THE NOVEL, PHILOSOPHY AND OBSCENITY IN DIDEROT'S "LES BIJOUX INDISCRETS"

Author(s): Anne Deneys-Tunney

Source: Diderot Studies, Vol. 31 (2009), pp. 83-95
Published by: Librairie Droz
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 THE NOVEL, PHILOSOPHY AND
OBSCENITY IN DIDEROT'S
LES BIJO UX INDISCRETS

With its unique and delirious mixture of philosophy, political sati

and sex, Les bijoux indiscrets (1748) not only inaugurates Diderot's lifelo
practice of experimenting with the genre of the novel, but also represe
one of the first depictions of the complex alliance between sexual politi
and metaphysical inquiry1. Let us briefly summarize its plot. At
beginning of the novel we meet King Mangogul, who, bored with li
his court, has been given a magic ring by the genie Cucuffa. This r
when its stone is turned, has the power to give speech to women's se
organs. These «jewels» are repeatedly referred to throughout the novel a
« altars of truth » incapable of dissimulation, as they never lie (see ch. «
autels», p. 51).

Incomplete truths

In the novel, there are thirty trials of the magic ring; thirty times in
which female genitalia talk. These episodes reveal that almost all women,
dominated by a universal passion for «jouissance»2 or sexual enjoyment,

1. All quotations from Les bijoux indiscrets come from Diderot's Œuvres Complètes
(DPV, Paris, Hermann, 1978, t. III). This novel was translated in 1993 as The
Indiscreet Jewels, New York, Marsilio.
2. The translation of the Lacanian term « jouissance » into English is a difficult problem.
« Sexual enjoyment » is not entirely correct as it implies that « la jouissance » is sexual,
while for Lacan it is not directly sexual, but rather a passage «beyond» sex. In her
« Glossary of selected Lacanian terms », Judith Feher Gurewich does not include the
term «jouissance» although it is a key concept in Lacan's thought. See Judith Feher
Gurewich and Michel Tort (dir), The Subject and the Self, New Jersey & London,
Jason Aronson Inc, 1997, p. 33 and following. In Enjoy your Symptom! (New York,
Routledge, 2000), Slavoj Zizek also comments on the impossibility of translating
the Lacanian term « jouissance » : « One of the stories that snobbish French Lacanians
like to quote against translating jouissance as "enjoyment" [...] is that Lacan, on

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84 ANNE DENEYS-TUNNEY

are unfaithful. The final trial of the magic ring is on the sleeping
the king's favorite wife. The confession of her sexual organ rev
unlike the other wives, she has remained faithful. However, M
untimely awakening interrupts the speech, leaving it incomp
ultimately indecisive :

Le sultan réitéra l'opération, et le bijou s'expliquant très distincteme

« Loin de vous, Mangogul, qu'allais-je devenir ? [...] Fidèle jusque
nuit du tombeau, je vous aurais cherché, et si l'amour et la consta
quelques récompenses chez les morts, cher prince, je vous aurais t
Hélas, sans vous, le palais délicieux qu'habite Brama, et qu'il a promi
fidèles croyants, n'eût été pour moi qu'une demeure ingrate. » M
transporté de joie, ne s'aperçut pas que la favorite sortait insensib
de sa léthargie, (p. 258)

This novel has often been accused of being obscene and ther
dismissed as a minor or purely commercial work. Later in life,
himself repudiated it as «cette saloperie [...] cette polissonneri
esprit3». These comments allowed many critics, until recently,
Les bijoux indiscrets. The sincerity of the author's regret should ho
be questioned, since between 1775 and 1780, that is roughly twe
years after its initial publication, he revisited the «saloperie» b
three more chapters to it - « Le Rêve de Mangogul », « Les Voya
and « De la figure des insulaires et de la toilette des femmes »4.
I would like to show that Les bijoux indiscrets, far from be
minor licentious novel, is instead a crucial work in the develop
Diderot's philosophy. The tensions or disjunction between phi
and obscenity at play in Les bijoux indiscrets had already been p
by Lessing, who in 1768 characterized it as «un roman fri

