent power of negation” (Blanchot 1966: 58).
is not a purely pleasurable experience but arises through augmenting sensation to a point of discomfort (as in the sexual act, where the cry of passion is at times indistinguishable from the cry of pain). For Lacan, on the other hand, jouissance seems to imply a desire to abolish the condition of lack to which we are condemned by our acceptance of the signs of the symbolic order in place of the Real.
Jouissance in communication against confined sexuality between the libertines can be manifested in Philosophy in the Boudoir. In the boudoir, the obscene dissertation by the master arouses Eugenie, involving her into a state of jouissance:
Madame de Saint-Ange—Make your dissertations upon me as much as you please.
Dolmance—’Tis Venus herself, embellished by the Graces.
Eugenie—What charms! delights! Let me drink them in with my eyes, let me cover them with my kisses. (PB 199)
To transgress the prohibitions which confine libertine sexuality primarily lies in the exclamation of licentious language, which leaves the pupil in extravagant pleasure.
“Pleasure has no end product, [and it] is thought of as an end in itself and is desired for its very extravagance” (Bataille 1992: 168). For Bataille, he keeps searching for the possibility of thinking about jouissance in the roué’s communication, of conceiving the
“impossible liberty” (Bataille 1985: 107) that Sade takes with his licentious language in his work.37 In both essays “Eroticism” in Death and Sensuality and “Sade” in Literature and Evil, Bataille puts such demand for this thought into practice, in the former with the
concept of sovereignty in the transgressive narrative and in the latter with an argument for Sade who reveals man as he really is in jail. Only by immersing oneself in jouissance is
37 The following excerpt from “Transgression” proves Bataille’s contention of jouissance in communication: “There exists no prohibition that cannot be transgressed. Often the transgression is permitted, often it is even prescribed…once a limited license has been allowed, unlimited urges towards violence may break forth” (Bataille 1992: 63-65).
Sade able to pen transgression when incarcerated.
In Sade’s fictional world, the language of jouissance sets the libertine free from the incarceration in sexuality and they are immune to a mental dishonor from an unjust indictment in society. The debauchee welcomes such transgression and inundates themselves with exultation. “One wishes everywhere to be fucked and whatever the part an engine perforates, one is made happy upon feeling it there” (PB 264). Madame de Saint-Ange’s irritating conviction arouses Eugenie’s emotional responses, which appears and reappears during the communication, which Bataille characterizes as ecstasy in non-knowledge: “Non-knowledge communicates ecstasy. Non-knowledge is anguish before all else. In anguish, there appears a nudity which puts one into ecstasy. Ecstasy only remains possible in the anguish of ecstasy. Obviously, ecstasy is in particular in the extreme surrender” (Bataille 1988: 52, my italics). This surrender in extremity shows that
moral codes are ignored or even destroyed by the roué. The debauchee unreservedly communicates with each other in a licentious tone. This narrative of jouissance in communication exalts the libertine into a state where extremity is highlighted in this force to keep arousing the debauchee.
During the libertine’s jubilant narrative, destruction, even murder, is welcomed, for such communication sublimates any possible deviation. In the pamphlet “Yet Another Effort:” “I address myself only to people capable of hearing me out, and they will read me without any danger” (PB 311), Bataille explicates this declaration as follows: “Thus we are nothing, neither you nor I, beside burning words which could pass from me to you, imprinted on a page: for I would only have lived in order to write them, and, if it is true that they are addressed to you, you will live from having had the strength to hear them”
(Bataille 1988: 94). The audacious nature of jouissance in the libertine’s communication finds its aesthetic manifestation in such process: “Let a simple philosopher introduce these new pupils that men are incapable of obtaining true notions of a being who does not
make his influence felt on one of our senses” (PB 304, emphasis mine). This narrative of jouissance affirms its aberrant force as a mode of sublimation.
For the libertine, what lies behind the narrative of jouissance indicates that their erotic sexuality is rooted not only in the language itself but in its “sublimation.” This
“sublimation” signifies that the focal point of jouissance in communication is not only to repulse conventional language use but to reconstruct the roué’s mindset. In other words, to go beyond constraints means that the narrative of jouissance sublimates the condemned state where the debauchee can enjoy an excessive pleasure and communicate with each other. Bataillean “non-knowledge” becomes “the thought from without” with which the libertine uses to signify their jubilant self in communication: “How sweet it is to gaze long upon the object of our desire, to live on in our desire, instead of dying by going the whole way, by yielding to the excessive violence of desire” (Bataille 1992: 141)! In Madame de Saint-Ange’s words, “Break your shackles at no matter what the cost. Fuck, in one word, fuck: ’twas for that you were brought into the world; no limits to your pleasure save those of your strength and will” (PB 219-20). The libertine rejects trammels and considers that the ultimate aim of all intellectual and artistic activities should be the annihilation of rational individual in an aesthetic, transformative act of jouissance during communication in terms of their licentious sexuality.
