Bataille, Death And Sensuality
INTRODUCTION
Not a few has remarked about the vagueness of George Bataille's writings. Reading Inner Experience for example gives that uneasy feeling of intruding into the sphere of the author's private world, and such a revelation, even though for the most part displays the mystical, could produce an "intellectual blush" upon the reader. Bataille is more shocking than Nietzsche because he allows us to see his terror and torment in a gesture of free play which is at the same time refreshing yet candidly offensive. In my desire to understand this philosopher and his disquieting philosophy, I also read his later work entitled Death And Sensuality. In this book, I came upon a curious view, which may produce a lingering restlessness, namely, that eroticism and religion are both aspects of man's inner experience. What is even of more concern to us philosophically is how Bataille relates eroticism to the features of religious experience.
This paper is in itself a voyage, not so much into Bataille's inner experience, but more of a journey into the region of our self. We shall traverse, with Bataille as our guide, the domain of the interior, where once in a while, we may come across the vulgar. I do not promise any satori or sudden enlightenment but I do hope that with Bataille's ideas we can understand ourselves better as a perpetual tension of the animal and the divine. I shall now lead you to Bataille, in the spirit of free play, where each of us can be alone in our inner experience. In the proceeding paragraphs the page references pertain to his book Death And Sensuality.
Bataille describes the human person in his book, Death And Sensuality, as constantly being hounded by the most astounding impulse that terrifies him as well: the erotic impulses (p. 7). It is obvious, from direct experience, that man's erotic passions prove to be the most difficult area in his life to handle. To curtail and restrain these impulses may require a Herculean task especially that our consumer society places a lot of exaggerated emphasis on sex and the body. Bataille considers the sexual aspect important for philosophical consideration, thus for him, a discussion on eroticism is also a discussion about man (p. 8).
This paper will not deal with the more pronounced aspects of sexuality but rather on the interdependent facets of human life as they appear from the point of view of eroticism, namely, the physical, emotional, and religious dimensions. The underlying thread that connects all these levels of eroticism is man's inner experience. If man were bereft of this sanctum of inner experience, his sexual act would not be called an act of love but merely copulation. Thus, this paper is not something about sex but is something about the erotic.
It is ironic that Bataille, in exploring the realm of eroticism, sees Christian religious experience and the "bursts of erotic impulses" as one and the same movement (p. 9). It is ironic because eroticism is usually aligned with the secular and the vulgar while religious experience is always linked with the sacred and the eternal. How can these two apparent contradictories be of the same movement?
WHAT IS EROTICISM?
According to Bataille, eroticism is a special form of sexual activity in the sense that between animals and men, it is that latter that have turned sexual activity into erotic activity (p. 11). It is a "psychological quest independent of the natural goal: reproduction and the desire for children. It is assenting to life..."(Ibid.) Animals simply copulate--mechanically, instinctively, and without choice. Theirs is a fundamental natural urge. In their mating there are no hellos and good-byes. Their mating games lie outside the context of meaningful relationship.
Men are animals too biologically. But the impulse for sexual union is an active affirmation to life, coupled with a consciousness that refuses mere animality and instinct. That is why in the area of human sexuality there is love-making, there are hellos and good-byes as well as lasting relationships.
Like Nietzsche, Bataille asserts that man cannot be divorced from his passions and that he "must never imagine existence except in terms of these passions" (p. 12). Although the erotic impulses are oftentimes the source of man's sin or fall, he can never separate himself from them; to do so would be to rid himself of his body.
Bataille's criticism against philosophy, shared by the Existentialists, is that philosophy is divorced from life. He believes that eroticism in the philosophical sense is linked with life in the most intimate way (Ibid.). The implications are clear: Bataille wants us to recognize our nature as erotic beings and that philosophy must come to terms with this fact. To exclude eroticism from philosophy is to exclude the well-spring of life.
Although reproduction is opposed to eroticism in that the former is the biological basis for sexual activity in both animals and man, Bataille nonetheless sees the fundamental meaning of reproduction as the key to eroticism. "Reproduction implies the existence of discontinuous beings" (Ibid.). What does Bataille mean by the term discontinuous as it is applied to beings? Each being, though reproduced, acquires a distinction from others. Thus, it is through the process of reproduction that man obtains an individuality--he is born alone, he dies alone, and between him and other men "there is a gulf, a discontinuity" (Ibid.) Human reproduction brings about separate individuals. If you are born, it is not my birth. If you die, it is not my death.