his first visit to the United States, watched in Baltimore a television com
with the motto "Enjoy Coke!" and, dismayed at its vulgarity, emphatically
that "jouir" is NOT this "enjoy".» To this pronouncement of Lacan's, on
reply that Lacan himself holds that the superego is an injunction to enjo
better example of that injunction than «Enjoy Coke!»? (See p. 7) «Enjoy
unfortunate « Enjoy Coke ! », in other words, is precisely « jouir » in the form
under the dominance of the superego.
3. On the various accusations leveled against this novel by Diderot's contem
see Geeta Beehary-Parray, « Les bijoux indiscrets : pastiche, forgerie ou ch
conte crébillonesque », in Diderot Studies XXVIII (2000) p. 25.
4. These three chapters are published in DPV as «additions», p. 259 and
pages.

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NOVEL, PHILOSOPHY AND OBSCENITY IN LES BIJOUX indiscrets 85

s'agitent des questions graves5 ». It is in fact an investigation of sex that

stages a radical critique of metaphysics, or more specifically, a radical
critique of the dualism of soul and body. This critique allows Diderot to
elaborate several key philosophical concepts — presented here in the form
of rapturous extrapolations from the basic premise of the plot — concepts
such as « the sensitive soul », for instance, which will be more thoroughly
investigated in later philosophical works such as Le rêve de D'Alembert
and Les éléments de physiologie6.
The other primary accusation leveled against Les bijoux indiscrets is
that it is misogynistic, and thereby objectifies and trivializes femininity7.
I would argue, however, that it is neither misogynistic nor anti-feminine.
Quite the contrary, it is a radical novel that dares to confront the question
of feminine «jouissance» or sexual enjoyment directly by examining its
origin, its localization, and its specific difference. The sexual enjoyment
of men is not investigated here. Nothing is said of it, except for the fact
that since receiving the magic ring, Mangogul has stopped having sexual
relations with Mirzoza, which indicates that, for him, the pleasure of
the senses has been supplanted by the pleasure of knowledge. In the
novel, it is man who interrogates woman about the nature of her own
«jouissance ».

Women and the problem of jouissance

In his Histoire de la sexualité, Michel Foucault correctly holds that Les

bijoux indiscrets marks the beginning of modem times by signaling a shift
between two epistemes and the emergence of what he calls « l'Âge de la
sexualité» in which sexuality is viewed as both desire and the desire of
knowledge :

5. Set Les bijoux indiscrets, in : Diderot, Contes et romans, Michel Delon (ed.), Gallimard
(Pléiade), 2004, «Appendices des Bijoux indiscrets », p. 224.
6. In his introduction to Les bijoux indiscrets, Aram Yartanian has already called
attention to the « materialist significance » of this novel. See DPV, p. 3. See also Pierre
Hartmann's materialist interpretation of Le rêve de D'Alembert in «Le Philosophe au
pilon et le cobaye spéculatif», Diderot Studies XXVIII (2000), p. 97-113.
7. See for instance Lieselotte Steinbrügge, « The Sexualisation of Female Existence », in :
The Moral Sex. Woman's Nature in the French Enlightenment, Lieselotte Steinbrügge,
Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 41-53.

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86 ANNE DENEYS-TUNNEY

Il convient donc de demander avant toutes choses: quelle est cett

injonction ? Pourquoi cette grande chasse à la vérité du sexe, à la vérité
dans le sexe ? [...] Il faut faire l'histoire de cette volonté de vérité, de cette
pétition de savoir qui depuis tant de siècles maintenant fait miroiter le
sexe: l'histoire d'une obstination et d'un acharnement. Que demandons
nous au sexe au-delà de ses plaisirs possibles, pour que nous nous entêtions
ainsi ? Quelle est cette patience, cette avidité à le constituer comme l
secret, la cause omnipotente, le sens caché, la peur sans répit ? Et pourquoi
la tâche de découvrir cette difficile vérité s'est-elle retournée finalement en
une invitation à lever les interdits et à dénouer les entraves ?8

In contrast to Don Juan or Casanova who consume women and se

Mangogul turns sex into the object of discourse and knowledge
The thirty trials of the magic ring constitute a type of encyclopedi
exploration of feminine sexuality, an exploration which attempts on
each occasion to interrogate the woman about her own «jouissance».
The novel performs a kind of «oral sex», as the sexual organ and the
mouth are united through these scandalous and highly delectable stol
confessions.

