Outline_of_georges_bataille_erotism_deat.pdf

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Erotism: Death and Sensuality: by Georges Bataille

Outline by Philip Turetzky, [email protected] Part One: TABOO AND TRANSGRESSION Introduction: 1) Eroticism is assenting to life to the point of death, independent of natural goals, and re: erotic passion existence must be imagined. 2) Reproduction implies discontinuous beings, as does communication. Reproduction opens gulf between death which implies continuity. In asexual reproduction 1st (discontinuous) being disappears and 2nd new beings arise with an instant of continuity between. These creatures have an inside. Sexual creatures unite in fusion - discontinuous yearn for continuity individuality hard to bear. 3) 3 Forms of eroticism: physical, emotional, religious - try to substitute continuity for discontinuity: (a) all eroticism has a sacramental character (b) Eroticism essentially a realm of violence - death most violent jerk from discontinuity to continuity (d-->c) - physical eroticism is violation of practitioners - dissolution of person - female as passive and male dissolved in fusion (c) Stripped naked as contrast to discontinuity links act of love w/sacrifice male as sacrificer female w/victim - Eroticism -> breaking patterns (of social order) jolts discontinuous existence - sex unto death = the extreme endpoint of violent element in erotic acts (d) Physical eroticism holds onto separateness Emotional eroticism not so constrained. Passion is violent agitation (d -->c, much more than physical desire) - Calm follows suffering, which reveals the significance of the beloved, death linked w/urge to possess - kill rather than not possess - Love means suffering and the hope of a way out of suffering - promised fusion made salient by suffering - love and union involve death, murder, suicide, passion - re: religion eroticism: the beloved appears full and limitless being = the truth of existence. (e) Death does not affect the continuity of existences continuity may even be proved by death - religious sacrifices victims die and spectators share in revelation of continuity by violent disruption of discontinuity - compare personal God w/ negative theology of mysticism, reveals absence of any object. (f) Eroticism = assenting to life unto death challenges death - life is doomed, but continuity is not meeting of the ways for violent impulses at the heart of things - Poetry leads, like all eroticism, to fusion of separate objects, to eternity death and continuity. Chapter I: Eroticism in Inner Experience A) Eroticism, an immediate aspect of inner experience as contrasted with animal sexuality: Eroticism = an immediate aspect of inner experience as contrasted w/animal sexuality. Inner desire ≠ object of desire, human eroticism calls inner life into play. B) The decisive importance of the transition from animal to man: Work (w/tools) and taboos arise w/early humans, both work and sexual taboos arise w awareness of death - These changes: understanding mortality, work, sexual shame/eroticism are religious in nature.

2 C)The inner experience of eroticism; the degree of objectivity connected with the discussion of it; the historical perspective in which this must be seen: Bataille stresses subjective point of view, deliberate loss of self in eroticism - objective views are necessary since inner experience is always bound up with some objective considerations. D) Eroticism is primarily a religious matter and the present work is nearer to “theology” than to scientific or religious history: Focus on subjectivity like theology (Christianity a bad e.g.) - no particular religious tradition, not antiscience but not scientistic - religious aspirations expressed indirectly - an experience outside specific religion - not objective history needing inner experience but benefits by not bringing it into play - must consider objective historical forms and experience cannot be separated from this and is illuminated by it. Inner experience must be universal with some arbitrariness E) The conditions of an impersonal inner experience; the contradictory experiences of taboos and transgressions: knowledge of eroticism and religion demand contradiction between prohibitions and transgressions. The dual experience is rare, religion is seen as either prohibition or transgression - Religion and Erotic experience does not occur if taboo hold good or taboo doesn’t hold good and taboo is seen (objectively [Freud]) as neurotic. This minimizes the significance of the experience. Objectivity sees Religion and Erotic experience as monstrous, in Science taboos are seen as irrational but science depends on subject denying themselves to get at objects. This is OK if it opposes eroticism, but such opposition is not justified and so neither is scientific attitude in studying eroticism. Taboo acting for science externalizes the object and removing terror in order to attain clarity. Since science depends on taboos it tries to subdue the violence by prohibition. But if awareness tries to focus on violent impulses it must do so using the taboos necessary to its function. But then taboos if not transgressed eliminate the very consciousness to be studied. Transgression -> anguish of violation necessary for the existence of taboo. So anguish at the heart of taboo. so religious sensibility like terror, anguish and intense pleasure. Inner experience achieved in moment of anguish tearing oneself (≠ object) and move beyond objective awareness. Chapter II: The Link Between Taboos and Death A) The contrast between the world of work or reason and that of violence: To consider: most intense moment - taboo/transgression relation: World of work (and reason) basis of human life, but doesn’t order us w/o limit, but (human) nature is itself violent - Nature moves to exceed bounds - excesses - indefinable, So God only a wishful projection of reason on the indefinable - Excess manifested when violence wins over reason. Work demands rational constraint, delayed gratification, the collective is dedicated to work defined by necessary taboos. B) The main function of all taboos is to combat violence: Taboos often seems insignificant, they exclude violence and So sex and death - Excess re: sexual reproduction and excess re: death are to be mutually understood [**The urge toward love pushed to its limit is an urge toward death.] C) Prehistoric evidence of taboos connected with death: homo faber worked w/tools and burial of the dead appears at the end of the Middle Paleolithic, So taboo and work begin together. Taboo on death is distances work from violence. Work includes reason and accepts identity with the (transformed) object (causal

