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Death and Sensuality: A Study of Eroticism and the Taboo
Taboo & sacrifice, transgression & language, death & sensuality--Bataille pursues these themes with an original, startling perspective. He challenges any single discourse on the erotic. His inquiry ranges from Emily Bronte to Sade, from St. Therese to Claude Levi-Strauss & Dr. Kinsey. Subjects include mystical ecstasy, prostitution, cruelty & organized war. Investigating desire prior to & extending beyond the sexual realm, he states eroticism is "a psychological quest not alien to death."
Foreword
Introduction
Taboos & Transgressions
Some Aspects of Eroticism
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Foreword
Introduction
Taboos & Transgressions
Some Aspects of Eroticism
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
286 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1957
989 people are currently reading
22308 people want to read
About the author
Georges Bataille
231 books2,572 followersFrench essayist, philosophical theorist, and novelist, often called the "metaphysician of evil." Bataille was interested in sex, death, degradation, and the power and potential of the obscene. He rejected traditional literature and considered that the ultimate aim of all intellectual, artistic, or religious activity should be the annihilation of the rational individual in a violent, transcendental act of communion. Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and Philippe Sollers have all written enthusiastically about his work.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 343 reviews
July 31, 2019
i am going to fuck god and die doing it, as is my spiritual birthright
October 29, 2012
You won’t stick your hand down your bathing suit ever again after reading this. Bataille will see to that. And yet this author's misgivings about the erotic seem somehow misplaced. They serve as springboards to jump off on tangents. Our writer throws in a bunch of psychoanalysis, too, but only insofar as it gets us to the religious take on man’s psychic esoterica.
But first let’s look at what Bataille gets right.
He starts with "continuity," an aspiration that for humans is the essence of being. It's what we discontinuous beings want from sex, but our primordial emergence from animal to human marks the change from nature to culture. Taboos meant to deny our animal side quarantine both sex and death so that we can get work done. Death, and then sex, become a kind of psychic violence: Either involves a transgression of taboos; either violates the status quo of culture.
This transgression generates eroticism. Religion for its part transforms transgression into sin. Thus, the Catholic Church becomes the most able defender of our humanity, preserving eroticism by upholding taboos.
At the same time, our need to work turns people into objects for other people, and only our animal nature can stop that. Sexuality, then, is “the greatest barrier to the reduction of a man to the level of a thing.” The erotic returns to humans their subjective dignity.
So the body becomes poetic and pure, and its erotic defilement is brought on by the sanctioned sin of marriage. Thus, the Church safeguards our dignity through its prohibitions.
Got that? Good. I'll buy it. But now Bataille starts to go off track.
Eroticism for him applies only to straight, married, pious males. He neither mentions nor acknowledges female sexuality, nor anything outside lawful relations. He wavers as to whether even this constricted eroticism is disgusting or not, but reaches no final verdict. This same waffling permeates most of his conclusions.
With sex equal to death, “man must die to live“ he keeps telling us. He bases this on the enormous expenditure of energy the sex act requires, energy denied to work. Bataille makes death look good and sex bad -- he might as well be talking about salmon and spiders.
He hammers away at the energy wasted by sex, forgetting that intercourse takes just a few minutes, whereas humans usually work all day long. I can’t tell what’s more in play here, the Church or the vogue of psychoanalysis, but similar flights of fancy come up later in The Denial of Death, a dreadful ripoff of the same theme.
Bataille’s discursive style gives his thinking a profound Hegelian veneer hinting of intellectual alacrity. But he seems to think Hegel grants us license to say just anything. His concept of eroticism is a floating abstraction backed up by hearsay upon hearsay, evidence like, “There is no reason to believe their [mystics’] experience is not genuine, according to people who know such practitioners.”
As the book goes on a frank disgust for the erotic emerges. The author uses the better part of one page to denounce obscenity, which he finds to be the creation of a “repugnant” class of people “vomited forth” by society. This bourgeois writer slams the lower classes for letting whores take over the streets, accusing them of intending to destroy society, refusing to work and using the “advantages of insubordination” to slake their lust. Erotic thoughts disturb him. He draws on his Church for support, but I doubt Catholic theology espouses the level of revulsion over eroticism that his writing achieves.
Beyond the diatribes the writing is clunky, repetitive, indifferent and archaic (“venereal orgasms“). The psychoanalysis and anthropology are outdated, and the Catholic references are suspect. The truth is, this book has no bearing on anything today. It’s hard to believe the author of Blue of Noon also wrote this flapdoodle, but I believe that's why I thought I'd like it.