The novel seems at first to tell a very consistent story about women.
They are dominated by a passion for sexual enjoyment and therefore,
despite religious dogma, are almost universally unfaithful. In addition to
this general portrayal of women's sexual desire, we also find in this novel
astonishing figurations of castration and amputation. Holes proliferate
everywhere, and in several of the novel's dream scenes, detached body
parts appear9. In the chapter entitled «Rêve de Mirzoza», for instance,
we read :

Un grand rideau s'ouvrit à l'instant, et je vis un atelier occupé par une

autre sorte de pygmées : ceux-ci n'avaient ni dents, ni ongles, mais en
revanche ils étaient armés de rasoirs et de ciseaux. Ils tenaient entre leurs
mains des têtes qui paraissaient animées, et s'occupaient à couper à l'une
les cheveux, à arracher à l'autre le nez et les oreilles, à crever l'œil droit
à celle-ci, l'œil gauche à celle-là, et à les disséquer presque toutes. Après

8. Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses, Paris, Gallimard, 1966, p. 222: «Après lui
[Diderot] commence l'âge de la sexualité. » On the relation between Foucault and
the Enlightenment, see Lumières 8 (numéro thématique Foucault et les Lumières)
(2006), 2' semestre, Bordeaux, Pleine Page.
9. Roger Lewinter, in his introduction to the novel, has noticed this: «Comme le
Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville qu'il préfigure, il est à la fois description
expérimentale de l'homme et utopie sexuelle.», in: LEW, 1.1, p. 493.

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NOVEL, PHILOSOPHY AND OBSCENITY IN LES BIJOUX INDISCRETS 87

cette belle opération, ils se mettaient à les considérer et à leur sourire,

comme s'ils les eussent trouvées les plus jolies du monde. Les pauvres
têtes avaient beau jeter les hauts cris, ils ne daignaient presque pas leur
répondre. J'en entendis une qui redemandait son nez, et qui représentait
qu'il ne lui était pas possible de se montrer sans cette pièce [...]. Le sort de
ces têtes m'attendrissait, lorsque j'aperçus plus loin d'autres pygmées plus
charitables, qui se traînaient à terre avec des lunettes. Ils ramassaient des
nez et des oreilles, et les rajustaient à quelques vieilles têtes, à qui le temps
les avait enlevés, (p. 177)

This fantasmatic and obsessional inscription of castration indicates that

this is not a novel about desire, but about «la jouissance10». In most
of these episodes the jewels being interrogated are very talkative about
the number and types of lovers they have had, but in the end they say
almost nothing about sexual enjoyment itself. As Lacan writes in his
Séminaire XX, his decisive seminar on love and sexual intercourse, « le
rapport sexuel ne peut pas s'écrire. Tout ce qui est écrit part du fait
qu'il sera à jamais impossible d'écrire comme tel le rapport sexuel. C'est
de là qu'il y a un certain effet du discours qui s'appelle l'écriture" ».
There is in fact a diametrical opposition between knowledge and
discourse on one hand and sexual enjoyment on the other12. In this