3 laws of operation) - Humans identified with the (rational) world of work and opposed to the world of violence. D) The horror of the corpse as a symbol of violence and as a threat of the contagiousness of violence: Violence and death both horrify and fascinate and disturb (we prefer life) - Death as sign of violence, corpse presents contrast between everyday and unfamiliar w/symbolic thought the corpse is dangerous, for the others, until buried and the rotting corpse is “contagious” until reduced to dry bones. E) The taboo on murder: A special case of taboo on violence - early human thought all death is caused by violence. So everyone dies of murder. The forces that murdered dead man must not be released on the others. Taboo works in the community of work (cuts off violence), but not re: strangers. - What outlasts transgression is the flouted taboo - repeated transgressions don’t abolish the taboo. - Taboos founded on terror exist as temptations to transgression as well as to be obeyed. Chapter III: Taboos Related to Reproduction A) The taboo universally found in man as opposed to the sexual freedom of animals: Evidence of early human sexual activity only since Upper Paleolithic art - Ithyphallic images. Sexual activity is a form of violence as opposed to work, as impulse it can interfere of work. So taboo against sex during work. Some restriction on sexual between are a cultural universals, e.g. concealing male erections and copulation. So while no particular form of taboo (e.g. incest) is universal, some taboo or other is universal. We must examine all sexual/religious taboos: on sex/death/violence (is universal) B) The taboo on incest: Taboo on sex has eluded scientists because of the specific focus on incest. Taboo on sex made it necessary that same order be placed on the distribution of women, and made incest taboo which is not basic: core = rational behavior surrounded by mobile violence of sexual impulses. C) Menstruation and loss of blood at childbirth: The taboos here are related to internal violence symbolized in blood, menstruation is associated w/sex and degradation. Childbearing is also excessive, rending process outside order and denial of established order by bringing being out of nothingness. Chapter IV: Affinities Between Reproduction and Death A) Death, Corruption and the Renewal of Life: Life always arises out of death in cycle: life->death->corruption->life. Life also negation of death, horror of death and decay, but bones appease rancor of corruption. So bones revered. Spontaneous generation = birth from corruption (horror and shame) - Nausea at decay. B) Nausea and its general field: For survivor the corpse is a sign of “nothing at all” - disgust is not at objective danger - also range of artificial behavior: horror re: corpse, excreta, sexual obscenity, connect sexual organs and body wastes biologically, subjectively this is often manifest in nausea - disgust is taught to children and includes a failure to see the stinking mass as “nothing at all.” C) The prodigality of life and our fear of it: We may feel a void opening in us (reading this) this void is at the point of death and revulsion. Life is instability and disorder, swelling on the verge of explosion which exhausts its resources and requires death of exhausted to make room for more life. The more

4 extravagant and excessive the means of engendering life, the more successful. In general human life strives to excess to the point of anguish (unbearable). In the end we want the honor of annihilation and yet regard it as impossible, a luxury of torment. D) Man’s “no” to Nature: Human’s try not to be carried away by the process, but only accelerate it. Taboos are refusals to expend life in an orgy of annihilation. So sex and death not distinguishable since both are festivals of excess. The taboos re: sex and death are unified in destructive frenzy. Humans are possible once “no” is spoken to excess even thought this “no” fails. Chapter V: Transgression A) The transgression does not deny the taboo but transcends it and completes it: There is a prohibition that cannot be transgressed, some transgression is permitted and some prescribed. Taboos are irrational (e.g. war OK but, don’t kill) “The taboo is there in order to be violated.” positive emotion --> violate taboo, negative emotion --> obey taboo. So taboo on murder doesn’t oppose war and war is impossible w/o taboo (animals have no war) war like work is purposive organization (war = organized violence). Transgression is violence used by a rational creature. War arises when threshold of taboo on murder is crossed. Organized transgression and taboo organize social life: frequency and regularity of transgression gives increased force to prohibitions. B) Transgression without limits: Transgression is often rule governed (unlimited transgression is only possible sometimes) e.g. funeral ceremonies esp. for sovereign lead to frenzy of the people which contains a form of sacrilege and though they break rules these rules very will be restored. Disorder takes place during period of decay ending w/clean skeleton. Mechanism of transgression: taboo holds violence in check, this barrier is seen to be ineffective (king is dead), unleashing penned up violence. Transgression ≠ animal liberty but is sacred world as opposed to the profane world of work and taboo. Sacred1 = taboo negative df of sacred, feelings of devotion and terror. Sacred2 = transgression fascinated awe. Economics distinguishes 2 meanings of “sacred” Taboo and prohibition make work possible. During work consumption is minimized. Sacred days are feast days when forbidden things are allowed or required and expenditure is mandated. Accepting violence is vertiginous. So Religion is moving force behind breaking taboos, founded on feeling of awe and terror and reaffirming taboos by transgression of the law. Consciousness of the void exalts and makes us aware of transgression. Chapter VI: Murder, Hunting and War A) Cannibalism: taboo once barred forbidden desire to eat human flesh. It is only done in rituals. Cannibals know that this is forbidden and sacred and the very prohibition incites, the desire, creates it. B) Duels, feuds and war: Taboo limits killing to special occasions like sex. Duels, feuds and war are exceptions. Murder --> taboo unknown or unheeded, while duels, feuds and war violate taboo under certain rules. Duels served religious intent and were public confrontations between factions in ordered precision. C) The hunt and the expiation of the animal’s death: Until quite recently human’s saw themselves as similar to larger animals, murder of human was

