Sade ou l'ombre des Lumières (Eighteenth-century French intellectual history) (French Edition)

This book on Sade is an attempt to understand the role of stereotype in his novels, which are considered to be sites par excellence of subversion of doxa. Doxa (opinion) is understood here as a reservoir or, better still, a garbage dump of ideological recycling from which some discourses of power establish their legitmacy. The Sadian novel tries to articulate evil throught the borrowing of the language associated with reason. Drawing on the philosophy of nature elaborated by Sade, it furthermore stresses the crucial role of alea in the ways events naturally unfold. Within this perspective, the discourse of Sadian evil becomes primarily strategic.