Perversion the Social Relation

158 James Penneyselves approvingly, in other words, is the selfsame agency through which we reproachourselves for our inadequacies. The movement from morality to ethics may be definedas coinciding with the subject's ability to liberate itself from such egoic dependenciesand to self-legislate: to rationalize its act ex nihilo, with reference to nothing otherthan the sacred legality of desire. Obviously, it is precisely this movement that Gillesand his auditors failed to effect.31 One may suggestively juxtapose the tremendous comfort and pleasure with whichGilles seems to adopt the role of the moral pedagogue with the serenity of the fetishistwho, according to Freud, shows himself "quite satisfied" with his fetish. It isalso possible to compare the paradox of Gilles's idea of his empirical guilt and metaphysicalinnocence with the fetishist's ability to entertain two contradictory propositionsconcerning his psychical experience of castration: "The woman has still gota penis," says the fetishist at the same time that he admits "[his] father has castratedthe woman." See Freud, "Fetishism," SE XXI, 152,157.32 This is just the tip of the iceberg, as the saying goes, of the evidence in favor of thepolitical stakes involved in the trial of Gilles de Rais. Indeed, only when the ecclesiasticaland political authorities had fully taken advantage of Gilles's declining situationdid they begin to amass the evidence required for an arrest. As Salomon Reinach hasargued, Gilles's profligacy was not entirely out of control, for he made a condition forthe sale of his most strategically located castles that his right to reacquisition be recognizedfor a full six years after the transaction. As a result of this clause, the buyersclearly developed a vested interest in the obliteration of Gilles, since only his deathor long-term incapacitation could have safeguarded their ownership of Gilles's property,and since Gilles had no sons to whom he could bequeath his fortune. Further,Reinach suggests that Jean de Malestroit, allied to the English during the HundredYears War, had a personal vendetta against Gilles, having been arrested in the battleof Saint-Jean de Beuvron by the constable de Richemont under whom Gilles served(Reinach, "Gilles de Rais,"269-70). As Michel Bataille succinctly puts it, "Gilles wasnot beaten by judges, but by political and financial rivals" {Gilles de Rais, 175). JeanBenedetti provides additional details about the duke of Brittany's political and materialinterest in Gilles's downfall {Gilles de Rais [New York: Stein and Day, 1972],156-90).33 Jacques Heers, Gilles de Rais. Vérités et légendes (Paris: Perrin, 1994), 12.