***** Ritual
Law, no. Protocol, yes. The most libertarian of writers wants Ceremony, Party, Rite, Discourse. In the Sadian scene there is someone "commanding the discharges, prescribing substitutions, and presiding over the whole order of the orgies"; there is someone (but no more than "someone") who makes up the program, traces the perspective....This is the opposite of the dull "_partouze_" where everyone wants to keep his "freedom," immediatize his desires. The rite, from _elsewhere_, but no _person_, is here imposed upon ejaculation. It appears that this is what separates the Sadian text from other transgressions (the drug trip, for example)....
(Roland Barthes, _Sade/Fourier/Loyola_, trans. Richard Miller, Berkeley: U of California P, 1976, p. 167) *****
***** The Principle of Tact
The Marquise de Sade...having asked the imprisoned Marquis to have his dirty linen sent out to her (knowing the Marquise, for what reason other than to have it washed?), Sade pretends to see in her request another, properly Sadian, motive: "Charming creature, you want my dirty linen, my old linen? Do you know, that is complete tact? you see how I sense the value of things. Listen, my angel, I have every wish in the world to satisfy you in this matter, because you know the respect I have for tastes, for fantasies: however baroque they may be, I find them all respectable...because one is not the master of them, and because the most singular and bizarre of them, when well analyzed, always depends on a principle of tact."
Of course, Sade can be read as a plan of violence; however, he can also be read (and this is what he recommends us to do) _according to a principle of tact_. Sadian tact is not a class product, an attribute of civilization, a style of culture. It is a power of analysis and a means of ejaculation: analysis and ejaculation join together to produce an exaltation that is unknown in our societies and which constitutes therefore the most formidable of utopias....
(Roland Barthes, _Sade/Fourier/Loyola_, trans. Richard Miller, Berkeley: U of California P, 1976, pp. 170-1) *****
Yoshie