Inurtexts, Vol. 5, No. 2,2001 Disciplining the Lesbian: Diderot’s La Reli^ieuse Paul Allen Miller U n i v e r s i t y o f S o u t h C a r o l i n a In an interview entitled, “The Eye of Power,” Michel Foucault character¬ ized the central project of the French Revolution and of the Enlightenment f o l l o w s : a s What in fact was the Rousseauist dream that motivated many of the revolutionaries?Itwasthedreamofatransparentsociety,visibleandlegible in each of its parts, the dream of there no longer existing any zones of darkness, zones established by the privileges of royal power or the prerogatives of some corporation, zones of disorder. It was the dream that each individual, whatever position he occupied might be able to see the whole of society, that men’s hearts should communicate, their vision be unobstructed by obstacles, and that [the] opinion of all reign over each (152) Thereignofsuperstition,arbitraryprivilegesofbirth,monarchicalwhimsy, and ecclesiastical obscurantism were to be swept from the world-historical stage and replaced with the light of reason, as embodied in the individual consciousnessfreelycontemplatinganopenandtransparentsocialworld.The figures of “liberty, egalite, fraternite,” the self-evident truths of the DeclarationofIndependence,andtheuncloudedgazeoftheempiricist’s tabularasaallderivefromthissamematrixofconcerns.Likewise,itisonthis epistemicfoundationthatthenumerouscritiques,satiresandparodiesofthe church, monasticism, and the other institutions of traditional p o w e r w e r e constructed.As Foucault continues, “The chateaux, lazarets, bastilles, and conventsinspiredeveninthepre-Revolutionaryperiodasuspicionandhatred exacerbated by acertain political overdetermination. The new political and moral order could not be established until these places were eradicated” (153). Thisdriveforuniversaltransparency,however,isonlythemostvisible sideofacomplexeroticizationofknowledgethatisequallypartoftheEn¬ lightenment project. This drive for transparency, this jouissance of knowl¬ edge,takesplacepreciselyinzonesofconfinement,intheverymonasteries, prisons, and convents that writers like Diderot and others s t r o v e t o o p e n t o thedemandsofreason.AsFoucaultwasperhapsthefirsttorecognize,*the Enlightenment with its complex elaboration of the dialectic of knowledge, power, and pleasure, of reason’s frenzy in the cachotofiu own desire for dark¬ ness-givesbirthtoSadeaswellasKantandtheEncyclopedie.Sadismispre¬ ciselytheproductofthedrivetosubjectunreasontodiscourse.Itistheimagi¬ nation of the deepest of opacities systematically brought to light: 1 6 8 1 6 9 Miller—Disciplining the Lesbian: Diderot’s La Reli^ieuse Sadism is not aname finally given to apractice as old as Eros; it is amassive cultural fact which appeared precisely at the end of the eighteenth century, and which constitutes one of the great conversions of Western imagin¬ ation. ...Sadism appears at the very moment that unreason, confined for over acentury and reduced to silence, reappears ... as language and desire. And it is no accident that sadism, as an individual phenomenon bearing the name of aman, was bom of confinement and, within confinement, that Sade’s entire oeuvre is dominated by images of the Fortress, the Cell, the Cellar, the Convent, the inaccessible Island which thus form, as it were, the natural habitat of unreason. (Foucault, Madness 2\0)^ The hunting down of all that fell outside the normative bounds of amonologicallyconceiveduniversalreason ,thesubjectionofalltothesurveillanceof discourse, itself became the engine of pleasure. The pleasure that comes of exercising apower that questions, monitors, watches,spies,searchesout,palpates,bringstolight;...thepleasurethat kindlesathavingtoevadethispower,fleefi"omit,foolit,ortravestyit.The powerthatletsitselfbeinvadedbythepleasureitispursuing;andoppositeit, powerassertingitselfinthepleasureofshowingoff,scandahzingorresisting. ...Theseattractions,theseevasions,thesecircularincitementshavetraced aroundbodiesandsexes,notboundariesnottobecrossed,butperpetual spirals of power and pleasure. (Foucault, History AZ) TheEnlightenmentgameofvisibilityisthusneverplayedexclusivelyonthe fieldoftheepistemicbuttakesplacesimultaneouslyonthoseofenjoyment and subjection. Thisscopicpleasure,however,asFoucaultisreluctanttoacknowledge,is gendered.LuceIrigaray,workinginthetraditionofpost-Lacanianpsyco analysis, has demonstrated the masculinist drive to subject woman to a reductive specularization, areduction which this same phallic logic simu a neously resists when it casts woman as reason’s other (Irigaray, Sexe ■> Irigaray, Speculum 178; Moi 133-4; Butler 9-10). Woman both represents the vanishing point of representation and the Dark Continent that must ever be brought to light. She is both the fantasy figure that reflects phallic reason s own self-representation and that which ever exceeds reason’s drive to trans¬ parencyanduniversalization(Benstock4-5,9;Lacan74,94).Wonianisthus theobjectoftheEnlightenment’s“sadistic”driveforknowledge’sspiralsot powerandpleasure”parexcellence.Itispreciselythisperverserelauono womantotheEnlightenment’sprojectofliberationthroughscopicsubjec¬ tionthatDiderot’sLarelipfieuse,andparticularlyitsspecularizationofees bian, throws into relief. Diderot’s novel has, of course, been traditionally read as aprecursor or post-revolutionary liberalism, adiatribe against the obscurantism of the churchandtheperversionsoccasionedbythecurbingofhumanliberty.^Wil¬ son describes it as “a document consonant with the whole social program of the Enlightenment in France” (386...