5 unknown in earliest humanity. Hunting takes on the significance of religious violation, so hunters need to be purified. Representation (cave drawings) follows transgression, depicting the moment when killing exposed life’s ambiguity. This view better than anguish (utilitarian) view. D) The earliest record of war: War was unknown to Paleolithics, then killing became ritualized as war. War requires rules, demarcating groups, declaration of hostilities, same qualities of feast days, fancy dress, etc. War was, at first, a luxury, extravagant and exuberant. E) The distinction between ritual and calculated forms of war: War, first, was an expression of feelings in ceremonial rites. War starts as a game of status and degenerates into pitiless struggle. War oscillates between rule guided end and means to political results. (NB rules don’t correspond with limits on losses. Once loosed frenzy was boundless). F) Cruelty and organized war: War often prelude to torture. Cruelty is here typically human, e.g. callousness to human suffering. Violence is organized in transgression of taboos. Cruelty is, like eroticism, a premeditated form conscious of intent to transgress. In war a return to animality is inconceivable, always stress the human character of violence. Modern warfare separates masses from the transgressive pleasure. Modern warfare is unsatisfying. Chapter VII: Murder and Sacrifice A) The suspension of the taboo surrounding death for religious reasons; sacrifice; and animals regarded as sacred beings: Sacrifice = religious act par excellance. Animals usually sacrificed and regarded like humans, but more sacred because they had no taboos. So killing an animal rouses feelings of sacrilege, animals are violent yet early humans thought they must know the law. So they deliberately broke the law. In death they are entirely in the power of violence. This elevates the victim above the ordinary customs and turns that order on its head. Death pays back animal violations. -- Continuity/ discontinuity thesis [cf. Theory of Religion] taboo distances from violence. Transgressions open to violence and animal, cave paintings seldom depict humans or hide them in animal masks (signs of shame?). Transgression, animal god dying, violence unconstrained by human taboos, human world shaped by denial of animality (nature denying itself) and dialectically going beyond to another denial which doesn’t return to nature. B) Beyond anguish: Anguish shows withdrawal before blind surge of life. Anguish and the art of its transcendence is the denial of cycle of death and reproduction make humanity. Life excessive and we desire what endangers our life. If danger is too great then both inevitable and desire abates. If not fatal extravagance, we spread ourselves w/great energy, e.g. detective novels, vicarious expenditure and danger: literature is heir to religion - sacrificial. Anguish desired to transcend death, but only if anguish is appropriate. Anguish desired in sacrifice and recoils when bounds overstepped. Human sacrifice is late development w/ separation of humans and animals. Chapter VIII: From Religious Sacrifice to Eroticism A) Christianity, and the sacred nature of transgression misunderstood: We do not feel the immediacy of sacrifice, Christianity anti-law breaking in general. In

6 transgression sin and expiation are deliberate acts. This is altered in Christianity the passion is not a deliberate transgression B) The ancient comparison of sacrifice and erotic intercourse: Transgressive acts intentionally removal of discontinuous to continuous existence as in erotic act which strips beloved of identity and exposes her to impersonal violence of sexual organs. The chance to explore the similarity of feelings of piety in sacrifice and in eroticism was lost when Christianity gave up the desire to use violent means to discover existence. C) The flesh in sacrifice and in love: Sacrifice brings life and death with continuity (by eating the sacrificial meat). Sacrifice brings life and death into harmony: death w/life’s upsurge and life w/death’s vertigo and unknown {Now imagination must do the duty of sacrifice} We need to imagine sacrifice beyond nausea. We hide killing of meat today. Both sacrifice and erotic acts reveal the flesh each replaces ordered life with the blind convulsion of organs, urges of the flesh go beyond bounds w/o controlling will. Yet it also returns, flesh signifies threatening freedom. D) The flesh, decency and the taboo on sexual freedom: Decency is chance matter of time and place. Some taboos familiar but general taboo on sex yet to be explored: Taboo in general is on violence of the flesh: move from objective consideration of organs to experience starting w/plethora of explosive upsurge Chapter IX: Sexual Plethora and Death A) Reproductive activity seen as a form of growth: Breaking sexual taboo is not a return to the animal (natural), which forms a foundation. Excess energy always expended by life either in growth or waste. Sissiparous growth is a discontinuous split: reproduction as growth dividing out of a state of plethora. B) The growth of the whole and the contribution of individuals: Sex is growth but not growth of the being reproducing, impersonal growth, individual loss contributes to group growth, giver must give and then find itself in the gift. C) Death and continuity in asexual and sexual reproduction: Plethora initiates pressure towards crisis of division, violent agitation of the whole organism pushes continuity to its limit in discontinuity of the split. Compare plethora of sexual organs. Both crises originate in superabundance and are bound with group reproduction and in both individuals disappear. Cell division is not immortality: a disappears and aa and aaa appear. Both push overall continuity to its limit, death appears where continuity appears and discontinuity disappears, only discontinuous beings die. D) A return to inner experience: Humans think of their discontinuity as the deepest part of their being. This hides continuity. the fusion of gametes makes the continuity clear, comparatively the anguish of discontinuous sexual beings is an illusion. In moments of sexual intensity fear of loss of discontinuity (death and pain) are transcended, stimulating a sense of continuity. This is a matter of inner experience, feeling of self ≠ consciousness of self (which requires consciousness of external objects) feeling of self varies with degree of isolation, discontinuity, sexual activity is a critical moment in isolation. E) General facts concerning sexual reproduction: Plethora in material basis of crisis. Sexual individual generally survives its excesses, death unusual, orgasm as “little death” eventually newcomers replace their predecessors. Death is consequence of superabundance; discontinuity only preserved in stagnation.

