Pasolini’s Saló, Art & Law Seminar, 2015

Hakan Topal and Alex Villar

The subject for discussion during the last seminar of the 2015 term of the ART & Law program is Pier Paolo’s Pasoline film from 1975: Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. At stake is the signification of the film and the texts it references for the thinking of law and its role during exceptional governmental circumstances.

Hakan Topal and Alex Villar, former Art & Law fellows, present the initial framework for the discussion. Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento, the program’s director, moderates the conversation, which includes all the participants.

Reading:

Agamben, Giorgio. “The Muselmann.” In Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive, 41–86. New York: Zone Books, 2000.

Bataille, Georges. “Unlimited Fusion, the Orgy.” In The Accursed Share, 129–136. New York: Zone Books, 1991.

Beauvoir, Simone. “Must We Burn Sade?” In The Marquis De Sade: The 120 Days of Sodom, and Other Writings. New York: Grove Press, 1966.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Leopold Sacher-Masoch. “The Language of Sade and Masoch.” In Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty & Venus in Furs. New York: Zone Books, 1989.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Leopold Sacher-Masoch. “Humor, Irony and the Law.” In Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty & Venus in Furs. New York: Zone Books, 1989.

Klossowski, Pierre. “Nature as Destructive Principle.” In The 120 Days of Sodom: And Other Writings. London: Arrow, 1991.

Mailer, Norman. “Children of the Pied Piper,” review of American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis, Vanity Fair, March 1991, 220.

Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Salò, Or, The 120 Days of Sodom. Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. 1975. Film.

Zizek, Slavoj. “Radical Evil as a Freudian Category.” Lacan.com. 2007. Accessed April 19, 2015. http://www.lacan.com/zizlovevigilantes.html.

Meeting:
Fordham University School of Law
150 West 62nd Street, New York, NY 10023