10. Jacques Lacan, in his SeminaireXX, defines «la jouissance» as follows: «Qu'est ce
que la jouissance? Elle se réduit ici à n'être qu'une instance négative. La jouissance,
c'est ce qui ne sert à rien. Je pointe là la réserve qu'implique le champ du "droit à la
jouissance". Le droit n'est pas le devoir. Rien ne force personne à jouir, sauf le surmoi.
Le surmoi, c'est l'impératif de la jouissance - Jouis ! » (Paris, Seuil, 1975, p. 10). Or
as Marcianne Blevis writes : « Following Lacan, we use the term jouissance for what
stands outside of representation - for example pain in its raw state that has not yet
been able to become a suffering expressed by a complaint that "I am" suffering.
This jouissance, referring to what is outside the system of representation belongs to
the category that Lacan calls the Real, which is distinct from the reality in which
we live, the reality made up of words, images, narratives. At most we can say that
jouissance refers to what has no form, since a form is a minimal organization.»
(« The Scope and the Limits of the Theory of the Self in Psychoanalysis », in : Judith
F. Gurewich and Michel Tort [dir.], Subject and the Self, op. cit., p. 110).
11. Jacques Lacan, ibid., p. 35-36.
12. Jacques Lacan, «Aristote et Freud», Séminaire XX, Encore, p. 57: «A cause de ce
qu'elle parle, ladite jouissance, lui le rapport sexuel, n'est pas. C'est bien pour ça
qu'elle fait mieux de se taire, avec le résultat que ça rend l'absence même du rapport
sexuel encore un peu lourde. Et c'est bien pour ça qu'en fin de compte, elle ne se
tait pas et que le premier effet du refoulement, c'est qu'elle parle d'autre chose. C'est
ce qui fait de la métaphore le ressort. » Also see Charles Sheperdson, Lacan and
the Limits of Language, New York, Fordham University Press, 2008, and Judith
F. Gurewich and Michel Tort (dir.), The Subject and the Self, op. cit.

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88 ANNE DENEYS-TUNNEY

respect, it is important to recall that the final «jewel» that Mang

interrogates, that of his favorite wife, Mirzoza, is interrupted in
course of its revelation, leaving the reader dissatisfied by this lac
narrative completeness. Les bijoux indiscrets attempts to convert s
enjoyment into discourse. This project, however, fails in the end, an
failure raises the following question : how are we to say or represen
unsayable or the incomprehensible ?
The chapter entitled «Des Voyageurs» constitutes a mini-uto
within the novel - the Utopia of what one could call a bio-poli
In order to ensure happy marriages, the priests of the Island of t
Cyclophylus measure the various sexual organs of the male and fem
inhabitants, identifying their different geometric shapes and ma
matches accordingly:

Ils étaient nus, et je vis qu'une des filles avait le bijou circulaire
son amant le bijou cylindrique. — Ce n'est pas là merveille, dis-
Cyclophile. — Regardez les deux autres, me répondit-il. — J'y portai
vue. Le jeune homme avait un bijou parallélipipède, et la fille un bi
carré. — Soyez attentif à l'opération sainte, ajouta Cyclophile. — Alo
deux prêtres étendirent une des filles sur l'autel, un troisième lui appliq
le thermomètre sacré, et le grand pontife observait attentivement le de
où la liqueur monta en six minutes. Dans le même temps le jeune hom
avait été étendu sur le lit par deux prétresses, et une troisième lui av
adapté le thermomètre. Le grand prêtre ayant observé ici l'ascension de
liqueur dans le même temps donné, il prononça sur la validité du mariag
et renvoya les époux se conjoindre à la maison paternelle, (p. 269)

This applied geometry combined with the measurement of the temperat

of the various sexual organs is intended to insure happy marriages. Her
is a question of sides, facets, curved surfaces, and geometric figures. In
chapter, Diderot is clearly mocking the confusion between the organ
« la jouissance ». The organ is an illusion that functions as a smokescreen
obfuscating the issue of «jouissance». It is, in Lacanian teminology,
« objet a ». Les bijoux indiscrets can thus be viewed as a complex gam
hide and seek. However, the question remains : how can one ever hop
track down female «jouissance» through words?
The «jewels» are «indiscreet». When the ring is turned on them, t
become loquacious. Nonetheless, their relation to language and mean
remains problematic. Of the thirty attempts to make them speak, m

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NOVEL, PHILOSOPHY AND OBSCENITY IN LES BIJOUX INDISCRETS 89

fail for various reasons. The most common reason is suffocation. Many
women, afraid of the disruption their talkative private parts might cause
in social situations, put muzzles on them, as exemplified in chapter 19,
« Septième essai de l'anneau, ou le bijou suffoqué ». In another scene, which
takes place at the Opera at Banza, when Mangogul turns his magic ring
towards the actresses and choir, an insane cacophony arises, from which
no meaning or truth of any kind can be established (p. 71)13. Later on, in
the chapter entitled «Treizième essai de l'anneau, ou la petite jument»,
when the ring is turned on a foal, its «jewel» produces strange and obscene
sounds that not even Gulliver can interpret (p. 130).

