Without End: Sade’s Critique of Reason

225 Pages·2017·1.334 MB·English

by  William S. Allen

Without End
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Without End
S ade’s Critique of Reason
William S. Allen
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc
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Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2018
© William S. Allen, 2018
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accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-i n-Publication Data
Names: Allen, William S., 1971– author.
Title: Without end : Sade’s critique of reason / William S. Allen.
Description: New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2017025594 (print) | LCCN 2017043447 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781501337611 (ePub) | ISBN 9781501337598 (ePDF) |
ISBN 9781501337581 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Sade, marquis de, 1740–1814 -- Criticism and interpretation. |
Sade, marquis de, 1740–1814 – Philosophy. | Philosophy in literature.
Classifi cation: LCC PQ2063.S3 (ebook) | LCC PQ2063.S3 A897 2017 (print) |
DDC 843/.6 – dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017025594
ISBN : HB 978-1-5013-3758-1
ePub: 978-1-5013-3761-1
e PDF : 978-1-5013-3759-8
Cover design: Daniel Benneworth-Gray
Cover image © Kim Kulim
Typeset by Refi neCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
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Diderot: You agree to my extinguishing our sun?
D’Alembert: All the more willingly since it won’t be the fi rst to be extinguished.
Diderot, L e Rêve de d’Alembert
What is a monster? A being whose duration is incompatible with the
subsisting order.
Diderot, É léments de physiologie
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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction: Realism, Imagination and Desire 1
1 Turmoil: Adorno’s Literal Reading 27
2 Intoxication: Th e Nature of Infl uence 51
3 Hors- la-loi : Blanchot and the Revolution 79
4 Disorientation: Th e Conditions of Abstraction 103
5 Praxis: Crime and History 129
6 Resistance: Forms Without End 155
Notes 179
Further Reading 201
Index 205
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Acknowledgements
An earlier version of chapter one previously appeared as ‘Dialectics in Turmoil:
Adorno’s Literal Reading of Sade’, in Angelaki 22.4 (2017), I am grateful to the
Taylor and Francis Group for their permission to reprint it here. Some remarks
at the beginning of chapter four have appeared in a glossary entry on ‘Disaster’
in U nderstanding Blanchot, Understanding Modernism , ed. Christopher
Langlois (Bloomsbury, 2018). I would also like to express my sincere thanks to
Kulim Kim and the Arario Gallery (Seoul) for their permission to use an image
of his painting Death of Sun 1 (1964) on the cover of this book, and fi nally, my
warmest appreciation to Patrick ff rench, and to Haaris Naqvi and Katherine
De Chant at Bloomsbury, for their enthusiastic support for this project.
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