7 F) A comparison of the two elementary aspects as seen objectively and subjectively: Subjectively the being’s being is in question in transition between continuity and discontinuity. Human experience is distant from objective realities of reproduction, e.g. plethora feeling not connected w/reproduction neither is erotic pleasure, yet let down after peak is connected w/death. The objective reproduction question subjective sense of self and discontinuity. Others are recognized and exert pressure towards continuity each being contributes to the others self negation: the violence of each meets that of the others and both are open to continuity. G) Fundamental characteristics of the subjective experience of eroticism: (1) individual shaken by plethora to point of rupture (2) rupture subsides and isolation returns (3) only death modifies individuality (4) Pleasure is deeply felt in crisis and anguish. A being yielding to physical urge is not human hence an infinite general taboo against violence is set up w/o a formula, out of subjective knowledge. Sexual violence overturns life’s structures. Transgression is necessary for feeling of freedom in rupture. H) The paradox of the general taboo on sexual freedom, if not on sexuality: Sexual taboo is manifested in transgression, pleasure and taboo suggest each other, transgression is human and shaped by work. Transgression and eroticism are organized activities. Eroticism appears in and stresses transgression. Chapter X: Transgression in Marriage and in Orgy A) Marriage seen as a transgression and the right of entry: Marriage is framework of legitimate sexuality: marriage is transgression, a rule regularly broken (a permitted violation). Sex in marriage has aspects of crime. The initial act was often entrusted to sovereign, with authority to transgress. B) Repetition: Work and economics stress state of marriage rather than the act. Habit dulls intensity and marriage --> habit. Eroticism demands irregularity and yet sexual life also grows w/habit as danger of initial violation recedes. Violation gives greater force to the law. C) Ritual orgy: The feast and orgy provide opportunities for rule breaking, feast denies bonds of work (transcending the animal). Orgy is clearly excess bringing frenzy, vertigo and loss of consciousness --> religious feeling (not like dignified religion which calms). D) The orgy as an agrarian ritual: Orgies ensure futility of fields but it has other meanings and sources, separating work from sacred worlds (= natural world unreducible to work and order). Sacred world is significant re: birth of a new order, i.e. sacred is determined by work. Use value of war, sacrifice and orgies originate in taboos against murder and sexual violence and their transgression: violence in these activities is not natural but religious and tied to communal acts Chapter XI: Christianity A) Licence and the making of the Christian world: Orgies do not return to the animal, but violations of a modesty originating in religion. This is difficult for us to see because Christianity opposes the spirit of transgression. Christianity does find its religious core in treating continuity as divine essence, and does try to reduce everything to this continuity via violent boundless love. How can the sacred world of continuity adjust to discontinuity? 1st by reducing the sacred to a discontinuous and personal God, 2nd by individual immortality in the afterlife.

8 Discontinuity is affirmed in damnation and denied in the mutual love of God. What is lost is the means from isolation to fusion, transgression. B) The basic ambiguity: Christianity’s reduction of religion to its benign aspect: Christianity’s projection of the darker side of religion into the profane world: Christianity rejected (pagans accepted) impure aspects of the sacred which were driven into the profane. Transgression came before the fall not as an element of the sacred. Profane good linked w/divine, profane evil w/diabolic part of the sacred. Profanation in Christianity, like transgression, accessed the sacred/diabolic via contact with something impure. Sacred/divine, for the Church, was formal w/well defined limits, erotic/diabolic w/o formal limits, while for pagan transgression impure had well defined forms. The dark side of religion dwindled and religion reduced to good w/o curse. C) Witches’ Sabbaths: Eroticism, like uncleanness, w/Christianity lost its apparent sacredness, and connected w/marital issues became a profane evil, to be suppressed. This suppression was difficult and all we know of orgies in the Middle Ages is via tortured confessions. Witches’ Sabbath’s based on feasts and sacrilege, and parody of Christian rites. These were transgressions giving access to the sacred connected w/pleasure and limitless potential. Christianity thought access to the sacred evil and evil profane. D) Pleasure and the certainty of doing wrong: Pleasure connected to transgression, but evil is transgression condemned (sin). The Church denied eroticism as sacred and free thinkers denied what the Church held divine. Free thinkers (Sade) denied evil and sin. Hence the sacred vanishes w/Church and then w/free thinkers, and eroticism vanishes into animal mechanism. No going back, so emotional eroticism may gain where physical eroticism has lost. Chapter XII: The Object of Desire: Prostitution A) The erotic object: The orgy is necessarily disappointing, all lose individuality, but this obscures the desirable object and eroticism works through the objective signs of the object. These signs make differences obvious, so eroticism is expressed in an object which paradoxically implies surpassing the limits of all objects. B) Women, the privileged objects of desire: Traditionally woman excite desire by putting themselves forward as objects for aggression and men pursue. Prostitution adds a commercial element, but as beautiful objects especially naked women is object on the verge of fusion and dissolution. C) Religious prostitution: Sexual display is followed by feigned denial. Adornment suggests prostitution and makes it possible to be elusive (poverty stops this oscillation). Originally prostitution was an exchange of gifts not a commercial transaction, gifts increase the woman’s adornment and power w/o productive use (unlike marriage) and which can consume a man’s wealth. The prostitute was dedicated to a life of transgression and sacred violation of taboo, consider sacred prostitutes: by retaining shame temple prostitute avoided disgrace of street whore who is cynically proud of her shame. Shame is disappeared after initial violation in marriage and dissolved completely in the orgy. Sacred prostitution turns shame into ritual and transgression, shame becomes a way of accepting the taboo. D) Low prostitution: Low prostitute w/o taboo as a result of extreme poverty and so treated as inhuman. In general distance from taboo evokes degradation.

