SADE-OMIZING SEXUALITY: DECONSTRUCTING THE GENDER BINARY THROUGH THE SADIAN SEXUAL PREDATOR by Jennifer Lee Lawrence BA, West Virginia University, 2001 MA, West Virginia University, 2004 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2013 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Jennifer Lee Lawrence It was defended on March 22, 2013 and approved by Giuseppina Mecchia, PhD, Associate Professor, French and Italian Clark Muenzer, PhD, Associate Professor, German Francesca Savoia, PhD, Professor, French and Italian Dissertation Advisor: Todd Reeser, PhD, Professor, French and Italian ii Copyright © by Jennifer Lee Lawrence 2013 iii SADE-OMIZING SEXUALITY: DECONSTRUCTING THE GENDER BINARY THROUGH THE SADIAN SEXUAL PREDATOR Jennifer Lee Lawrence, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2013 The Marquis de Sade became famous, or infamous depending on one’s perspective, for the ferocious depictions of sexual predation which are found throughout his literary works, and consequently, the character of the sexual predator is indispensable to understanding the author’s philosophical standpoint. For Sade, the laws of nature determine the sex of the individual, but they also require him or her to satisfy a set of physical needs which reject the masculine/feminine binary as often as they embrace it. This blurring of the lines between masculinity and femininity is thus characteristic of the Sadian sexual predator who must constantly seek satisfaction for his needs regardless of social and religious constraints on his behavior and on the sex of his victim. When examining the myriad variations on this character in Sade’s work, it becomes clear that he has transferred the natural law of “survival of the fittest” from a purely physical to a highly intellectual concept and, in so doing, has created a predator who uses mental as well as physical strength to dominate his victim. I, therefore, propose that masculinity mixes fluidly with femininity when examined through the lens of the predator and that by investigating the hierarchy of predator versus prey, the mutability of gender at both extremes of the predatory relationship, and the description of specific acts of predation, it is possible to deconstruct the iv gender differences through the strict adherence to the laws of nature observed by Sade’s sexual predators. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE .................................................................................................................................. VII I. INTRODUCTION — READING AS PREDATION: WHY DO A GENDERED READING OF SADE? ................................................................................................................. 1 II. NATURAL LAW VERSUS THE LAWS OF NATURE: THE CORRUPTION OF PURITY AND THE REVERSAL OF GOOD AND EVIL ........................................................ 22 III. DEFINING THE PREDATOR: PRECURSORS AND PRETERNATURALISM ............................................................................................................ 48 IV. POWER PLAYS: ESTABLISHING FLUIDITY THROUGH THE PREDATOR/PREY RELATIONSHIP ....................................................................................................................... 111 V. BODIES IN MOTION: SADE'S PORTRAYAL OF THE DE-SEXED BODY .......... 154 VI. CONCLUSION — DEGENDERING THE PREDATOR: RESULTS AND REPERCUSSIONS ................................................................................................................... 193 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 205 vi PREFACE First, I would like to thank my committee members for their time, encouragement, and expertise throughout the writing process. Very special thanks go to Dr. Todd Reeser for his kindness and guidance over the course of this project. I could not have hoped for a better chairperson. Second, I am grateful for the support of many friends and family members but especially to Daniel Ferreras, Justin Swettlen, and Joshua Mason for their willingness to talk through my ideas. In addition to my biological family, I have to thank my dance family for their support and encouragement. Finally, I dedicate this work to the memory of my late brother-in-law, Gary Smolnik, Jr., whose love of learning and quiet courage I will always admire. vii I. INTRODUCTION — READING AS PREDATION: WHY DO A GENDERED READING OF SADE? The relationship between gender and sex is both constant and inconstant: constant through the existence of the bind that connects the two, for there is always a relationship even when it is antithetical, but inconstant in the application and expression of this connection. In recent years with the rise of feminism and the resulting shift in traditional social roles and responsibilities, the possibility of something other than a binary, male versus female, construction takes the fore. The tumultuous evolution of gender from a binary relationship in which sex and gender are tightly bound to an aggregate system that distances the physical sex of the body from the gendered behavior of the individual allows for a degendering of both behavior and the sexed body by redefining the conceptions of both sex and gender. While the shift from a binary to a fluid construction of gender, from a dependence to an independence, continues to be hotly debated by scientists and scholars alike, there has been remarkable progress on both fronts. From the performance-oriented Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990) by Judith Butler1 to the scientific and medical approach taken by Anne Fausto-Sterling in Sexing the Body (2000),2 gender has ceased to be a clear-cut sexual divide. Disagreement about the 1 Butler defines both sex and gender as a construct. She posits that gender remains open to constant interpretation and can be redefined through performance. 2 As a biologist by trade, Fausto-Sterling discusses the scientific implications of intersexuality and the difference between biological, sexual difference and gender. 1 qualities and definitions of gender being the rule rather than the exception has led to a situation in which the indefinability of the concept has become its only common denominator. Its amorphous nature can be seen as both expanding and limiting the idea of gender; no longer can it be said that there are two genders, the masculine and the feminine, but instead the term itself has been opened up to include multiple definitions that are unrelated to the biological divide. While gender fluidity as a concept has only come into popular consciousness in the last forty years, instances of its practice have always existed; beings who were biologically female but displayed male behaviors, such as Amazons, and those who were biologically male but displayed female behaviors, such as the dandy, stand as prototypes for the modern confusion surrounding the definition of gender. Despite the almost constant apparition of individual examples of gender bending, however, the construction of gender fluidity (or the deconstruction of gender) is most prominently situated in the late 20th and early 21st century. If gender fluidity is a relatively recent cultural development, why then should its presence be sought out and its implications weighed in the 18th century writings of Donatien Alphonse- François de Sade? The answer to this question lies not only in Sade’s depiction of gender and sex but in the common critical approach categorizing his work as pornographic and/or misogynistic, with little or no value beyond that of titillating the sexual desire of the reader. The works of the Marquis de Sade are cited by modern critics as both philosophy and pornography: Dworkin demonizes Sade's work as pornography (70-7), Airaksinen considers Sade a successful philosopher but a failed novelist (5), Klossowski, on the other hand, finds the truth of Sade's philosophy only through his fiction (Neighbor 58), Bloch presents Sade both as a writer of pornography and as capable of transcending the genre but persists in describing his works as 2 "repugnant and repulsive and repellent to any person save the most degenerate libertine" (212-13), and Carter and Frappier-Mazur acknowledge both sides of Sade's work, but from a feminist perspective. Michel Foucault points out that Sade takes a novel approach to erotic literature by creating a universe stabilized only by desire within which the structure of power is entirely insulated from reality. In this way, the originality of Sade's work precludes its categorization as strictly pornography or philosophy . Foucault explains: Dire la vérité, ça veut dire pour Sade, établir le désir, le fantasme, l'imagination érotique, dans un rapport à la vérité qui soit tel qu'il n'y aura plus pour le désir aucun principe de réalité capable de s'opposer à lui, capable de lui dire non, capable de lui dire il y a des choses que tu n'atteindras pas, capable de lui dire, 'tu te trompes; tu n'es qu'un fantasme et imagination.'3 (Sade) As Foucault explains, desire in the Sadian universe cannot be disrupted by values from the outside. By putting the sexual desires and fantasies of the individual on display as the "truth" of his narration, Sade makes them the organizing principle of both his narrative universe and his over-arching philosophy. As described by Foucault, the power of