Abstract

Abstract:

Rites of Holy Terror: Sadean Governmentality in France's Les Dieux ont soif Les dieux ont soif seems, at first blush, to endorse a centuries-old cliché: the Jacobin club trafficked in ideological abstraction, thus dooming their project to “failure.” Reading more closely, we find an altogether different set of concerns. In his stereotyped cast of characters, in the leitmotifs of nature and monstrosity, and in an interlocking grid of references, which the current article explores at length,France encodes the paradox of sovereignty. Beyond the juridical order and at its very core, his Jacobins lay bare a zone of transgressive force, where norm and anomaly pass through one another, and the exception grounds the rule. Finally, the conte “Crainquebille” extends this regime to the grind of daily life, thrusting starkly into view its backdrop of well-regulated terror.

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