Even though reproduction brings discontinuity to beings, Bataille argues on the other hand that death brings continuity of beings (p. 13). In death, all becomes one and loses their separate individualities. Death for Bataille has different nuances. First, death means the ultimate, irrevocable end when man becomes dust once again and he joins the community of the dead. In this first meaning, death imposes continuity. However, death also means the biological phenomenon of that instant when the egg and the sperm fuse and the transition to continuity happens again. It is in this fusion of two separate beings in the sexual act, that unity, and consequently, continuity comes into existence (p. 14). Thus, sexual reproduction accounts, on the one hand, for a new being in existence, a beginning but a continuation from the old life-line--man and woman see their reflection and extension in their child. Yet the child is a separate being and hence, discontinuity happens again.
In the words of Bataille: "We are discontinuous beings, individuals who perish in isolation in the midst of an incomprehensible adventure, but we yearn for our lost continuity" (p. 15). Perhaps this is the reason why man longs for immortality. He is obsessed with the need to find that primeval continuity that may at least link him with everything there is. This desire finds its expression in eroticism. Man cannot stand the thought of not existing, more so at the thought of dying. One of the ways to leave an indelible imprint is to reproduce.
THREE FORMS OF EROTICISM
According to Bataille, there are three forms of eroticism, namely, physical, emotional, and religious (Ibid.). Physical eroticism is characterized by a violation bordering on death. It is a dissolution of two people where both are mingled in the sexual act, both attaining the same degree of dissolution. Here, two people in an erotic relationship cease to be discontinuous beings. But both violate each other's individuality in their very need for continuity. "The whole business of eroticism is to destroy the self-contained character of the participators as they are in their normal lives" (p. 17).
An example of dissolution for Bataille is found in nakedness. He considers stripping naked a decisive action in that it abandons self-possession in favor of erotic communication: "Bodies open out to a state of continuity through secret channels that give us a feeling of obscenity" (Ibid.). Here, in the region of physical eroticism, the bodies are the means of dissolution, of ceasing to be separate individuals. Nakedness is a violation of the other's privacy, of the other's self-ownership. In physical eroticism, the bodily abandonment is a transgression and at the same time a redeeming act. It violates self-possession but, but for some ecstatic moments, the two bodies are joined in the overcoming of separation. In "the activity of organs, in a flow of coalescence and renewal....the self is dispossessed" (Ibid.).
For Bataille, physical eroticism involves a victim and a sacrificer. The woman is the victim, the man the sacrificer. Both lose themselves in conquest and surrender, established by the first transgressive act of stripping naked. Eroticism breaks down established patterns of the social order which requires that each person be defined as a separate individual. In eroticism, our existence as discontinuous beings is merely jolted, not condemned. Absolute continuity has no place in eroticism, only partial, momentary continuity. "What we desire, says Bataille, is to bring into a world founded on discontinuity all the continuity such a world can sustain" (p. 19).
Bataille gives a distinction between sexual activity and erotic activity: "eroticism is the sexual activity of man to the extent that it differs from the sexual activity of animals. Human sexuality is not necessarily but erotic it is whoever it is not rudimentary and purely animal" (p. 29). When a man rapes a woman it is a sexual activity, not an erotic one. The act of rape is considered by many societies as bestial and could not have come from the more refine sensibility of man such as love and affection.
This yearning for continuity is seen even in the event of death. "Death, the rupture of the discontinuous individualities to which we cleave in terror, stands before us more real than life itself" (p. 19.) In death man loses himself in the annihilation of everything that he is--his uniqueness and particularity. He becomes one with the earth, with the fallen, the brave, and the coward--it doesn't matter. He is no longer wholly himself, no longer separate. In death there is only an irrevocable continuity despite the loss. It is the most violent form of separation and it wrenches us abruptly out of discontinuity: "death jerks us out of a tenacious obsession with the lastingness of discontinuous being" (p. 16). Death then is the ultimate ground of continuity.
We have seen how physical eroticism provides a break from our discontinuity and ushers us to the level of temporal continuity where self-possession is abandoned but where violation is a necessary part. Whereas eroticism "holds on to the separateness of the individual in a rather selfish and cynical fashion" (Ibid.), emotional eroticism has less demand or constraint. The lover's affections for each other may enable them to go beyond physical eroticism. The fusion of their bodies implies the element of the the spiritual plane because it is their love for each other which is the basis and prelude to physical union (Ibid.). For a person in love, the fervor of love may be more intense than physical desire. After the union, the lovers suffer because of the return of their discontinuous beings. The anguish of desire is felt when continuity is inaccessible.
