(the) American (Novel of)

Murder So Bland
protest in the name of human individuality, which no doubt accounts
for its strange power and fascination.
Without crime, which awakens in us a mass of torpid feelings
and half distinguished passions, we would remain still longer
in disorder, in weakness. 3
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In short, then, Fourier and the Fourierists viewed crime as a
necessary means of rehabilitating a society and civilization which has
been perverted by corrupt political institutions. Legislators and various
other governmental officials have simply contaminated the natural order
of things by imposing false moral codes and by directing the intrinsic
passions away from their true objects. Reversing this trend,
according to Fourier, requires that individuals render the environment
attractive to natural inclinations. Life, labor, leisure, sexuality, and so on.
must be organized along the lines of a new environmental plan—a plan
that requires a certain regime of association which is consistent with an
ancient utopian conception lost in modern times. Vice and crime, viewed
in the contemporary world in decidedly negative terms, might, within
this regime of association, very well turn out to be virtues, since they
would certainly serve to reverse the existing order of things: those false
principles of morality that have obstructed the scope of human passions,
and thus misdirected them.
For the Marquis de Sade, murder and crime were not only a tonic
and a form of social resistance, but also—and above all—a compulsory
activity necessary to fulfill the utopic objective of Sade’s representation
of the most highly developed of all individuals: the libertine. Simply
put, the libertine could not live life in its fullest sense until he or she
embraced the criminal act and transgressed the codes of customary law.
Indeed, for Sade, law (both criminal and civil) was so egregious in its
capricious restrictions that it represented one of the most extreme
limitations on the human spirit; it placed people in absolute submission
to a totally arbitrary legal system and a prohibitive social contract—
factors that ultimately weakened individuals’ position in society, rather
than strengthening it: “The truly intelligent person is he who . . . lashes
out against the social contract, he violates it as much and as often as
he is able, full certain that he will gain from these ruptures, will always
be more important than what he will lose if he happens to be a
member of the weaker class; for such he was when he respected the
treaty; by breaking it, he may become one of the stronger. . . . There