Bataille is good at literature; he’s bad at social commentary. I advise readers to skip this one.
But first let’s look at what Bataille gets right.
He starts with "continuity," an aspiration that for humans is the essence of being. It's what we discontinuous beings want from sex, but our primordial emergence from animal to human marks the change from nature to culture. Taboos meant to deny our animal side quarantine both sex and death so that we can get work done. Death, and then sex, become a kind of psychic violence: Either involves a transgression of taboos; either violates the status quo of culture.
This transgression generates eroticism. Religion for its part transforms transgression into sin. Thus, the Catholic Church becomes the most able defender of our humanity, preserving eroticism by upholding taboos.
At the same time, our need to work turns people into objects for other people, and only our animal nature can stop that. Sexuality, then, is “the greatest barrier to the reduction of a man to the level of a thing.” The erotic returns to humans their subjective dignity.
So the body becomes poetic and pure, and its erotic defilement is brought on by the sanctioned sin of marriage. Thus, the Church safeguards our dignity through its prohibitions.
Got that? Good. I'll buy it. But now Bataille starts to go off track.
Eroticism for him applies only to straight, married, pious males. He neither mentions nor acknowledges female sexuality, nor anything outside lawful relations. He wavers as to whether even this constricted eroticism is disgusting or not, but reaches no final verdict. This same waffling permeates most of his conclusions.
With sex equal to death, “man must die to live“ he keeps telling us. He bases this on the enormous expenditure of energy the sex act requires, energy denied to work. Bataille makes death look good and sex bad -- he might as well be talking about salmon and spiders.
He hammers away at the energy wasted by sex, forgetting that intercourse takes just a few minutes, whereas humans usually work all day long. I can’t tell what’s more in play here, the Church or the vogue of psychoanalysis, but similar flights of fancy come up later in The Denial of Death, a dreadful ripoff of the same theme.
Bataille’s discursive style gives his thinking a profound Hegelian veneer hinting of intellectual alacrity. But he seems to think Hegel grants us license to say just anything. His concept of eroticism is a floating abstraction backed up by hearsay upon hearsay, evidence like, “There is no reason to believe their [mystics’] experience is not genuine, according to people who know such practitioners.”
As the book goes on a frank disgust for the erotic emerges. The author uses the better part of one page to denounce obscenity, which he finds to be the creation of a “repugnant” class of people “vomited forth” by society. This bourgeois writer slams the lower classes for letting whores take over the streets, accusing them of intending to destroy society, refusing to work and using the “advantages of insubordination” to slake their lust. Erotic thoughts disturb him. He draws on his Church for support, but I doubt Catholic theology espouses the level of revulsion over eroticism that his writing achieves.
Beyond the diatribes the writing is clunky, repetitive, indifferent and archaic (“venereal orgasms“). The psychoanalysis and anthropology are outdated, and the Catholic references are suspect. The truth is, this book has no bearing on anything today. It’s hard to believe the author of Blue of Noon also wrote this flapdoodle, but I believe that's why I thought I'd like it.
Bataille is good at literature; he’s bad at social commentary. I advise readers to skip this one.
July 15, 2018
‘Our only real pleasure is to squander our resources to no purpose, just as if a wound were bleeding away inside us; we always want to be sure of the uselessness or the ruinousness of our extravagance. We want to feel as remote from the world as we can. As remote as we can: that is hardly strong enough; we want a world turned upside down and inside out. The truth of eroticism is treason.’
‘It is the desire to live while ceasing to live, or to die without ceasing to live’
Bataille’s eroticism is ‘the assenting to life prior to death’. The conceptual identity of eroticism is historically diffuse & contingent, from primitive man to modern / postmodern consumer society, it is a phantom hand guiding every imaginable facet of life. For Bataille this arises from any terrain where a taboo is set. The abstraction of sexuality from the carnal act itself has to do with the complex interplay of prohibitions and desire which shift with historico-cultural paradigms. Taboos are a litigal-religious necessity for policing the boundaries of violence, ugliness, decay, excrement and (crucially) death. All of which induce fear, revulsion and rapturous desire; and for a society to survive, the fear must be gridlocked into law and the desire forbidden. But banishing something from civilized life inevitably and necessarily strengthens its fascination. The experience of continuity between the monotony of life and the abyssal beauty & terror of death can be bridged via onanism, worship, sacrifice and degradation; heightened to heaving summits by the cold iron bars of taboo.