The likelihood of suffering is revealed in the total significance of the beloved. Here, the idea of possession, according to Bataille, is linked with death. The man would rather kill his beloved than lose her. Or he may want to die if he can't possess her (p. 20). Such was the case of the tragic love between Romeo and Juliet. Only in love, only in the beloved, can continuity occur. The fusion, not only of the bodies but of the passions, gives the lovers a glimpse of oneness even if just for the moment. Suffering ensues when each returns to their isolated individuality. "Hence love spells suffering for us insofar as it is the quest for union at the mercy of circumstance" (Ibid.). The fusion is precarious and contingent. The circumstance may not give a steady support for the union to be continually possible: separation, sickness, and even death pose a threat to the quest for union. At the lowest level then eroticism bridges the solitariness of each individual by violence or the sexual act. In the level of emotional eroticism or love, the truth of existence is revealed--one must overcome the abyss that exists between lovers not simply by bodily fusion but by the underlying affection they have for each other (p. 21).
The need for continuity resides outside the sphere of the immediate world and points to an essentially religious direction according to Bataille. "All eroticism has a sacramental character" (pp. 16-17). For Bataille, eroticism in Western religions is bound up with seeking God's love (p. 16). "Erotic activity, by dissolving the separate beings that participate in it, reveals their fundamental continuity, like the waves of a stormy sea" (p. 22). The same is true of pagan religious sacrifice. When the victim dies, the onlookers share in his death in a symbolic manner and the living share in the continuity of existence. The death, which may be violent, "disrupts the creature's discontinuity" (Ibid.).
Bataille considers religion as a form of eroticism because he sees a parallelism between the two. Both reach out for continuity by transgression and sacrifice in analogous ways. Whereas in physical and emotional eroticism the persons transgress or violate each other, in religious ritual the taboo on murder is violated and the sacrifice takes on a sacred meaning. In addition, the yearning for continuity is manifested in physical and emotional eroticism through the union of the flesh with the beloved, while in religion the union is with a Cosmic Lover, God.
God, according to Bataille, "is a composite being possessed of continuity" (Ibid.) In this context, mystical experience is closely tied up with religious sacrifice, directed towards God as the object of eroticism. God is conceived as personal, infinite and unlimited. In Him, all continuity resides. The difference between physical and emotional eroticism from religious eroticism is that while the former two aspects need change, a person, and favorable circumstance, the latter "requires only that the subject shall not be disturbed" (p. 23). Thus, religious eroticism is the encounter with silence. The person, in mystical experience, need not engage in erotic foreplay with God. The silence itself is the foreplay. In that silence, the temporal and the eternal, the physical and the spiritual, the animal and the divine, meet. God is the Beloved, the Holy Other, in whom all human passions are said to find fulfillment. Here, absolute continuity is encountered.
EROTICISM AND RELIGION IN INNER EXPERIENCE
"Eroticism is one aspect of the inner life of man," says Bataille (p. 29). This may not be obvious because there is an apparent exteriority in physical and emotional eroticism. Man is directed towards objects that are desirable and attractive. But these objects, according to Bataille, corresponds to man's inner desire. For example, when a man is attracted to a woman, one of the decisive factors he considers is often an intangible aspect of this woman and not merely an objective, physical reality. It could be her character, her moral sense or her positive attitude. Eroticism then is not only directed to the physicality of the desired object but has, for its basis, the interiority of the other.
Primitive man, according to Bataille, must have been behaving in a way which is essentially human--he worked, he had awareness of death, he reproduced. These were his basic primitive actions, which, although antediluvian, were essentially human. Bataille even surmises that there must already exist certain restrictions known as taboos which may have been primarily concerned with the dead. With regards to sexual taboos these may have already existed then but we have no way of verifying them except through the anthropological findings which may not give ample data (p. 30).
Eroticism is also closely tied up with shame: "by moving imperceptibly from unashamed sexuality to sexuality with shame" it becomes part of the inner experience of man. Man is ashamed of some of his body parts related to eroticism. He covers his genitalia and creates exotic garments to hide his sexuality. He may titillate, seduce or be provocative. But the aspect of shame is not taken away. It may only be suppressed. Thus, our experience of shame brings us into the inner experience of eroticism.