Castration and silence: the subject in front of la jouissance

As an indication of the limited meaning or knowledge that the « jewels »

produce, half of the time the ring is turned on them, they make only
senseless noise or remain totally silent, as in the chapter, « Le bijou muet ».
When they can be heard, their confessions often take the form of terrifying
stories of beheaded and castrated men, or stabbed women, as in Sélim's
recounting of Cydalise's murder. In fact, the motif of castration permeates
the novel in various forms. For example, in the chapter entitled « L'amour
platonique», a particularly dissatisfied «jewel» reveals that her platonic
love owes more to sexual impotence than religious or philosophical virtue.
Sexual enjoyment is defined by Lacan as that which exceeds pleasure. As
such, it can also be identified with suffering as well. When pleasure is
too intense, some form of regulation occurs. « La jouissance » is excess. It
makes the body go beyond pleasure. It is for this reason that Ethics is never
an ethics of sexual enjoyment. It is both what attracts us and repulses us.
It is the beyond of language and the excess of pleasure. Therefore, pain
is always heard within «jouissance». It is a boundary against or towards
which we are attracted. It is a danger. It entails a partial dissolution
because it produces anguish, and to protect itself from this anguish or
anxiety the subject may take refuge in self-dissolution («l'aphanisis»)14.

13. On the relation between music and sexuality in Les bijoux indiscrets, see Béatrice
Didier, « Le texte et la musique » in : Elisabeth de Fontenay and Jacques Proust (dir.),
Interpréter Diderot aujourd'hui, Paris, Le Sycomore, 1984, p. 302.
14. «Aphanisis» is defined by Lacan in SéminaireXI, ch. XVII, «Le sujet et l'Autre» (II)
L'Aphanisis.

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9° ANNE DENEYS-TUNNEY

This definition of « la jouissance » first appears in Le séminaire XI

Les quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse (1973), and it
to be deployed throughout Le séminaire XX, entitled Encore (1975)1
«Aphanisis» means the disappearance or rather the self-effa
of the subject in front of «la jouissance». For the subject to r
desiring subject, he must avoid « la jouissance ». Therefore, « la joui
itself rejects the subject as it threatens to abolish him. It is as i
confronted with «la jouissance», the subject goes into a sudden
Lacan borrowed the notion of «aphanisis» from Ernest Jones, bu
a completely new meaning16. According to Lacan, it expresses the a
or anxiety produced within the subject by this «jouissance» bec
desiring subject knows that when he reaches « jouissance » desire di
Lacan gives a very particular meaning to «jouissance»: to him,
nothing to do with pleasure or sexual satisfaction. One could say th
concept of «jouissance» in Lacan is almost a myth. It is the myt
full and total primal unity that the subject has experienced, of a un
he has had to abandon as soon as he is born, like the Garden of
the Old Testament, or the «state of nature» in Rousseau17.
In his Séminaire XX, Lacan tries to think of love in relation
baroque18. Sexual enjoyment, like the baroque, functions as an
transgression of a border that would attempt to contain it. In L
indiscrets, Diderot implicitly describes this process without overtly d

