Perversion the Social Relation

140 James Penneythat are not associated with a presumed essence or identity of the subject.Theoretically, in other words, each subject is equally capable of fallingvictim to the temptation of sodomy, and the execution of such anact will not necessarily tell us anything about who this subject "is." It isalso worthwhile noting that, as Goldberg argues, the crime of sodomyemerged into visibility only on occasions when it was coupled with anotheract of criminality that threatened the authority of the church. 18Clearly, Goldberg's observation applies directly to the Gilles case. Asfor what we would now call the "homosexual" aspect of the case—thatGilles was almost exclusively interested in adolescent boys and probablyhad sexual relations with a number of his male cohorts, includinghis Florentine invoker François Prelati—there is evidence that we shouldnot overestimate the extent to which this aspect would have been perceivedat the time as scandalous. According to Philippe Reliquet, malehomosexual activity among late feudal nobles in France was relativelycommon. 19 Young lords of Gilles's level of privilege habitually sponsoredthe company of mignons, adolescent male pages who often performedservices of a sexual nature for their masters. Indeed, Gilles's cronies recruitedthe young boys who would become Gilles's victims to serve asthe great lord's pages.It is crucial to remark that Bataille directly relates Gilles's monstrousaberrance to his erotic preference for young male victims. Gilles's"homosexuality," according to Bataille, is a function of the "archaic"quality of his "personality," of the fact that the criminal failed to obeyan imperative of civilization during his lawless, undisciplined, and overprivilegedchildhood. Gilles personifies, very precisely, the bloodthirstyand violent "archaic human nature" present in late medieval culture. 20The homoerotic networks linking Gilles and his numerous lackeys serveto highlight this depraved, perverse archaism characteristic of bothGilles and the entire feudal aristocracy. To illustrate his contention, Batailleinterprets Gilles's melodramatic goodbye to his cherished alchemist—and,in all likelihood, his lover—François Prelati not as evidencethat Gilles, despite his brutality, was also capable of that most "human"of emotions, namely love, but rather as proof of Gilles's infantilism andnaivete, of the location of his intellect beneath the threshold of universalrationality (19-20; 24-25). For Bataille, the homosexual practices ofGilles and his male class peers were not simply another instance of their