Bataille considers eroticism as the "disequilibrium in which the being consciously calls his own existence in question" (Ibid.). It propels man from the status of mere animality to the transcendence of the spirit. Although his passions may be regarded as physical, they nonetheless bring him to the edge of continuity, where he loses himself as separate being only to find himself one with the other.
Bataille justifies his use of inner experience as a method of knowing the human condition because he believes that we cannot divorce our inner experiences from their external aspect and from their historical significance (p. 35). He further states that inner experiences has a universality of its own, otherwise eroticism and religion would be impossible to discuss about (Ibid.).
Our knowledge of both eroticism and religion necessitates our personal experience of prohibitions and transgressions. Whenever we experience eroticism and religion there there will always be the corresponding experience of prohibitions and transgressions. Such is the example of prostitution, which provides taboo for erotic experience outside the context of marriage and love. Yet the very prohibition imposed against prostitution opens up up the possibility for violation. The forbidden is desired. In the words of King Solomon: "Stolen waters are sweet and bread eaten in secret is pleasant."
The same experience, by analogy, is found in religion: the sacred rituals, from the primitive sacrifices where murder is involved, to contemporary celebration of the Holy Eucharist where the death of Christ is consecrated, are bound up with transgression. Christ was murdered. He was the sacrificial lamb. Yet through his death humanity hopes to gain access to eternal life to abandon their discontinuous being. The Christians see in Christ the ultimate lover who died for love of all men. The erotic element in Christian religion is seen in the symbolic meaning of death and transgression. Christ's partially naked body reveals his vulnerability to the world. His suffering is man's salvation. His death is man's resurrection.
Thus, Bataille argues that unless we relate our inner experiences to eroticism and religion, these two human aspects will have remained foreign to us. The sexual act and the religious sacrifice point to man's capacity for inwardness. In addition, the nuances in eroticism and the complexity of feelings involved carry with them a stark truth: that we are erotic beings capable of transcending mere instinct and raw animality. In this same vein, what could have been gross and impure in religion is rescued by the transcending aspect of inner experience. These two, eroticism and religion, "are the stirrings of life within ourselves" (p. 37).
Religious sensibility according to Bataille occurs when man has to account for himself the anguish he feels when he violates a prohibition in the secular world. The inner experience of eroticism, man's natural drive for it, and his conscious avoidance of some passions declared as wrong by certain sexual taboos (i.e., pre-marital, extra-marital relationships) bring him closely to the heart of religion. There, desire is linked with terror, with intense pleasure and anguish at the same time (pp. 38-39). Man feels terrified at the thought of doing what is considered as taboo, yet feels intense pleasure at the experience of his relationship with the cosmic lover, God. The anguish is experienced at the core of balancing eroticism and religion.
Bataille argues that Christianity has misunderstood sin or transgression. The crucifixion is a sin. Yet in this transgression, in this act of murder, man finds freedom paradoxically. Christianity strongly opposes law-breaking but takes account the necessity of crucifixion for the salvation of man (pp. 89-90). When the Holy Eucharist is thus celebrated during Mass, the priest enters into the realm of the paradoxical, wherein the symbolic gestures of transgression is seen as a redeeming act at the same time. Sin becomes holy. It is at this vantage point that religion acquires an inner dimension. It takes inner experience to formulate symbolic meanings such as those found in religious rituals. It takes an even deeper inwardness to take that leap of faith in making holy what otherwise is an act of transgression, namely, the crucifixion of Christ. Inner experience reveals that only in transgression can man possess the eternal. Man must first bow down to his humanity before he can take the leap of faith.
Going back to the parallelism between eroticism and religion, Bataille thinks that during the sacrificial ceremony, the priest commits an act of violence that deprives the creature of its limited particularity and bestows on it the limitless, infinite nature of the sacred in an intentional act. In the same manner, in physical and eroticism "the lover strips the beloved of her identity....the woman in the hands of her assailant, is despoiled of her being and penetrates her" (p. 90). The woman as the sacrificial victim is "laid open to the violence of the sexual urges set loose in the organs of reproduction" (Ibid.). Whereas in religious sacrifice the animal (or Christ) dies and becomes one with continuous existence, in eroticism the woman loses herself and becomes one with her lover in a brief, fleeting continuous existence.
