Mishima’s “L’école de la chair”: The Educational Drive and Other Aspects of Perversion

In this paper the author revisits Mishima’s L’école de la chair (1993) through an explorative questioning of the Japanese writer with respect to the structure of perversion. Rather than starting from an a priori formulated theory on perversion, Mishima’s work is read in an open way that results in a series of themes. In addition to the opposites characteristic of Mishima’s oeuvre, the following themes emerge: the educational drive; the psychological insight; the knowledge and the use of this knowledge in eroticism and love; homosexual eroticism; the contract; the jouissance; contempt and humiliation; and fantasy. L’ecole de la chair teaches us about perversion, especially with respect to the educational drive, that is when the latter serves other than strictly educational aims, such as humiliation. Finally, the author considers some aspects of C. Millot’s Gide, Genet, Mishima, Intelligence de la perversion (1996).

Mishima’s “L’école de la chair”: The Educational Drive and Other Aspects of Perversion

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