The language of jouissance in communication can aesthetically say everything that it is in fact not supposed to say. “Look sharp, Eugenie, mind, the serpent is about to disgorge its venom; fix your gaze upon the head of this sublime weapon; let your charms fly, ’tis the moment of your triumph” (PB 268). The moment of jouissance in gazing the
sexual organ for Eugenie is “the desire to consume, to annihilate, to make a bonfire of the resources, and the joy one finds in the burning, the fire and the ruin are what seem to him/her divine, sacred” (Bataille 1992: 185). Jouissance in communication allows the pupil to see a sexuality which is full of emotional responses when the language, at the
scene of jouissance, focuses on its licentious expression. At that moment, the roué in jouissance welcomes any aberrant communication. The communication between the libertines is affirmed by such pleasure in transgression. “Discourse affirms sexual pleasure and it, by inscribing into the linguistic realm the physical debauchery imagined and programmed by sexual pleasure, allows this debauchery to become a genuine
libertinage” (Henaff 70, italics added). An imagined, sublimated libertinage echoes the roué in jouissance and signifies the force of jouissance as an aesthetic value.
Jouissance in communication accelerates the libertine’s passion and gives them the force with which the roué can sublimate obscene dissertation. Eugenie’s education is an initiation into enjoyment of the libertine body through a practice of language in jouissance:
Madame de Saint-Ange—This capricious portion of our mind is so libertine nothing can restrain it; its greatest triumph, its most eminent delights come of exceeding all limits imposed on it
Eugenie—I adore the remark…Never could you conceive all the voluptuous ideas my brain has caressed…how much it is desired of my heart! (PB 232-33).
Bataille analyzes that this narrative of jouissance between the libertines will liberate an inexplicable desire by filling the mind with its aesthetic value: “The greater the beauty, the more it is befouled” (Bataille 1992: 145). The libertine enjoys the privilege of violating both epistemic norms and practical rules in sexuality. S/he maximizes every emotional response as it comes, and drowns the self with jouissance in a state of sublimity.
For the roué, there is no sublimity unless they are in jouissance: to sublimate means to philosophize, to dissertate, and to harangue; in short, to subject the self to a state of sublimity. By giving free rein to the communication in jouissance, the narrative of
jouissance liberates the enchantment of regulated disciplines and transgresses the limit in sexuality. “The forces which together work at destroying us find in us such a happy—and at times such violent complicities—that we cannot just simply turn away from them…But we communicate without anguish, full of joy, imagining not laying ourselves open to the movement” (Bataille 1988: 96-97, my italics). With overt dissertation, the libertine believes themselves to have reached depth, developing their erotic discourse in a state of mental discharge. According to Dolmance, “By God, what an imagination! Do you see this libertine discharge mentally, without anyone having touched her” (PB 288, italics original)? The narrative of jouissance exposes the diverse communication between the libertines, where the roué remains in ecstasy and repulses absurd virtue through the force of sublimation in jubilant narrative.
In such jubilant narrative, communication between the debauchees is fierce and complex, manifesting its force to keep arousing the roué even in a state of republics. The roué resumes this force as their life principle: “The communal aspect of life in republics always renders this vice more frequent in that form of society; but it is not dangerous”
(PB 326). The libertine is bestowed the freedom of unlimited commotion to savor the multitude of jouissance:
Without any doubt…What throws men out of their empty isolation and mingles them with unlimited movements—through which they communicate among themselves, rushing with great commotion like waves one to another—could only be the horror of this self. And this is why that agony assumes the multitude of spectators. (Bataille 1988: 97, italics added)
Bataille analyzes that jouissance in communication drives Eugenie towards an agony of commotion in an extreme disorder linked to the libertine’s value of vice in sublimation.
The sublimation of jouissance in communication can be summed up in Dolmance’s proclamation: “But what is the foundation of this sentiment [love]? Desire. What are this
sentiment’s consequences? Madness…Is it not to wish to linger in a burning fever which devours, consumes us, without affording us other than metaphysical joys, which bear such a likeness to the effects of madness” (PB 287). For the libertine, the burning fever in madness marks the narrative as an aesthetic discourse, which carries away the sense of horror.
