Mixed bag below. Topics change.
I have a LOT of stuff on the internet. I use the term “Cultural Sadeism” from time to time, and this essay here is where I developed it.
Cultural Sadeism is what I referred to in the previous post as the yes/yes operator. It is the reason Apollinaire referred to Sade as “the freest man who ever lived.”
It is the rejection of rejection. It is the rejection of form, and instead consists in relationships of power only.
No sadist can exist without a target. They are a pool of water without a container, endlessly flowing until the moment of contact when they can EITHER be abused or abuse.
Plainly, some serial killers/rapists/Communist leaders always want to be in control. Yet who are they in the interstices? They are nothing. They are less than human. This is where their energy comes from; they must push back from their void, their black hole, sucking them into nothingness.
This is my view. Sade himself, clinically, was BOTH a “Sad-ist” and a masochist. He was fine with being whipped himself. And one has to sense a certain masochism in behaving in such a way that he KNEW he would be locked up.
I will add as a footnote, as it were, that while I have never seen any reason to read Foucault, it is very interesting that he obsessed in his work about power relations, and in his personal life enjoyed homosexual bondage.
It would not be unwarranted, I think, to look to the lives of self declared “philosophers” first, and see if there is anything worth imitating, if they live happily and actually free. Only then might it warrant examining their work. Read the biography, then the theory. If the two do not connect, then you are dealing with someone who can and should be ignored.
Philosophy is about life. It is about building structures in which you can live. It is an artisanal trade no different than baking bread, pouring concrete, or fixing television sets. If it is not useful, then it should be ignored, no matter how pretty it might seem to be. It will not feed you, and instead will likely lead you both to hunger and an inability to feed yourself.
No amount of blood can ever bring a vampire to life. They cling: they do not live.