Name: ATTILA DE OLIVEIRA PIOVESAN
Publication date: 29/05/2020
Advisor:
Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| LUÍS EUSTÁQUIO SOARES | Advisor * |
Examining board:
| Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| FABÍOLA SIMÃO PADILHA TREFZGER | Internal Examiner * |
| LUÍS EUSTÁQUIO SOARES | Advisor * |
| RAFAELA SCARDINO LIMA PIZZOL | Internal Alternate * |
| SÉRGIO DA FONSECA AMARAL | Internal Alternate * |
Summary: As comic book writer Grant Morrison makes the Marquis de Sade one of the characters in his
graphic novel The Invisibles, turning him into a utopia-builder in a world on the verge of an
eschatological event that will ascend humanity to a new level of existence, people familiar with
the writings of the infamous libertine may question the reasons for such a choice. Thus, this
work investigates under which conditions the "divine marquis" is chosen as a fitting candidate
for the role while trying to understand how the process of appropriation as a fictional character
articulates him with other themes present in the narrative: the price of revolutions, the romantic
movement, the problematic relationship between fiction and reality and reality as language.
Such a venture will rely on, among others, the theoretical subsidies of the poststructuralist
philosopher Michel Foucault and the logician Charles Sanders Peirce, one of the fathers of
modern semiotics, to treat the issue as "semiosic archaeology" inquiry and to also understand
how the passions and their relationship to the concepts of interest and selfishness that emerged
both in the economic sphere and moral philosophy resulted on Sade's perverse philosophical
stance. However, the non-emancipatory implications of using Sade, whose radical negativity
propagated in the discourses of the notorious debaucher at the end of the 18th century that is
yet to found a parallel in the 21st century, must not be overlooked and will be analyzed to
understand the potentialities and limitations of Morrison's utopian discourse, including its real-
world applications.
Keywords: The Invisibles. Marquis de Sade. Utopia. Language. Fiction and reality.
