Juliette’s Endless Prosperities: Foucault avec Lacan on Sade’s Illustrious Villain

The Marquis de Sade’s Juliette—well-known as an outrageously murderous, hedonistic anti-heroine—captured the attention of some of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. Most of these engagements with Sade have received some critical attention. However, Foucault’s distinctive remarks on Juliette in The Order of Things have gone overlooked. I situate Foucault’s interpretation of Juliette alongside and against Adorno’s and Lacan’s: exploring his positioning of her as a liminal figure, situated in the Classical age on the cusp of modernity, and his allusion to the way in which her “solitary—and endless” “prosperities” exceed our grasp.