In the very recent edition of Le Séminaire XVIII, entitled « D'un discours

serait que du semblant» (Paris, Seuil, 2008), which covers the years 1970-1
in Séminaire XX, Lacan develops his theory on love and sex and woman a
showing that they are in no way complementary. Man is, according to L
slave of «le semblant» or the appearance or the seeming. He depends on it
to exist, since in order to exist man always has to exhibit a virility that he d
control. Woman, on the other hand, is closer to the truth, since she is in a
that allows her to escape « le semblant». The woman is « pas toute », while
has to be «au moins tout». This dissymmetry explains Lacan's famous dec
« Le rapport sexuel n'existe pas » in Séminaire XX, p. 67.
See Judith Feher Gurewich, «Who's afraid of Jacques Lacan?» in: J
Gurewich and Michel Tort (dir.), Subject and the Self, op. cit., p. 1-30.
This «state of nature» is defined essentially as a unity of man with natur
of complete contentment but already lost because of «perfectibility», th
in the natural man which contains already all future historical developme
more information, see the Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégali
les hommes.) In his remarkable last book, entitled Rousseau : une philosophie
(Paris, Verdier, 2008), Paul Audi has given a definitive interpretation of the
of Rousseau's system.
See ch. 9 «Du baroque» in SéminaireXX, p. 95 and following pages.

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NOVEL, PHILOSOPHY AND OBSCENITY IN LES BIJOUX INDISCRETS 91

it. He does so through that which is not said. To paraphrase Lacan, to talk
is to enjoy, but to enjoy is not to talk. According to Lacan, there is a gap
between speech and enjoyment that cannot be overcome — enjoyment being
precisely that which is located outside language. Enjoyment thus embodies
the limits of all language. Therefore, in the novel, the more the «jewels»
speak, the more they remain silent about their own «jouissance».
In the original model of the oriental tale, The 1001 Nights19, a female
narrator recounts tales in order to stave off her own death. In Diderot's

novel, the plot revolves around a male protagonist whose masculine point
of view unsuccessfully tries to understand the reality around him through a
series of faulty metaphors. Inscribed in this inability is the novel's recurrent
theme of the failure to hear and understand female «jouissance».

From the jewel to the soul

Through this inscription, the Bijoux indiscrets shows itself to be a

foundational and highly subversive work in the genre of the philosophical
novel. In the essential chapter entitled « Métaphysique de Mirzoza » (p. 118),
Mirzoza redefines what a soul is. According to classical metaphysics, the
soul is opposed to the body in that it is self-moving while the principle of
the body's movement lies outside itself. In redefining the soul, she proposes
the following typology of the jewels :

Ainsi la femme voluptueuse est celle dont l'âme occupe le bijou et ne s'en
écarte jamais.
La femme galante, celle dont l'âme est tantôt dans le bijou, et tantôt dans
les yeux.
La femme tendre, celle dont l'âme est habituellement dans le cœur, mais
quelquefois aussi dans le bijou.
La femme vertueuse, celle dont l'âme est tantôt dans la tête, tantôt dans
le cœur, mais jamais ailleurs.
Si l'âme se fixe dans le cœur, elle formera des caractères sensibles,
compatissants, vrais, généreux. Si, quittant le cœur pour n'y plus revenir,
elle se relègue dans la tête, alors elle constituera ceux que nous traitons
d'hommes durs, ingrats, fourbes, cruels, (p. 124)20

19. Les mille et une nuits was translated into French by Galland in 1704.
20. In the article «Femme» (partie «morale») of the Encyclopédie, one finds a similar
definition of women, in particular the distinction between «la coquette» and «la
femme sensible » : « Elle cesse d'être coquette à mesure qu'elle devient sensible. »

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92 ANNE DENEYS-TUNNEY

The coquettish woman and the tender woman : for the tender woman, t
soul lies in the «jewel» while for the coquettish one it lies in the head. T
coquettish woman is the cerebral woman. She displaces « la jouissance
the head in order not to confront it.

