Understanding Sade, Understanding Modernism

James Martell is Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Lyon College, USA. He is the author of Modernism, Self-Creation, and the Maternal: The Mother’s Son (2019) and Beckett and Derrida (2024). He is the co-editor of Samuel Beckett and the Encounter of Philosophy and Literature (2013), a special volume of Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui, titled “Beckett Beyond Words” (2018), and Tattooed Bodies: Theorizing Body Inscription Across Disciplines and Cultures (2021).

Sade’s role in shaping the modernist consciousness is difficult to underestimate. This indispensable collection of essays sheds invaluable light on the myriad of ways in which this most singular of 18th-century thinkers was taken up in the 20th century to articulate modernist perspectives on desire and subjectivity, reason and unreason, transgression and abjection.

• Introduction: Unzeitgemässer MarquisJames Martell, Lyon College, USAPart I: Conceptualizing Sade1. S’ériger en libertin: The Care of the Libertine Self in Histoire de JulietteHenry Martyn Lloyd, University of Queensland, Australia 2. Derrida with Sade or the 44 JournéesJames Martell, Lyon College, USA3. "Modernes! Encore un effort, si vous voulez l’inouï": Becoming a Woman and Sustaining an Ethics for the Feminine Beyond the BoudoirFernanda Negrete, University at Buffalo, USA4. Sade and the Problem of Ecological SovereigntyAllan Stoekl, Penn State University, USA5. Sade, Genealogy, Modernity, or Historicism PervertedJames A. Steintrager, University of California, Irvine, USA6. Obscene MartyrsCindy Zeiher, University of Canterbury, New Zealand7. The Crimes of Love: Pierre Klossowski, Queer Theory, and the Modernist NovelCharlie Clements, Tufts University, USAPart II: Sade and Modernism8. Beckett’s Sadean ModernismJean-Michel Rabaté, University of Pennsylvania, USA9. Horkheimer, Sade, and Erotic ReasonWilliam S. Allen, University of Southampton, UK10. Sade Reads d’Holbach: Atheism, Materialism, and Atopy in the Rise of the Avant-GardeDany Nobus, Brunel University London, UK11. Foucault's Sade, or a Modernist's Destiny: Transgression, Desire, and PowerMladen Kozul, University of Montana, Missoula, USA12. Sade Tel Quel: Writing DesirePatrick ffrench, Kings College London, UK13. Domesticating Sade: The Avant-Garde, "Continental" Philosophy, and Sade's Aesthetics of the AbhorrentHenry Martyn Lloyd, University of Queensland, Australia14. Sade in the 1960s Counterculture: The Progressive Defense of a Horror ShowGuy Stevenson, Queen Mary University of London and Goldsmiths College, UK15. Sade, Sex Ed, and the Cinematic SentenceRamsey McGlazer, University of California, Berkeley, USA16. Beckett's Sad(e) Laugh: Philosophical Grotesquerie and Po-ethics of Parody in Samuel Beckett’s Reception of the Marquis de SadeElsa Baroghel, University of Oxford, UKPart III: Glossary 17. AestheticismJames A. Steintrager, University of California, Irvine, USA18. ApathyJames A. Steintrager, University of California, Irvine, USA19. AtheismTony Richards, University of Lincoln, USA20. CrimeJames Martell, Lyon College, USA21. EthicsRodrigo Gonsalves, European Graduate School, Switzerland22. IronyJames A. Steintrager, University of California, Irvine, USA23. LibertinismTony Richards, University of Lincoln, UK24. MathematicsPrashant Mishra, Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, India25. NatureDany Nobus, Brunel University London, UKNotesNotes on Contributors Index