Bataille wasn’t advocating a cessation of social boundaries. Stuff like free love and libertinism appalled him; full sexual licentiousness would eradicate the very thing it sought to liberate. Continuity comes at the expense of scarcity & degradation which incite violence and horror. To this end, The Catholic Church, like the bloodthirsty Aztec Gods, safeguards the integrity of eroticism’s entrancing otherworldliness.
The book is duly anthropological. Cave art and study of contemporary hunter-gatherer societies like the San People or the horticulturalist tribes across the ‘Hunter Gatherer Spectrum’ in Papua New Guinea give us important anthropological insights into non-state forms of social organization and culture. This is a window into sexual practice less ossified by bloated (post)industrial cultures. The bureaucracy of civilization after a certain stage advances our sense of futurity to the point of stymying an authentic continuity with delirious thanatropic underpinning of erotic experience. The expenditures of ritual hedonism are incompatible with a society revolving around work, where labour is the sum total of ontology, so the erotic becomes a sepulchral ambiguity; the examples Bataille employs to this point are far reaching & very convincing. Categories from structural anthropology like taboo and transgression are important here but Bataille carries them further than most cod-structuralists would dare & he extracts its logic for deployment into his own historical age. As we can easily do to ours; and the basic principles remain sturdy.
That said, the anthropological research Bataille uses was the best available at the time, mostly stuff from Durkheim, Hubert and Mauss. Claude Le vi-Strauss’ dubious theory of incest has an entire chapter devoted to it. This stuff is mostly out of date. It doesn’t really matter. Although Bataille's conclusions rest on some obsolete info they are still convincing. Good philosophy may draw from supplanted regimes of knowledge and still make persuasive claims which endure long after the research itself has been falsified. And I think contemporary developments in sociology & anthropology actually advance many of Bataille’s claims.
Less-ink-than-you-would-think has been spilled on the involvement of Bataille with Lacan. Despite their personal intimacy (they were friends--and Lacan would go on to impregnate and marry Bataille’s estranged wife Sylvia) there are few explicit references to one another in their work. But Lacan is here, if you know where to look. The vanishing objects of desire are located in the enigma of the other, experienced as a sharp pang of lack unlocatable in the maps & grids of the symbolic; Bataille’s thermodynamic solar expenditures, the profane furnace of being, of wanting and of burning our sacred possessions to escape the martyrdom of time. Surplus and plenty, the ill-omened repositories of wealth which characterize industrial age economic privilege are the harbinger of a barren and anhedonic life. There is no doubt that Lacan read Bataille but whether or not he approved of this, um, unorthodox arrangement of his ideas is unknown to me.
I find Bataille’s reading of Sade much more interesting than Sade’s own books, which have always slightly bored me. The manichaean inversion of good and evil, the profusion of sex and violence, always seemed slightly...obvious. Not shocking at all. But Bataille extracts a more complex reading, digging under the soiled flesh of Sade’s unpleasant books and reasoning that most torture, tyranny and bloodshed is not the work of sadistic libertines but rather is sanctioned by the state and wreathed in its antiseptic language; ‘foreign intervention’, ‘austerity’, ‘correctional facility’ all refer to organized death and slavery, comfortably within our purview of acceptable violence. Sade’s characters don’t greasepaint over their horrific cruelties; they are described in loving detail. The act of violence, in which we are all complicit (particularly us first worlders), is animated by Bataille’s logic of expenditure, of squandering & ruining as an act of purification unvarnished by officiated sterility.
There are blemishes on this book. Written from the bourgeois-male perspective, many of the references to the working classes come across as condescending or thoughtless. And Bataille makes the all too familiar tin-eared claim about women enjoying fantasies of rape. While Bataille’s consideration of women as the locus of male sexual desire, and thus violence, is mostly cogent and always interesting, there is never a serious attempt to implant the point of view in...literally anyone else. Eroticism is infinitely variable but it is only considered from the world-historical-default of the male perspective.
That said, in only several months time Bataille has become enormously important to me. And I’m not even close to done, I still have so many books to read from him.
