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5 Science and Insensibility On April 3, 1768, Easter Sunday, the young count de Sade abused a Strasbourgeoise by the name of Rose Keller, some thirty-six years of age. Sade had found her begging on the Place des Victoires in Paris. She had apparently just left mass, but the area was known as a haunt for prostitutes. Sade brought Keller to his house in Arcueil, then a village on the outskirts of the city. According to the woman, Sade promised to employ her as a servant . He eventually whipped her furiously and at repeated intervals, shouting imprecations and emitting all variety of noises. After apparently climaxing , he stopped. The woman managed to escape and made her plight known to the authorities. Sade claimed that his victim was well aware of his sexual intentions. Even were this the case, we might question whether physical and psychological tortures were part of the bargain. There are other contradictions in the testimonies given by the two parties. Keller claimed that her tormentor had bound her, that he had used not only a whip but also a rod, and that he had made many incisions on her with a small knife and then dripped hot wax on the wounds. Sade maintained that he had not bound her, that only a whip had been used, and that he had neither made incisions nor dripped wax. As to the last point, he insisted that he had applied to her wounds a curative ointment.1 A surgeon, Le Comte, who examined Keller shortly after she had lodged her complaint , gave expert testimony. He declared that although the skin had cer- tainly been removed by some means, it was probably by whip and not by knife. He found no evidence of burns. It is entirely possible that, given the difference in status between Sade and Keller, the surgeon could have been in®uenced.2 Yet in spite of these mitigating and biasing factors, Sade was to spend several months incarcerated for his misdeeds. The “affaire d’Arcueil,” as it came to be known, was the ¤rst major public exposure of Sade’s interest in algolagnia (the sexologist’s term for sexual pleasure in in®icting pain, eventually displaced by the epithet “sadism ”). His punishment was the ¤rst of several increasingly prolonged imprisonments that were to mark indelibly his life and writings. As such, the affair has become one of the crucial points of reference for Sade’s biographers , supporters, and detractors.3 Tallying the author’s crimes, belletrist Jean Paulhan posed a rhetorical question concerning the “affaire d’Arcueil”: “It seems established that Sade gave a spanking to a whore in Paris: does that ¤t with a year in jail?”4 For Paulhan, the writings, not the man, offend , and both are thereby worthy of our cautious defense. For radical feminist Andrea Dworkin, Sade’s deeds and texts are parts of an inseparable nexus: misogynist to be sure, and indicative of the general structure of patriarchy. She dedicates Pornography: Men Possessing Women to the memory of Rose Keller.5 How then might we approach this biographical event and the textual treatments, written by Sade and others, to which it gave rise? We can hardly treat the event as an absolute origin; it was already embedded in the communication networks of the time. These networks surely shaped Sade’s behavior—although in ways to which we may never have access. They much more clearly shaped the reception of the occurrence. The “affaire d’Arcueil” propelled Sade—willing or not—into a very speci¤c subject position: the virtuoso or amateur scientist, the embodiment of the eighteenth-century schism between sentiment and science. Besides the predictable shock over Sade’s blasphemous choice of days for his activities, another aspect of the case was given particular emphasis: the possibility that the villain was carrying on some sort of medical and scienti¤c experiment. As the initial incident was just being reported, the claim that Sade had made numerous incisions was picked out as particularly reprehensible in the public outcry—an outcry that appears to be one of the factors that led to incarceration. Sade’s own testimony that he had applied an ointment rather than wax was given the twist that he was testing a medicine of his own invention. Thus the Marquise du Deffand wrote to Horace Walpole in a letter dated April 12, 1768, concerning the affair, The Bedside Manner of the Marquis de Sade 88 [18.224.149...

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