I have recently read a chapter that Allan Stoekl devotes to Foucault in his
book "Agonies of the intellectual". He argues quite forcefully that a
language/philosophy of transgression, in so far as it claims to replace or
topple dialectical thinking is engaged in a kind of dialectical manouver
itself. In this view, even if a language of transgressivity is to be taken
as "a practice which forces philosophy (or language) to acknowledge that
which it cannot acknowledge", it is, by virtue of claiming to be that much
more aware of what is going on, in language, in philosophy, that it ends up
repeating the dialectic itself but in a strange way, where the dialect and
the transgressive (as its other) "interfere" with each other. Any claim to
have somehow found a limit experience in something like sexuality, madness,
death, that transcends the usual confines of philosophical thinking is
claiming to find an other, a hidden double of "man" which can be recuperated
even while one is ostensibly out to destroy the anthropological conception
of "man" itself. Sexuality as limit experience, where speaking breaks off,
is itself recuperable in the dialectical movement if it somehow captures
something which normal (logocentric/rational etc) philosophising experience
cannot. Then again, if it is only a parody of the dialectic, as in
Bataille's "The Story of the Eye", where the culminating
(dialectic/transgressive) movement is the sacrifice (I mean first raping
then killing) of a priest (and all that he represents, not only the church
but the despised universalism of dialectical philosophers) out of the ever
more transgressive lusts of the three transgressors (the I of the story,
Simone, & Sir Edmond). The three escape the consequences of their hideous
crime and after Sir Edmond purchases a yacht at Gibraltar, and still intent
on new and more comprehensive conquests, "set sail towards new adventures
with a crew of negroes." A bit of a laugh really.
The dialectic returns. Transgression is non-dialectical when it fails to
master the dialectal manouver of replacing dialectics, but somehow contents
itself with "playing" with it, repeating it, in various parodies. Stoekl
suggests that of the avant-garde French writing which operates in this
transgressive tradition, only Bataille was somehow able to comprehend this
in his writing. I would be very interested in any responses to Stoekl's views.
Sebastian Gurciullo
book "Agonies of the intellectual". He argues quite forcefully that a
language/philosophy of transgression, in so far as it claims to replace or
topple dialectical thinking is engaged in a kind of dialectical manouver
itself. In this view, even if a language of transgressivity is to be taken
as "a practice which forces philosophy (or language) to acknowledge that
which it cannot acknowledge", it is, by virtue of claiming to be that much
more aware of what is going on, in language, in philosophy, that it ends up
repeating the dialectic itself but in a strange way, where the dialect and
the transgressive (as its other) "interfere" with each other. Any claim to
have somehow found a limit experience in something like sexuality, madness,
death, that transcends the usual confines of philosophical thinking is
claiming to find an other, a hidden double of "man" which can be recuperated
even while one is ostensibly out to destroy the anthropological conception
of "man" itself. Sexuality as limit experience, where speaking breaks off,
is itself recuperable in the dialectical movement if it somehow captures
something which normal (logocentric/rational etc) philosophising experience
cannot. Then again, if it is only a parody of the dialectic, as in
Bataille's "The Story of the Eye", where the culminating
(dialectic/transgressive) movement is the sacrifice (I mean first raping
then killing) of a priest (and all that he represents, not only the church
but the despised universalism of dialectical philosophers) out of the ever
more transgressive lusts of the three transgressors (the I of the story,
Simone, & Sir Edmond). The three escape the consequences of their hideous
crime and after Sir Edmond purchases a yacht at Gibraltar, and still intent
on new and more comprehensive conquests, "set sail towards new adventures
with a crew of negroes." A bit of a laugh really.
The dialectic returns. Transgression is non-dialectical when it fails to
master the dialectal manouver of replacing dialectics, but somehow contents
itself with "playing" with it, repeating it, in various parodies. Stoekl
suggests that of the avant-garde French writing which operates in this
transgressive tradition, only Bataille was somehow able to comprehend this
in his writing. I would be very interested in any responses to Stoekl's views.
Sebastian Gurciullo