The École Saint-Simonienne's Outrage to Public Morals

On August 27 and 28, 1832, the Saint-Simonians were tried for outrage to public morals. I analyze the August trial and caricatures of the École in the light of Carole Pateman's notion of the sexual contract, to argue that the Saint-Simonians' "outrage" lay in their challenge to the founding fiction of social order: the social contract. By proclaiming that the social individual is man and woman, and by positing that the social pact is predicated on a sexual contract, the Saint-Simonians questioned not only the structure of the public sphere during the Bourgeois Monarchy, but also its underlying ideology. (AS)