John, I am not sure whether I agree or disagree with you. My first reaction
to most of your examples of transgression -- and I still do have this
reaction -- was that they were somehow not the kind of thing that the
_Preface_ essay is a meditation on. I want to say: they have too much
practical utility; they trangress not in order to illuminate the limit,
or "affirm" limited being, as _Preface_ puts it, but in order to move
beyond certain social or political or economic restrictions: to free women
>from the supposed necessity of bras, students from certain rules of behavior,
workers from being managed and exploited.
But the specific type of transgression discussed in _Preface_
-- Bataille's and de Sade's type -- seems different. My feeling is that
it is precisely because it is a type that cannot be thought of in terms
of practical utility that it seems to call for the kind of analysis
that F attempts in the essay. What are its characteristics?
First of all, it plays itself out on a purely symbolic level -- on the
plane of _speaking_, not of _working_ (i.e. struggling with the world).
Not the plane of liberating one's body from bras and girdles, but that
of, say, drinking menstrual blood. Secondly, it seems very much centered
around sexuality, and using it in ways which, if God hadn't died, would
be clearly blasphemous. "But what does it mean to kill God if he does not
exist, to kill God _who has never existed_? Perhaps it means to kill God
both because he does not exist and to guarantee he will not exist --
certainly a cause for laughter: to kill God to liberate life from this
existence that limits it, but also to bring it back to those limits
that are annulled by this limitless existence -- as a sacrifice; to kill
God to return him to this nothingness he is and to manifest his existence
at the center of a light that blazes like a presence -- for the ecstasy;
to kill God in order to lose language in a deafening night and because
this wound must make him bleed until there springs forth 'an immense
alleluia lost in the interminable silence' -- and this is communication."
It seems to me that what your examples lose is this sense of pure
sacrifice, pure expenditure, the "manifesting of God's existence (at the
same moment as he's being returned to nothingness) at the center of
a light that blazes like a presence". _Like_ a presence. This kind
of transgression creates an experience of the sacred -- because it creates
the experience of desecration -- without there being anything sacred
to point to: "in a world now emptied of objects, beings and spaces to
desecrate".
The argument in _Preface_ seems to be that Bataille's "blasphemies" are not
attempts to liberate sex from strictures, repressions or limits; rather,
they represent attempts to bring a certain kind of resonance out of
a space which has been rendered void; in some sense they are meant to
_create_ a limit, or at least tease forth the experience of sacred dread.
The space explored in _Preface_, it seems to me, is not the space of
Ibsen's _Doll's House_, but rather the space of _King Lear_.
But on the other hand, I am not sure whether these spaces are as distinct
as they seem at first glance -- which is why I am not sure whether I _do_
disagree with you as much as I think I do.
-m
to most of your examples of transgression -- and I still do have this
reaction -- was that they were somehow not the kind of thing that the
_Preface_ essay is a meditation on. I want to say: they have too much
practical utility; they trangress not in order to illuminate the limit,
or "affirm" limited being, as _Preface_ puts it, but in order to move
beyond certain social or political or economic restrictions: to free women
>from the supposed necessity of bras, students from certain rules of behavior,
workers from being managed and exploited.
But the specific type of transgression discussed in _Preface_
-- Bataille's and de Sade's type -- seems different. My feeling is that
it is precisely because it is a type that cannot be thought of in terms
of practical utility that it seems to call for the kind of analysis
that F attempts in the essay. What are its characteristics?
First of all, it plays itself out on a purely symbolic level -- on the
plane of _speaking_, not of _working_ (i.e. struggling with the world).
Not the plane of liberating one's body from bras and girdles, but that
of, say, drinking menstrual blood. Secondly, it seems very much centered
around sexuality, and using it in ways which, if God hadn't died, would
be clearly blasphemous. "But what does it mean to kill God if he does not
exist, to kill God _who has never existed_? Perhaps it means to kill God
both because he does not exist and to guarantee he will not exist --
certainly a cause for laughter: to kill God to liberate life from this
existence that limits it, but also to bring it back to those limits
that are annulled by this limitless existence -- as a sacrifice; to kill
God to return him to this nothingness he is and to manifest his existence
at the center of a light that blazes like a presence -- for the ecstasy;
to kill God in order to lose language in a deafening night and because
this wound must make him bleed until there springs forth 'an immense
alleluia lost in the interminable silence' -- and this is communication."
It seems to me that what your examples lose is this sense of pure
sacrifice, pure expenditure, the "manifesting of God's existence (at the
same moment as he's being returned to nothingness) at the center of
a light that blazes like a presence". _Like_ a presence. This kind
of transgression creates an experience of the sacred -- because it creates
the experience of desecration -- without there being anything sacred
to point to: "in a world now emptied of objects, beings and spaces to
desecrate".
The argument in _Preface_ seems to be that Bataille's "blasphemies" are not
attempts to liberate sex from strictures, repressions or limits; rather,
they represent attempts to bring a certain kind of resonance out of
a space which has been rendered void; in some sense they are meant to
_create_ a limit, or at least tease forth the experience of sacred dread.
The space explored in _Preface_, it seems to me, is not the space of
Ibsen's _Doll's House_, but rather the space of _King Lear_.
But on the other hand, I am not sure whether these spaces are as distinct
as they seem at first glance -- which is why I am not sure whether I _do_
disagree with you as much as I think I do.
-m