Both the sexual act and the religious sacrifice reveal the flesh. "Sacrifice replaces the ordered life of the animal with blind convulsions of its organs. So also with the erotic convulsion: it gives free reign to extravagant organs whose blind activity goes beyond the considered will of the lovers" (p. 92). For Bataille, flesh is the extravagance against decency. We also find that the elemental violence is found in the flesh, both in the religious sacrifice and in the urges of reproduction (p. 93).
Bataille also argues that transgression must be fundamental in human nature otherwise the act of religious sacrifice and the act of love would have no basis. Without anything to violate and without an underlying symbolic meaning constitutive in transgressive acts, man would not have had an inner life. Eroticism and religion can be understood only within the realm of man's inner experience. Both has continuity of being as their supra-physical goal.
CONCLUSION
From the preceding discussions, one cannot help but be reminded of Nietzsche and his free play of good and evil. In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche opens up a new view of the problem of good and evil: there can be evil in good and good in evil. Bataille also belongs to this same tradition of the post-modern notion that there is nothing absolutely good or evil. He captures this very well in his view that eroticism and religion have both the element of transgression and salvation. There can also be no inner experience of eroticism and religion without the elements of prohibition and transgression. Thus, what man considers to be a prohibition (i.e, "Thou shalt not kill.") is at the same time the source of his fall and salvation.
I think Bataille wants us to accept the fact that no matter where we view ourselves we are a synthesis of the animal and the divine. But ours is not a happy synthesis because we have to continually struggle to balance the animal and the divine nature in us, to find a center in the midst of contradiction. In my own opinion, there is really no struggle. We just have to accept the way we are essentially and not divide ourselves as if the other part of us belongs to the vulgar and the other opposite side to the spiritual. We are both simultaneously. This is portrayed in erotic experience where the lovers, in the intermingling of the flesh and organs of reproduction, become one in their desire to overcome separateness. But they could only acquire their continuity in the display of their physicality. They must say "yes" to the erotic impulses first before they can have that elusive taste of the transcendence, of the divine in them. They have to transgress each other first, sin against each other's individuality, violate each other, before they can become one. The religious experience too ascribes to this paradox. In man's active search for transcendence, in the overcoming of his temporality, he finds mediation in transgression as shown in ritual sacrifice. The act of transgression is evil bit at the same time the act is holy. In this context, evil is good and good is evil.
It is true that man is a solitary, discontinuous being. This separation is at once both tragic and necessary. From birth to death man constantly wrestles for coalescence, for a synthesis that would save him from damnation and absolute annihilation. However, it is essential that man be a separate being. He needs his private world with which to grow and evolve. Human reality demands dynamism and this is only possible if man were a separate being. In addition, the basis of man's yearning for continuity is grounded in his discontinuous existence.
It is interesting to note that for Bataille, eroticism and religion are analogous in many ways. Is it possible to argue that eroticism is religious and that religion is erotic? With regards to eroticism being religious, we find that man desires not just physical release or orgasmic activity in the sexual act but there is that vague yet implicit yearning for fusion and continuity. Eroticism can be said to be a physical activity overcoming separateness. In this context, the overcoming of separateness is a means of going beyond the limits of self and separateness towards transcendence and unity. In the heat of sexual passion, where flesh and spirit intermingle, the lovers attain transcendence--they become conjoined in the sphere of love which is not mere animality. It crosses the boundary from profane to the sacred. Thus, we see in this physicality the element of the divine, of the sacred, of the religious. It is not absolutely religious. The aspect of the spiritual is only an element, a part, but nonetheless real and concrete, part of the whole being of man.
Can religion be considered erotic? To answer this, the nature of sacrifice must be taken into consideration. Given the Christian religion as a particular context, God, the Eternal Cosmic Lover, is the victim (Christ as the Sacrificial Lamb) and we are His beloved. We are the sacrificers. The re-enactment of the passion and death of Christ during Lent carries erotic elements--suffering, the stripping, the crucifixion, and death--all these are acts of transgression against Christ, our lover. But these acts of violence purports the very essence of redemption and the overcoming of our separation from Him. In Him we find eternal life when He died for us.
Let me end this paper with Bataille's own words: "Eroticism is the problem of problems. In that he is an erotic animal, man is a problem for himself. Eroticism is the problematic part of ourselves." (p. 273). Thus ends our voyage into the region of our self with Bataille as our guide.
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