9 Low prostitution complements Christianity which treats it as profane. Growth of importance of morality is linked with contempt for animals denying them moral value; degradation is indefensible while transgression is not, fallen creatures have no hope, transgressive anguish promises joy. E) Eroticism, Evil and social degradation: Morality which exalts the lowly serves to oppress them more (e.g. poverty in Egypt and Christian world). Christianity harshest on religious eroticism. Witches were burnt while low prostitutes lived to illustrate sin. Modern degradation of prostitution arises out of this, the involuntary cooperation of the prostitute and the retention of the idea that human life as the good where acceptance of degradation is a way of spitting on human dignity. Degrading words for sex organs and acts retain some of the same elements of the forbidden as transgression. Low prostitute sides w/free thinkers re: the organs are not disgraceful, but then turns to degradation and denial through violence in order to retain sense of erotic w/o taboo. Chapter XIII: Beauty A) Man’s fundamental contradiction: The tension between the plethora of a being lost in continuity and the conatus of discontinuous individuals, then persists through changes: transgression, profanation, degradation. The feeling of transgression, of going outside of bounds persists. Breaking barriers and dying are invested as objects. We try to get at continuity w/o crossing the boundaries of discontinuity that must be crossed. We try to get beyond our limits and retain them at the same time. Intense pleasure arises by suspension on the verge of bursting w/o going the whole way. Either desire will fade or we will die. We choose the former and take possession of the object rather than losing our life. Possession emphasizes the objectivity of the object of desire which is valued as beautiful. B) The contrast of purity and uncleanness in beauty: Human beauty is appreciated according to the current ideal, w/little room for personal preference. Consider two factors youth and the distance from animal appearances. Beauty also suggests the animal parts as mystery. Beauty denies the animal and awakens desire by frustrating it and sanctifying animal parts. C) The final sense of eroticism is death: Quest for beauty both tries to break discontinuity and to escape continuity: the limit is always present but it is there to be overreached, fear and horror are temptations to exceed bounds. Beauty is desired to find joy in profaning it. Sacrificial victims are chosen for their perfection. Sexual beauty is desired as a contrast to the ugliness of the sexual organs and act. Beauty is important because ugliness cannot be desecrated, which is the essence of eroticism. Repetitions and contradictions are inevitable w/so many potentialities, but the transition from compression to explosion is constant, even though these appear in many and varied forms (e.g. all forms of eroticism are possible in marriage, and an object may stand out clearly in an orgy). Eroticism would not exist w/o reconciliation of desire/individual love, life persisting/death beckoning, sexual frenzy/love of children. But we have stressed the attempt to cheat its longing for death and continuity. Part Two: SOME ASPECTS OF EROTICISM

10 Chapter I: Kinsey, the Underworld and Work A) Eroticism is an experience that cannot be assessed from outside in the way an object can: Humans are not mere things but have the sovereignty of significance (eating them violates sacredness). Human spirits unlike animal bodies cannot be treated as things. Sexual acts and organs could be regarded as things except that they trouble us when viewed subjectively. Kinsey report claims observation from the outside yet uses subjective reports, which are only objectified by the application of method. Sexual activity has the contagiousness, like laughter, which precludes scientific observation. We participate and share in it, so it is not a thing. Sexual activity has the same influence as poetry, making the body divine. Kinsey can only objectify this by using great numbers. Such methods only yield knowledge insofar as they show that subjectivity must exist beyond objective observation. To perceive the violence of human sexuality is to be deeply stirred. B) Work binds us to an objective awareness of things and reduces sexual exuberance. Only the underworld retains its exuberance: Animal nature can be treated as a thing: Kinsey research uses statistics, facts efficiently collected and assembled, which show orgasm rates by religion and class. Report says that rates vary with religious restriction but highest rate in those who do not work, work makes people into things, means to an end. Animals are things only as people ignore their exuberant nature (tiger e.g.). Animal sexual exuberance, is greatest bar to treating people as things, but human work absorbs some of this energy and tends to makes us into things. C) Work as opposed to sexual exuberance is the condition of objective awareness: Orgasm rate varies w/degree of “humanization” of work. Rate goes down as class goes up except for the dominant class, which has leisure. People are things insofar as they belong to someone else, so dominate class is not treated as things. K report fails to consider length of sex play which uses energy. Sexual exuberance leads away from awareness and is incompatible with work which heightens awareness (of objects). Yet by work by refusing sexual abundance we have limited self awareness by the very work that made self awareness possible. D) The awareness of eroticism, unlike that of external objects, belongs to a darker side; it leads to a silent awakening: We lack awareness of ourselves in ways that cannot be reduced to objects. Clarity about sexual life reduces it to nature and cannot grasp inner experience and its disturbing aspects. Inner truth is revealed when understanding via objects fails and accursed aspect is felt; the rending tumult of passion leads us to focus beyond objects. Chapter II: De Sade’s Sovereign Man A) Those who are not bound by reason: thieves and kings: Sovereign rulers personify the escape from the bounds of work (as do criminals). War opens up more possibilities than work and slavery prolongs the effects of wars. With today’s domesticated sovereigns the vision of the “whole man” is lost. Spectacular apparatus of royalty and the extravagances of kings which balanced common life are lost. B) In literature the idea of absolute and sovereign liberty occurs after the revolutionary denial of the monarchic principle: Sade perfects and criticizes the development of individual potentials above the crowd in 2 lines: siding against the ancien régime and using literature to put forth a concept of sovereignty