The typical Sadeian rhythm of dissertation which accompanies orgy is put into practice by following pedagogically sound principles. The narrative of jouissance in the boudoir opens another territory in Sade’s writing because it not only inherits ars erotica but also carries obscenity into aesthetic manifestation with which the libertine tries to erect a system of libertinage in the sense of beauty through elevating any possible transgression connected to their jubilant communication. As Dolmance reminds Le Chevalier, “Let your principles weed it (remorse) out of you if you dread its sting. When you no longer believe evil anywhere exists, of what evil will you be able to repent” (PB 342)? That is, jouissance in communication is not only a kind of emotional responses but also a mode of aesthetic discourse. Intensity is produced not only by the quantity of the libertine’s experiences and the violence of circulatory movement, but by the narrative which is released in jouissance. The heating-up narrative of jouissance is thus carried out in various ways through the communication in sublimation. One of the roué’s concerns about sexuality is to forge deviation into a possible elevation through the narrative of jouissance in communication.
According to the above discussion, Philosophy in the Boudoir is strewn with the aesthetic value in the narrative of transgression as the force of sublimation. Reading Sade from this perspective replaces the conventional labels38 as a writer of horror or of sadism
38 As some critics term him, “Sade is a writer of many voices: self-contradictory, provocative, reassuring, revolutionary and scandalous” (Phillips 2001: 29).
with another interpretation, as is mentioned in Chapter One: “the libertine body as an erotic connoisseur.” Exceeding every canon of Western discourse and literature, the narrative of transgression in the boudoir is empowered and driven by the traditionally disgusting force—aesthetics in transgression. On the one hand, the libertine loses themselves deliberately in narrative; on the other hand, they are distanced from the objects at the same time, which signifies the force of sublimation in their transgressive narrative.
In this chapter I explicate why the narrative of transgression in the boudoir can be regarded as the force to sublimate the libertine in the sense of beauty by analyzing the following facets: “Sensuality in Blasphemy,” “Egotism in Destruction,” “Delight in Cruelty,” and “Jouissance in Communication.” I use Bataille’s erotic discourse to elaborate that the force of sublimation is inherent in the above facets. The transgressive narrative in the boudoir as an aesthetic manifestation enables the libertine to enjoy their licentious sensuality beyond every restraint. However, it’s just one level for the libertine to manifest their aesthetics of libertinage in Philosophy in the Boudoir. “Sade posits [literary] language as the source of erotic experience and [he] implies that an imaginary [transgression] organizes the relation of narrative to the body” (Frappier-Mazur 1996: 4, my italics). The next chapter “Extreme Pleasure in the Libertine Body” will further explain another level for the libertine in the boudoir to demonstrate their aesthetics of existence—ecstasy in transgression, revealing its aesthetic value in the sense of beauty.
Chapter Two
Extreme Pleasure in the Libertine Body
In Sade, sex is without any norm or intrinsic rule that might be formulated from its own nature.
—Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality
As is mentioned in the “Introduction,” this thesis tries to figure out how Philosophy in the Boudoir manifests Sadeian aesthetics of libertinage from two different levels:
“telling” (the narrative of transgression) and “showing” (the libertine body). In Chapter One, the narrative of transgression in the boudoir as an aesthetic discourse has been clarified from the following facets which can be regarded as the force to arouse the libertine’s emotional responses: “Sensuality in Blasphemy,” “Destruction in Egotism,”
“Delight in Cruelty,” and “Jouissance in Communication.” In this chapter, another level which manifests Sadeian aesthetics of libertinage in Philosophy in the Boudoir will be explained, that is, extreme pleasure in the libertine body.39 I will explicate how Sadeian libertine body in diverse combinations triggers the debauchee’s extreme pleasure, which manifests its aesthetic value. “The effort to make the libertine body totally visible, revealing its sexual workings, results in the multiplication of the body as delicious tableaux” (Judovitz 157, emphasis original), which can affirm its diversity as an artistic
manifestation in a mode of objet d’art. In the first section I will explicate how the roué uses their libertine technologies of the self to attain a state of perfection and to regard the body as erotic objet d’art, which consists of its artistic qualities in transgression. In the
39 “The erotic code consists of units which have been carefully determined and named by Sade himself.
The minimal unit is the posture; it is the smallest combination that can be imagined. Combined, postures compose a unit of higher rank, the operation” (Barthes 1989: 28, italics original). “For the libertines, Sade would invent a body made to the measure of the fantasies poured forth by the new order of things. To achieve this goal, he would submit that body to a strict process of quartering, in quartering’s double sense of geometrical operation, a game of programmable variations and combinations” (Henaff 20, my italics).
Weiss pinpoints that “the Sadeian Master always considers the multiplication of bodies, and aims at eliminating consideration of the ‘for-the-Other’ by manifesting a pure ‘for-Oneself’” (qtd. in Allison etc.
206, emphasis original).
second section I will elaborate that when beholding erotic objet d’art the debauchee appreciates any diverse combinations of the libertine body, which amplifies its aesthetic value in diverse posture. In the last section I will apply Foucault’s notion “transgression in sexuality”40 to explain that the roué signifies their aesthetics of existence—ecstasy in transgression.
1. Perfection through Libertine Technologies of the Self