‘It is the desire to live while ceasing to live, or to die without ceasing to live’
Bataille’s eroticism is ‘the assenting to life prior to death’. The conceptual identity of eroticism is historically diffuse & contingent, from primitive man to modern / postmodern consumer society, it is a phantom hand guiding every imaginable facet of life. For Bataille this arises from any terrain where a taboo is set. The abstraction of sexuality from the carnal act itself has to do with the complex interplay of prohibitions and desire which shift with historico-cultural paradigms. Taboos are a litigal-religious necessity for policing the boundaries of violence, ugliness, decay, excrement and (crucially) death. All of which induce fear, revulsion and rapturous desire; and for a society to survive, the fear must be gridlocked into law and the desire forbidden. But banishing something from civilized life inevitably and necessarily strengthens its fascination. The experience of continuity between the monotony of life and the abyssal beauty & terror of death can be bridged via onanism, worship, sacrifice and degradation; heightened to heaving summits by the cold iron bars of taboo.
Bataille wasn’t advocating a cessation of social boundaries. Stuff like free love and libertinism appalled him; full sexual licentiousness would eradicate the very thing it sought to liberate. Continuity comes at the expense of scarcity & degradation which incite violence and horror. To this end, The Catholic Church, like the bloodthirsty Aztec Gods, safeguards the integrity of eroticism’s entrancing otherworldliness.
The book is duly anthropological. Cave art and study of contemporary hunter-gatherer societies like the San People or the horticulturalist tribes across the ‘Hunter Gatherer Spectrum’ in Papua New Guinea give us important anthropological insights into non-state forms of social organization and culture. This is a window into sexual practice less ossified by bloated (post)industrial cultures. The bureaucracy of civilization after a certain stage advances our sense of futurity to the point of stymying an authentic continuity with delirious thanatropic underpinning of erotic experience. The expenditures of ritual hedonism are incompatible with a society revolving around work, where labour is the sum total of ontology, so the erotic becomes a sepulchral ambiguity; the examples Bataille employs to this point are far reaching & very convincing. Categories from structural anthropology like taboo and transgression are important here but Bataille carries them further than most cod-structuralists would dare & he extracts its logic for deployment into his own historical age. As we can easily do to ours; and the basic principles remain sturdy.
That said, the anthropological research Bataille uses was the best available at the time, mostly stuff from Durkheim, Hubert and Mauss. Claude Le vi-Strauss’ dubious theory of incest has an entire chapter devoted to it. This stuff is mostly out of date. It doesn’t really matter. Although Bataille's conclusions rest on some obsolete info they are still convincing. Good philosophy may draw from supplanted regimes of knowledge and still make persuasive claims which endure long after the research itself has been falsified. And I think contemporary developments in sociology & anthropology actually advance many of Bataille’s claims.
Less-ink-than-you-would-think has been spilled on the involvement of Bataille with Lacan. Despite their personal intimacy (they were friends--and Lacan would go on to impregnate and marry Bataille’s estranged wife Sylvia) there are few explicit references to one another in their work. But Lacan is here, if you know where to look. The vanishing objects of desire are located in the enigma of the other, experienced as a sharp pang of lack unlocatable in the maps & grids of the symbolic; Bataille’s thermodynamic solar expenditures, the profane furnace of being, of wanting and of burning our sacred possessions to escape the martyrdom of time. Surplus and plenty, the ill-omened repositories of wealth which characterize industrial age economic privilege are the harbinger of a barren and anhedonic life. There is no doubt that Lacan read Bataille but whether or not he approved of this, um, unorthodox arrangement of his ideas is unknown to me.
I find Bataille’s reading of Sade much more interesting than Sade’s own books, which have always slightly bored me. The manichaean inversion of good and evil, the profusion of sex and violence, always seemed slightly...obvious. Not shocking at all. But Bataille extracts a more complex reading, digging under the soiled flesh of Sade’s unpleasant books and reasoning that most torture, tyranny and bloodshed is not the work of sadistic libertines but rather is sanctioned by the state and wreathed in its antiseptic language; ‘foreign intervention’, ‘austerity’, ‘correctional facility’ all refer to organized death and slavery, comfortably within our purview of acceptable violence. Sade’s characters don’t greasepaint over their horrific cruelties; they are described in loving detail. The act of violence, in which we are all complicit (particularly us first worlders), is animated by Bataille’s logic of expenditure, of squandering & ruining as an act of purification unvarnished by officiated sterility.
There are blemishes on this book. Written from the bourgeois-male perspective, many of the references to the working classes come across as condescending or thoughtless. And Bataille makes the all too familiar tin-eared claim about women enjoying fantasies of rape. While Bataille’s consideration of women as the locus of male sexual desire, and thus violence, is mostly cogent and always interesting, there is never a serious attempt to implant the point of view in...literally anyone else. Eroticism is infinitely variable but it is only considered from the world-historical-default of the male perspective.