It is important to recall that the soul is at the center of several signific

philosophical debates at the time of the writing of Les bijoux indiscrets
1748. La Mettrie had just published his Traité de l'âme (its first publicat
is in 1745, the second in 1747 is publicly burnt), in which he often quot
Condillac's Essai sur l'origine des connaissances humaines21. Diderot
integrates a central philosophical question into this chapter. C
philosophical allusions to concepts such as Descartes's « pineal gland
concept introduced to supplement, so to speak, the dualist theory in
22

Méditations métaphysique) proliferate alongside images of people reduced

to one limb - their sensitive one :

Je vous disais donc que l'âme fait sa première résidence dans les pieds [...].
Nous avons tous éprouvé dans l'enfance que l'âme assoupie reste des mois
entiers dans un état d'engourdissement. Alors les yeux s'ouvrent sans voir,
la bouche sans parler, et les oreilles sans entendre. C'est ailleurs que l'âme
cherche à se détendre et à se réveiller; c'est dans d'autres membres qu'elle
exerce ses premières fonctions [...]. L'âme reste dans les pieds jusqu'à l'âge
de deux ou trois ans ; elle habite les jambes à quatre : elle gagne les genoux
et les cuisses à quinze. Alors on aime la danse, les armes, les courses et
autres violents exercices du corps. C'est la passion dominante de tous les
jeunes gens, et c'est la fureur de quelques-uns. Quoi! L'âme ne résiderait
pas dans les lieux où elle se manifeste presque uniquement, et où elle
éprouve ses sensations les plus agréables ? Mais si sa résidence varie dans
l'enfance et dans la jeunesse, pourquoi ne varierait-elle pas pendant toute
la vie? (p. 120-122)

21. La Mettrie, Œuvres philosophiques, t. 1, Traité de l'âme, Paris, Fayard, 1987, see
ch. XII : « Des affections de l'âme sensitive», p. 191 and following pages.
22. One should recall that in Descartes the «glande pinéale» is the third term of
metaphysical dualism. This third term is introduced as the intermediate between the
soul and the body, a notion which indeed constitutes a major philosophical problem
within the Cartesian system, as Descartes denies that there can be any action of the
body (located in space and therefore passive) on the soul (the only active element).
On the pineal gland, please see my book Ecritures du corps, de Descartes à Laclos,
Paris, PUF, 1992, ch. 1 «Le corps et les signes ou les Fantômes de la Philosophie»,
p. 55 and following pages.

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NOVEL, PHILOSOPHY AND OBSCENITY IN LES BIJOUX INDISCRETS 93

This leads to the classification of women according to the degree of

sensitivity of their sexual organs - their jewels (p. 124).

The recycling of metaphysics : the sensitive soul

The general system of meaning in this chapter is based on allusion and

importation - but within a heterogeneous context that trivializes them -
of the vocabulary of metaphysics. Therefore, an understanding of this
novel, often dismissed as obscene, in fact requires a sound philosophical
education. If Descartes is never quoted directly, the narrative inscribes
him within itself as the original discourse from which it stems. It is
thus difficult to grasp the meaning of Les bijoux indiscrets fully without
acknowledging the constant movement between the reference-text of
Cartesian metaphysics and its recycling and parody within the novel23.
This very funny chapter ends with a love scene between Mangogul and
Mirzoza. The reader in this chapter is carried from the philosophical
question of the location of the soul in the body, to the idea of the
intimate union between body and soul - through the «jewels» and
their sexual enjoyment — to the sexual intercourse between Mirzoza
and Mangogul.
Diderot's originality as a philosopher is absolute. In order to prove that
the soul is in fact nothing but sensation (and therefore inseparable from
the body), La Mettrie writes a Traité de Tâmevt\\trz he demonstrates that
soul and body are in fact «un seul tout» («one entire whole»). Diderot,
on the contrary, opposes to metaphysics not a philosophical treatise,
but a bawdy oriental tale in which a sultan has been given the power to
make women's sexual organs talk. La Mettrie and Condillac oppose to
metaphysical systems based on a body/soul split their own materialist
and sensualist ones. Diderot, in a more radical gesture, displaces the
scene and the object of philosophical discourse altogether, locating it
in the indiscreet female «jewels». The scene of philosophical discourse
has changed; truth now emerges from another site - the sexual, the
repressed, and the feminine.

23. I already explored this question in my article « La critique de la métaphysique dans

Les bijoux indiscrets et Jacques le Fataliste de Diderot », in : Recherches sur Diderot et
sur l'Encyclopédie 26 (1999), p. 141-151.