11 beyond the agreement of the masses, outrageous, gratuitous and w/scope for spectacle. C) Solitude in prison and the terrifying truth of an imaginary moment of success: Sovereign men are subject to no restraints, self-centered (not incited by the people) their partners have no rights, they do not count at all, so that the violence of eroticism is not invalidated. Absolute solitude is condition for sovereignty. This denies interdependence necessary for human life, but also marks moments of excess w/o which we would not understand ourselves. Excess, useless pleasure, is by definition outside of reason and work, and logically implies denial of others rights. Sade discovered this knowledge, even though it went against his own practices, by considering only what he could imagine. D) The mortal disorder of eroticism and “apathy”: Erotic excess expends and is the opposite of work which accumulates. So it implies disorder and connects w/death, destruction and betrayal. Nudity, partial nudity, brutality, murder, prostitution, coarse talk all turn sensual pleasure into ruinous excess. Pleasure squanders our resources to no purpose. W/o respect for others there are no limits on desire showing what spending can mean. Respect leads to a cycle of servitude that undermines respect. No one has the strength for this supreme moment of sovereignty. {Blanchot: “Apathy” = spirit of denial necessary for sovereignty. W/o apathy we spend energy on others in pity, gratitude, etc. Apathy means cold blooded crime, i.e. crime w/o spontaneous passion which becomes so insensible that cruelty needs to be taken to destructive explosion, yielding pleasure on a new level of one’s whole being.} E) The triumph of death and pain: Being, more that passive presence, is excess, transcendent pleasure is more than sensuous (Clairwill’s crime that acts beyond her life and consciousness). Unlimited denial is denial not just of others but of oneself aiming at sovereignty. Historical sovereignty only evades necessity, Sade’s sovereign man is a fiction w/o obligations and a victim of his own sovereignty. Sade starts with absolute irresponsibility and ends in utter selfcontrol. Transgression is taken to the point that only crime matters, individuals, as victims, don’t matter. Impersonal denial and crime tend to the continuity of beings beyond death; it does not transcend yet links infinite continuity with infinite destruction. Chapter III: De Sade and the Normal Man A) Pleasure is paradox: Ordinary people motivated by need and fear, sympathies, dread and cowardice oppose the passions of sovereignty. Hence pleasure is paradoxically unbearable, dread the proper reaction to it. Sade imagines sovereign man as a challenge to decent normal people, and the firmness of this gives meaning to this challenge that exceeds the possible. B) To admire de Sade is to diminish the force of his ideas: Even talking about Sade is paradoxical. Opponents regard glorification of Sade’s rebellion as boast or impudence, implying impossibility of shaking established ethics, but this ignores the value of Sade’s ideas incompatible w/reason: life = pursuit of pleasure, which is > as more destructive of life. An attitude of disgust w/Sade better suits his intentions when talking about him. What is the significance of the absolute value Sade placed on the excesses of the imagination? C) The divine is no less paradoxical than the vicious: The sacred intimates secret violence that is the spring of power, yet limited by the normal and profane.

12 Sacrifice manifests this violence, which only protects once its need to consume and ruin is sated. These facts show human needs which cannot be denied like Sade’s fancies. The paradox of life is solved by separation of religious from profane, anguish and joy from useful activity. D) The normal man considers the paradox of sacredness or eroticism as unhealthy: The attitude of normality cannot grasp the ambiguity of the sacred or take its horrors seriously. They exist on the edge of awareness and Sade helps make the horrors of sacrifice more accessible, if only as aberrations and extensions of erotic impulses. Q: Can human being totally avoid excise the denial of reasonand utility or is this negation essential to our being? E) Vice is the deep truth at the heart of man: Can acetic will and punishment remove our sadism or is overpowering excess at the heart of humanity? If the 1st, then we will subdue nature, if the 2nd, this would destroy our humanity. Consequence: $ essential excessive urge, which is sacred, and w/o which humanity would languish, and which is connected with the normal quest for self -knowledge which seeks to accept and limit these urges. F) The two poles of human life: Use-value and violence; reason and excess; civilization and barbarism; speech and silence; do not divide us into groups but are present in all humanity. G) Violence is silent and de Sade’s use of language is a contradiction in terms: Common language cannot express violence, it treats it as a mistake. Silence cannot eliminate violence, but reason denies it and it derides talk about it. Torturers use the language of authority not of violence concealing violence. Sade’s libertines talk to each other to justify their conformity to nature and insist on the value of violence, excess, crime and torture. Sade’s ideas are opposed to the torturer in that he refuses to cheat, his words are said by characters who would be silent. Speechless solitude needs no justification which requires the very moral energy in question. One who speaks has broken out of solitude. Violence opposes solidarity, logic, laws, language, and Sade uses the most forthright language opposed by sovereignty. H) Sade’s language is that of a victim: Violence only comes to speech in the language of the victim, since silence would imply acceptance. So Sade, in prison, becomes judge attacking men, God and Nature. I) De Sade spoke out in order to justify himself in his own eyes before other people: Giving voice to violence fits well neither w/violence nor language. Hence, misunderstanding and revulsion are the best responses to Sade’s writings as justifications. J) De Sade’s language takes us out of the field of violence: Sade’s expression changes violence into a reflective rational will to violence. Sade’s discourses make exhausting reading; in their excess, they give us vertigo, pointing to our own nature. In their logical incoherence these discourses take us away from violence, since their conscious desire to profit from violence denies the frenzy of being beside oneself that violence requires. Conscious understanding tries to comprehend violence and violence makes us lose ourselves and our consciousness drawing toward consciousness to intensify itself. K) For the sake of greater satisfaction de Sade strove to infuse violence with the orderly calm of awareness: Eroticism is the sexual activity of a conscious being which is inaccessible to consciousness. Sade tries to make something solid and

