Metaphors of Nature: Vivisection and Pornography--The Manichean Machine

a s " c o n n a t u r a l , " o r " w i t h n a t u r e , " w i t h a n o t h e r c r e a t u r e . T h e l a t t e r i s e x e m p l i f i e d p e r t i n e n t l y b y t h e c h i l d i n t h e w o m b , w h e r e t w o c r e a t u r e s k n o w 1 8 3 B e t w e e n t h e S p e c i e s each other as one.25 An epistemology is rooted in biology: "The certainty of the flesh ... is the foundation of all certainty...." An idea expressed as "biological wisdom" in Terrence DesPres' book, The Survivor, becomes for this century the necessary thread leading us out of the moral debauchery of experimental science as practiced in the concentration camps. It is this biological wisdom "flesh" "matter" which became for Descartes the reason for doubt. Matter is for him a Manichean evil, deceptive and illusory: Descartes, the adult and philosopher, postulates to "doubt sensible things because they have deceived us," and it is in this connection noteworthy that in French the word det;u has the double meaning of "deceived" and "disappointed." The certainty of the flesh which is the foundation of all certainty had to be conjured away because it was here where the terror and pain of abandonment lurked.26 The combination of res cogito and the world as machine fueled by the gnostic aversion to nature and sex erupted into what Stern calls a "pubescent Manicheanism which pervades so much of the nineteenth century...."27 The modern explosion of sadistic pornography is often traced to the classical Christian view of human sexuality. However, the era of theological combat with sexuality in the Middle Ages witnessed the creation of courtly love, the elevation of woman, and the love songs of the troubadors, not sadistic pornography. Debauchery has existed before as overindulgence by over­ pampered classes; lewdness, bawdiness (Chaucer), discomfort with sexuality, embarrassment at God's folly (Erasmus), erotic wit (The Decameron), and erotic celebration (The Song of Songs) but nothing like the literature of the Marquis de Sade has existed before. We witness here the steady transformation of eros into thanatos. Like Jack the Ripper, the Marquis de Sade is an index of a modern mental construct. Gnosticism is a contributing factor to this mentality but not a causative one. The difference in worldview is, as Henry Adams described it, between the Virgin and the Dynamo the first symbolizing a negativity toward sex, but embodying a life force in the image of the suffering mother reaching into the layers of connatural knowledge; the other a machine, a symbol of power, unfleshed, unsuffering. The triumph of total mastery, except for the institution of slavery, exists in few places. In the modern world the vivisection laboratory is one place. "Here," as Elizabeth Blackwell wrote, "the student becomes familiar with the use of gags, straps, screws, and all the paraphernalia of ingenious instruments invented for overpowering the resistance of the living creature."2B The world of pornocracy is another. This word, created by Stephen Marcus in The Other Victorians, describes the pornographic world of male fantasy, where women are totally compliant and resistance to the masculine will is unknown.29 The paraphernalia for overpowering is often similar, if not in detail then in effectual models for overcoming resistance. There are also stereotaxic devices and rape racks for women. De Sade believed that nature was vicious and that he received his obsessions from nature. He exulted in crime. Nature knows no such models as de Sade describes, but the modern world does in its admiration for objective cognition. De Sade was at all times, even in the sexual act, the complete investigator, himself as object, objective, himself looking at himself as object looking at his partners as objects. Social space between himself and others did not exist. Flagellation was an expression of abhorrence; it was also a requirement for reification. De Sade whipped and harried flesh as the only means available to him to verify its existence: The male aggression of the Sadist hero is never softened by the usual transformation of the body into flesh. He never, for an instant, loses himself in his animal nature; he remains so lucid, so cerebral, that philosophic discourse, far from dampening his ardor, acts as an aphrodisiac. We see how desire and pleasure explode in furious attacks upon this cold, tense body, proof against all enchantment. They do not constitute a living experience within the framework of the subject's psychophysiological unity . The curse which weighed upon Sade was this "autism" which prevented him from ever forgetting himself or being genuinely aware of the reality of the other person ....Sade needed deviations to give to this sexuality a meaning which lurked in it without ever managing to achieve fulfillment, an escape from consciousness in his flesh, an understanding of the other person as consciousness through the flesh.30 Between !he Species 184 T h i s f l e s h k n o w l e d g e i n s e x u a l u n i o n i s a n o t h e r f o r m o f c o n n a t u r a l k n o w l e d g e , t h e b e i n g w i t h a n o t h e r c r e a t u r e . E m p a t h y w a s h a r r i e d f r o m t h e s t a g e o f W e s t e r n c o g n i t i o n , d e r i d e d a s f e m a l e b y t h e r e q u i r e m e n t s o f i d e o l o g i c a l c r u e l t y a n d t h e d i a l e c t i c s o f p o w e r a n d s c i e n c e . " T h e w i l l t o i n t e l l e c t u a l i t y " w a s , a s B a c h e l a r d w o u l d d e s c r i b e i t , " i m p u r e a t i t s s o u r c e . " 3 1