-
The Ecole Saint-Simonienne is Outrage to Public Morals
- Nineteenth-Century French Studies
- University of Nebraska Press
- Volume 33, Number 3&4, Spring-Summer 2005
- pp. 258-272
- 10.1353/ncf.2005.0038
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
On August 27 and 28, 1832, the Saint-Simonians were tried for outrage to public morals. I analyze the August trial and caricatures of the Ecole in the light of Carole Pateman's notion of the sexual contract, to argue that the Saint-Simonians' "outrage" lay in their challenge to the founding fiction of social order: the social contract. By proclaiming that the social individual is man and woman, and by positing that the social pact is predicated on a sexual contract, the Saint-Simonians questioned not only the structure of the public sphere during the Bourgeois Monarchy, but also its underlying ideology. (as)