13 measurable out of violence. the attempt to talk about his delirium as an external object postpones and intensifies the climax of pleasure(/pain). L) De Sade’s perversion brings violence into the field of conscious experience: In focusing on an antinomy of violence and awareness Sade tends to make us aware that violence (Sade’s punishment) is w/o justification. The calmness of reason in violence attempts to bring to the surface what revolts us and induces pleasure. Nothing excites passion more than irregularity. This Sadean doctrine leads the way to an understanding of the paradox of transgression and taboo, by making it possible to want to know that which most repels us. Chapter IV: The Enigma of Incest A) Some answers that have been given to the problem of incest: Prohibitions on incest are universal in some form; either in precise rules of legitimate relationships or less customary forms due to economic or psychological factors B) Some answers that have been given to the problem of incest: Lévi-Strauss claims rules of exogamy distinguish culture from nature, and so make us human. This is ambitious since it links the desire of self revelation with knowledge. Earlier theories treated taboos as eugenic in 19th C [cf. Foucault p.148-50], or as instinctive repugnance (false: incestuous desires are universal), historical accounts capturing women via war, menstruation, killing of the primal father (dubious since arbitrary or not historical but symbolic fantasies of the present) C) The limited significance of the external factors forbidding or permitting marriages: Lévi-Strauss give us detailed permutations to solve the problem of the distribution of women. The distinctions between parallel and cross cousins, matrilinear and patrilinear cross cousins make social but not biological differences in who is allowed to marry (these relations may have opposite meanings in different cultures). Distribution of women = distribution of wealth, problems are solved by rights settled in advance. D) The rules of exogamy, giving women away, and the need for a rule to share them out among the men: Mauss claims that economic relations = reciprocal gift exchanges and = a total social act: religious, economic, utilitarian, emotional, juridical and ethical. Expenditure is the key to such exchanges. If incestuous marriages, then no gift exchange and no cycle of wealth. Destruction (of useful) has prestige value. The principle opposes commercial exchange which seeks profit. Women are not objects of commerce, but signify celebration and means of communication as objects of generosity which circulate. Incest taboo rest on the affirmation of the gift and a movement beyond immediate enjoyment, rather than the denial of sexual union. E) The positive advantages of certain blood relationships in the system of gift and barter: The material advantages of giving women in marriage include added wealth and varying diets. Exchange of cross cousins sets up a reciprocal structure between two groups, that prevents stagnation and generalized exchanges between many groups is aided by privileging matrilinear cousins, opining up an indefinite possible linkings extending the need to make exchanges and extend alliances and power. F) The secondary significance of the economic aspect of Lévi-Strauss’s theory: In potlatch the gift is given expecting a gift in return and is also based on generosity. Exogamy paradoxically gives away coveted objects: exchange involves the sexual value of the object and is universally compelling. So taboo is

14 erotic giving an extra intensity to sexual desire in setting a limit. Reciprocity has economic utility, but this opposes eroticism. Eroticisms alternating denial and affirmation, fascination and horror are subject to rules only temporarily. Rules for distributing women as objects of desire also serve to distribute labor force. G) Lévi-Strauss’s propositions describe only one aspect of the transition from animal to man. This transition should be considered as a whole: As total social phenomenon taboos on incest cannot be explained as just economic. Total being cannot be separated from a state of becoming where human and animal nature confront one another instead of being separated abstractly they have to be looked at historically in transition not in synchronic stages. H) The specific qualities of man: Subjectively the transition from animal to human is marked by nausea. Humans alter, contradict, exterior nature w/tools and their own nature education. Work and education are connected in humans. Taboos on animal needs, e.g. excretions, is so total it never gets mentioned. and 3rd taboo on death (Hegel concentrates on 1st and 3rd). I) The variability of the rules about incest and the general variability of sexual taboos: We should ignore taboo on obscenity, since this varies as a relation between subjects and objects. Incest, also arbitrary in this way, its universality proves of connection between humanity and denial of (animal) sensuality. Sexual activity cannot be cast off instead we can only separate off forbidden times, places and persons, arbitrarily defined, e.g. nakedness. The disorder of the animal world is always contrasted with human order, but how varies. J) The essence of humanity is to be found in the taboo on incest and the gift of women resulting from it: The absolute denial of the animal is situated just where Lévi-Strauss explores, viz. marriage as site of convergence of economic utility and purity, sensuality and taboo, generosity and avarice. It begins w/ the gift which is a refusal of immediate animal satisfaction (w/o strings). Marriage is for the man who gives the woman he could have had. A gift substitutes for sex a form of expenditure of resources, making giving and humanity possible. Renunciation adds to value of gift, helps create control of violence and complements eroticism which requires respect for desired object. Respect keeps order where violence is forbidden and makes violent eruptions possible. Taboo makes transgression possible. There are moments when transgression is unthinkable and those when the erotic completely overturns the law. These extremes exist within a constant flux of circumstances. Chapter V: Mysticism and Sensuality A) From the breadth of the modern Christian attitude to the “fear of sex”: The religious seem bent on proving that fear of sexuality was not the source of the Christian practice of continence. But is not the connection between continence and mysticism itself a manifestation of fear of sex? B) The sacred nature of sexuality and the sexual qualities said to characterize the mystic life: Sexual union is apt description of mystical union (cf. St. Theresa quote p. 224), but biological orgasm ≠ mystical experience. Yet erotic and mystic experiences are similar. To investigate the similarities we must start with the inner life not, as psychiatrists do with the assumption of pathology in any experience they do not have. C) The morality of “dying to oneself” and the difference between this and ordinary morality: Mystic experience is tied to morality. Sexual ecstasy can be

