Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 13:16:53 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: The Misfortunes of Virtue (was Re: M-TH: Re: ethics and intentions)



Yoshie, you have been hanging out in the English dept too long. It's
starting to rot your brain.

--jks

On Thu, 26 Feb 1998, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

> Doug asked:
> >Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> >
> >>Morality depends on (and incites) its negation. Without immorality, what's
> >>the meaning of morality? Under communism, there shall be neither Justine
> >>nor Juliette.
> >
> >Will there be no kinky sex at all under communism?
> 
> I almost expected you to ask this question! (Try and surprise me
> sometimes.) The game of possession and dispossession (or trust and
> surrender) in sexual relations is likely to continue, for all I know, but
> it will be thought of as playful, not kinky, probably. So there, you won't
> get bored.
> 
> I don't subscribe to the position Justin attributes to me, by the way. My
> point was that sadism (not the game of trust and surrender) arises out of
> and depends on the following conditions:
> 
> (1) private virtues of individuals (like Justine) exist merely to be
> outraged in private and public.
> 
> (2) public morality (universal moral principles, discourse of natural
> rights, etc.) depends on private immorality (in the civil society) to
> perpetuate and legitimate its existence as "idle fantasies"; in turn, such
> "idle fantasies" serve to protect the social relations that give rise to
> exploitation and violation of human beings.
> 
> (3) stories of systematically randam violations of private virtues (like
> that of Justine) offer themselves as pornography that vicariously satisfies
> our "repressed" desire for transgressions of public morality. Our
> "repressed" desire, by the way, is not necessarily inherent in humanity; to
> the contrary, repression and prohibition, more likely than not, implant the
> desire to be repressed.
> 
> (4) pornography of outraged private virtues makes us desire not only "idle
> fantasies" of universal moral principles and bourgeois rights but also Law
> & Order in practice.
> 
> In my view, without public morality and its systematically random negation
> (and the social relations that give rise to and are protected by them),
> there shall be no desire for and pleasure of crime to be had (by the likes
> of Juliette). Sadism is hard work (as de Sade makes that clear), and it
> will be simply tedious to practice it without the payoff of pleasurable
> transgressions. As de Sade says, "There is a kind of pleasure which comes
> from sacrilege or the profanation of the objects offered us for worship."
> No object for worship, no sacrilege.
> 
> Yoshie
> 
> P.S. This is my post-Foucauldian take on Mark Jones' comment: "There cannot
> be sadism in a world where the distinction between public and private, ie
> the civil society, has been effaced. That, BTW, was de Sade's ENTIRE
> POINT."
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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