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94 ANNE DENEYS-TUNNEY

One year later, Diderot publishes La lettre sur les aveugles. In thi
work, the blind imagines, in a manner that is both symmetrical with and
inverted to that of Mirzoza, not that the soul is only sensitive matter, bu
rather that matter might in fact be more abstract that one had originally
conceived - their inability to see leads them to imagine that matter might
actually be capable of thought24. The similarities between the Lettre and th
chapter « Métaphysique de Mirzoza » clearly suggest that the philosophical
questions presented in Les bijoux indiscrets are of central importance for
Diderot. In the novel it is through the mediation of the woman that t
hypothesis of « une âme sensitive », « a sensitive soul », is first presented. Th
theory will be further developed in Condillac's Traité des sensations (1754)
This chapter, which appears to unfold as free association by a woma
in fact mobilizes three major philosophical intertexts : Descartes, on t
side of metaphysics, and on the side of « modern philosophy», La Mettrie,
and Condillac. What Mirzoza says in this chapter is even described as «
system » :

Votre système est ingénieux, et vous l'avez présenté avec autant de grâce
que de netteté : mais je n'en suis pas séduit au point de le croire démontré.
Il me semble qu'on pourrait vous dire que dans l'enfance même, c'est la
tête qui commande aux pieds, et que c'est de là que partent les esprits,
qui, se répandant par le moyen des nerfs dans tous les autres membres, les
arrêtent ou les meuvent au gré de l'âme assise sur la glande pinéale, ainsi
qu'on voit émaner de la sublime Porte les ordres de Sa Hautesse, qui font
agir tous les sujets, (p. 122)

Against the theories of the immaterial soul, Mirzoza proposes what

could be called a « sensitive or sensual metaphysics » (« une métaphysique
sensualiste ») of a material soul that travels throughout the body, locating
itself in the parts that concentrate the maximum of sensation and pleasure

24. Lettre sur les aveugles à l'usage de ceux qui voient, DPV, IV: 28 : « [...] comme ils
voient la matière d'une manière beaucoup plus abstraite que nous; ils sont moins
éloignés de croire qu'elle pense»; and 31-32: «Si jamais un philosophe aveugle et
sourd de naissance fait un homme à l'imitation de celui de Descartes, j'ose vous
assurer, Madame, qu'il placera l'âme au bout des doigts car c'est de là que lui
viennent ses principales sensations et toutes ses connaissances. Et qui l'avertirait que
la tête est le siège de ses pensées ?[...] Car l'abstraction ne consiste qu'à séparer par la
pensée les qualités sensibles des corps, ou les unes des autres, ou du corps même qui
leur sert de base ; et l'erreur naît de cette séparation mal faite, ou faite mal à propos ;
mal faite dans les questions métaphysiques et faite mal à propos dans les questions
physico-mathématiques. »

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NOVEL, PHILOSOPHY AND OBSCENITY IN LES BIJOUX INDISCRETS

in them. This «metaphysical physiology» produced here by Mirzoza is

indeed an exercise in mediation as it retains the vocabulary of dualist
metaphysics - the dichotomy soul/body — and empties it of its spiritual
and metaphysical content in order to identify it in the end as the unifying
sensation of pleasure and sexual enjoyment. Here, the libertine novel with
its satirical reformulation of metaphysics appears as a compromise between
the old and the new - the old metaphysics and the new philosophy.
Les bijoux indiscrets is a unique work in that it constitutes the first
attempt to track down and understand female enjoyment. Where is it?
What is it? Are there different kinds? This is a novel that attempts to
reconcile woman with herself. At the same time it is a virile novel. The

subject that desires knowledge about female «jouissance» can only be

a man, so it is both a virile novel and a pro-feminine novel, like most
of Diderot's works. With this novel Diderot does not merely open the
modern epoch of sexuality and of autonomous knowledge about sex and
sexual «jouissance». He also places the question of pleasure and sexual
«jouissance» at the core of philosophy as the enigma that both philosophy
and the novel have to interrogate, since otherwise they might not say
anything worthwhile.

Anne Deneys-Tunney
New York University

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