15 spiritual, but sensuality and mysticism also conflict. Mediocrity, self-satisfaction, and attachment to oneself = pride most harm spiritual life, morality in mysticism is not centered on obeying the law, but on mystical passion leading one to die to oneself, that one may (eternally) live. Hence mysticism guides and judges moral life. “man must die to live eternally” D) The present moment and death in the “nuptial flight” and in the life of holy orders: In Christianity sex is “intended by God” only within limits close to animal sexuality; eroticism is diabolic. Seduction and temptations are often aimed at erotic not the genital. Religion fears the obsessive element. Temptation signifies death as dying to self to live eternally and dying as turning away from genital order. Life as exuberant loss also aims at increase, yet loss wins in the long run, as life proliferates only to offer itself up to death. Animals, e.g. bees, die w/sex are dying to themselves. If done w/awareness in humans dying to oneself dissolves one in immensity. There is in the momentary vertigo an instant of anguish. E) The temptation of the religious and morose delectation: Taboo on sex leads religious to temptation increasing the erotic element, which like drone ends in death. Resistance entails awareness and so gives the humanity of mystic its full significance. Even the life of the soul must be kept going, via the seduction of what is beyond self interest, the lightning flash that exalts one above time. The power of resistance to temptation derives from the preference for equilibrium to the sexual delirium which tempts. Mystic denies the ego that would lapse into temptation for the sake of the calculated advantage of the 2nd self discerned by intellect. Sexual fascination becomes significant: hateful and desirable. In morose delectation horror = fascination, desire for salvation and for dissolution is reconciled in desire for an object w/o charm, an object outside of consciousness. F) Guilty sensuality and death: The lure of the forbidden and death lie at the core or mystical experience, the embrace of a peak experience with a fatal outcome (drone e.g.). Dread and expenditure are bound up with sex act, with death as extreme, “little death” feared and desired. Desire is ambiguous: to die and to live to the limits of possible intensity and violence. G) Sensuality, tenderness and love: Death = incandescence of life. The order of tender friendship must find a place for sensual disorder, but balanced forms are doomed to fresh disorder by eroticism. Love brings the desire for the other to feel the threat of loss of the other as = to death, so love = desire to live in anguish w/possibility of unbearable loss. We expect the lover to desire to make the disorder lasting and so orderly. This is absurd, especially re: material organization, even more absurd in that tenderness is pretext of and accentuates violence. H) The underworld, sexual cynicism, and obscenity: When the disorder of passion is accepted and temptation wholeheartedly embraced, then passion loses its power, savor and interest. Even degraded lives, where objects of desire are easy, must have some organization and are cynically egoistic. But while this live is insipid for members, it holds dangerous fascination for outsiders. I) The unity of mystical experience and eroticism: Mystic experience must not be diminished for sake of comparison, nor must sex be exalted, unduly. The attraction of obscenity for outsiders paradoxically gives greater point to sexuality. Mysticism shares the quality of fascination w/obscenity, love, morose delectation and mating of drones. Rapturous states signify non-attachment to

16 ordinary life and its needs, and anguish opening the spontaneous surge of life. But mysticism confines significance to inner states, though it may set off or be set off by sexual climax. Communication is always possible between mysticism and sensuality. J) Continence and the condition of an unconditioned moment: Continence separates from material constraints; it aims at sovereignty marked by indifference to what happens losing subject in continuity. Yet greatest tension of movement toward death takes place at end of intelligent effort, but Bataille doubts whether such a state can be reached but only approached by calculation. Refusal of servile work for transcendence calls for truer indifference than in striving to reach such indifference. Sovereignty requires chance, self abandonment, free play; hence the disorderliness of eroticism, rather than the control of continence, may also lead us to explore the farthest potentialities of being. Chapter VI: Sanctity, Eroticism and Solitude Eroticism is defined by secrecy, and is outside ordinary life. Sanctity is not entirely outside speech, but it shares intensity w/eroticism, overwhelming us. But eroticism isolates while sanctity merges us w/others. Philosophy cannot encompass all experience; it is one experience among others. Hegel’s system synthesizes all possibilities, but excludes experience since it is immediate. Such specialization is a condition of efficiency which admits it lacks something and is impotent to get it. There is strength in refusing such discipline for caprice. Sanctity and eroticism refuse. Q: Can the sum of possibles be thought in the domination of interest over whim? Eroticism is a domain of taboo and its transgression: profane time of useful work is separate from sacred time of eroticism, celebration, and sacrifice. Specialized philosophy is work excluding moments of intensity of feeling, and so is not the sum of possibles if these include experiences, especially extreme experiences of sex, death and birth, since it includes only well-defined experiences and extreme effort. Without this effort philosophy sneers at philosophy falling into impotence and regrets. Instead philosophical discipline is necessary to its most extreme, even though it can never go the whole way. Extreme states can never be subjected to calm reflection. We are beside ourselves in such states. This excludes possibles, not quantitatively (“I’ll never read that book.”) but qualitatively by destroying reflection. Competition for insight reaches its limits where it is impossible to work and impossible to transgress, yet necessary to do both, and solitude is unavailable. Christian taboo is absolute and transgression = sin. Sacrifice of God is happy error, but error nonetheless. Erotic intensity condemns us to solitude. Sanctity delivers us from solitude on the condition we except the extravagant error that redeems us. But to join our fellows we must renounce the joys of transgression which are only available to the damned. The cost of community is that work cannot be reconciled w/experience of the ultimate. Sanctity pushes toward death, so saint lives like s/he was dying, and intention of eternal life is connected w/death. Christianity provides transgression that still permits discussion by separating deliberate from other kinds of transgression.

17 So homage to silence (and eroticism). Speaking here must be in a dead language, than of philosophy which is also the death of language, a sacrifice of language, a language = 0 = silence, the suppression of what language can add to the world. Chapter VII: A Preface to ‘Madame Edwarda’ CONCLUSION: