Perversion the Social Relation

150 James Penneynew significance as a kind of short circuit of the moral framework ofChristianity. By indulging in such unambiguously transgressive actions,Gilles acquires for himself the certainty of his guilt in the eyes of God;Gilles knows what he is from the perspective of God's desire because hehas transgressed His law. Yet by framing his entire confession around thepremise that the sole condition for divine forgiveness is a genuine gestureof clemency, Gilles ensures for himself that he will be especially forgivenfor his particularly scandalous crimes. Through his criminality Gilles'sbecomes the instrument of the jouissance of divine clemency. Ratherthan being perturbed, in neurotic fashion, by the uncertainty of the conformityof his actions with God's indeterminate desire, Gilles interpretsthe divine faculty to bestow forgiveness as a kind of obscene jouissanceand then positions himself through the execution of the crimes as itsguarantee. In more theological terms, Gilles's perversion consists in histaking to its extreme limit the already perverse logic of Jesuitical casuistrythat subtended the possibility of earning grace through acts of contritionand self-justification. 29 In a theological framework that allows forcertainty with respect to the content of the final judgment, the subjectacquires divine forgiveness and favor by means of the very transgressionof the terms of the covenant. One receives proof of God's love bymeriting his forgiveness; in consequence, the surest, most direct way ofexecuting the will of God becomes crime.The attraction of the kind of absolute religious faith Gilles constructsfor himself is that it permits the complicity of an illusory ideal of innocencewith a subterranean world of transgression that paradoxically enablesthis innocence. One detects in the trajectory of Gilles's testimonya moral self-justification reminiscent of the fetishistic logic Freud elucidatedin his 1927 essay "Fetishism" (SE XXI, 152-57). Gilles, on alevel not too deeply hidden, knows he is guilty. Otherwise it is impossibleto account for Gilles's deep-seated need for the moral purgation forwhich his plan for a holy pilgrimage to Jerusalem, for example, providesevidence. Yet Gilles repeatedly posits during his confession that he is"always already," as some now like to say, pardoned for his sins; that theunceasing act of contrition he performs at the trial serves to preserve himin a pure, beatific state of divine favor. The believer of Gilles's ilk—themoral 30 fetishist—says to himself: I know I am guilty of reprehensibleinjustices, but still, such actions do not tarnish my fundamental, inalien-