Return of the Great Mother: Rousseau vs. Sade
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper." --"Return of the Great Mother: Rousseau vs. Sade" (1990) by Camille Paglia "Satirizing Rousseau, point by point, [Marquis de Sade] prefigures the theories of aggression in Darwin, Nietzsche, and Freud." --"Return of the Great Mother: Rousseau vs. Sade" (1990) by Camille Paglia "The Enlightenment, as Peter Gay asserts, used pagan scientism to free European culture from Judeo-Christian theology. (The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (New York, 1966). The first volume is called “The Rise of Modern Paganism.” Gay seems to use “pagan” as a synonym for what I call Apollonian, only half of my theory of paganism.)" --"Return of the Great Mother: Rousseau vs. Sade" (1990) by Camille Paglia "Rousseau's mother nature is Christian Madonna, lovingly enfolding her infant son. Sade's mother nature is pagan cannibal, her dragon jaws dripping sperm and spittle."--"Return of the Great Mother: Rousseau vs. Sade" (1990) by Camille Paglia |
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"Return of the Great Mother: Rousseau vs. Sade" is the 8th chapter of Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae.
Paglia argues that Sade can be best understood as a satirist, responding "point by point" to Rousseau's claims that society inhibits and corrupts mankind's innate goodness: Paglia notes that Sade wrote in the aftermath of the French Revolution, when Rousseauist Jacobins instituted the bloody Reign of Terror and Rousseau's predictions were brutally disproved. "Simply follow nature, Rousseau declares. Sade, laughing grimly, agrees." (Paglia (1990), p. 235)
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