ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the major contradictions inherent to psychoanalytic writing on perversion: the tendency, on the one hand, to deny the authenticity of the "pervert's" self-designation and identity while, on the other hand, reifying him as a type, a clinical entity. Certain strands of cultural studies and political theory, influenced by Michel Foucault's historiographical writing, problematize the ongoing sexological and psychoanalytic practices of referring to, diagnosing, and treating perversion. The historical simultaneity of the activities and writings of the Marquis de Sade and the bloodshed of the French revolution also provides a commonly cited example of perversion's capacity both to reflect and produce primarily social meanings. Ethics can never simply be about admitting of the universality, rather than the aberration, of perversion. By envisaging the plural narratives of diverse sexualities encountered in clinical practice as "perversion" in the singular, as the binaristic counterpart of "normal" or "healthy" sexuality, one commits an indiscretion in logic and in ethics.