That said, in only several months time Bataille has become enormously important to me. And I’m not even close to done, I still have so many books to read from him.
April 28, 2023
Multă vreme o carte-cult, eseul lui Bataille își arată deja vîrsta...
Autorul crede că erotismul (pe care îl deosebește de sexualitate) reprezintă nostalgia continuității, a unității de odinioară. Opinia lui îmi amintește de mitul hermafroditului din Banchetul lui Platon. Iubirea e căutare a jumătății pierdute. Nimic nu e întîmplător în iubire: ea ține de ordinea necesității și nu de aceea a hazardului.
Dar cum legăm practicile erotice solitare de dorința de continuitate, de nostalgia sufletului pereche? Astfel de practici nu țin de erotism, ar spune Georges Bataille, ci de simpla sexualitate, un mecanism fiziologic.
Iubirea platonică e pur vizuală. Nu presupune celelalte simțuri: tactilul, gustul, mirosul.
Continuitatea de care vorbește Bataille ține de o filosofie vitalistă, e una a fluxului vital. Ea leagă sacrul și profanul, indivizii care țin la solitudinea lor. Desființează moartea, limitele, anulează izolarea, separația, desființează partea și o integrează într-un întreg. Opinia aceasta se deosebește oarecum de viziunea lui Platon, a căutării sufletului pierdut.
Citez: „Înțelesul ultim al erotismului este fuziunea, suprimarea limitei”.
Cîteva pagini se referă la „delectatio morosa” (comentată de unii teologi medievali): ea este o formă prelungită de ispitire: „În delectatio morosa, frumusețea obiectului, atracția-i sexuală au dispărut. Numai amintirea lor subzistă... De aici înainte, obiectul e mai puțin un obiect, cît o atmosferă legată de o stare sufletească și e imposibil să spunem dacă e vorba de oroare sau de atracție”
Autorul crede că erotismul (pe care îl deosebește de sexualitate) reprezintă nostalgia continuității, a unității de odinioară. Opinia lui îmi amintește de mitul hermafroditului din Banchetul lui Platon. Iubirea e căutare a jumătății pierdute. Nimic nu e întîmplător în iubire: ea ține de ordinea necesității și nu de aceea a hazardului.
Dar cum legăm practicile erotice solitare de dorința de continuitate, de nostalgia sufletului pereche? Astfel de practici nu țin de erotism, ar spune Georges Bataille, ci de simpla sexualitate, un mecanism fiziologic.
Iubirea platonică e pur vizuală. Nu presupune celelalte simțuri: tactilul, gustul, mirosul.
Continuitatea de care vorbește Bataille ține de o filosofie vitalistă, e una a fluxului vital. Ea leagă sacrul și profanul, indivizii care țin la solitudinea lor. Desființează moartea, limitele, anulează izolarea, separația, desființează partea și o integrează într-un întreg. Opinia aceasta se deosebește oarecum de viziunea lui Platon, a căutării sufletului pierdut.
Citez: „Înțelesul ultim al erotismului este fuziunea, suprimarea limitei”.
Cîteva pagini se referă la „delectatio morosa” (comentată de unii teologi medievali): ea este o formă prelungită de ispitire: „În delectatio morosa, frumusețea obiectului, atracția-i sexuală au dispărut. Numai amintirea lor subzistă... De aici înainte, obiectul e mai puțin un obiect, cît o atmosferă legată de o stare sufletească și e imposibil să spunem dacă e vorba de oroare sau de atracție”
September 12, 2016
no.
bourgeois, heteronormative, sexist, boring, no.
bourgeois, heteronormative, sexist, boring, no.
November 22, 2020
One of my top 10 most important books of all time tbh, all reality is sex with a dead god, if u think I'm wrong read this book and then study the occult for 10 years and then talk to me
October 30, 2025
"Erotism is the affirmation of life, even in death" - Georges Bataille.
Sex and death, the sacred and the profane, the longing for the divine... Bataille mixes philosophy and anthropology to talk about eroticism, touching a wide range of subjects, from human sacrifice and cannibalism to the Christian notion of sin and that which is diabolical. A must read!
Sex and death, the sacred and the profane, the longing for the divine... Bataille mixes philosophy and anthropology to talk about eroticism, touching a wide range of subjects, from human sacrifice and cannibalism to the Christian notion of sin and that which is diabolical. A must read!
February 11, 2021
“If I were to be asked what we are, I should answer: we are the door to everything that can be, we are the expectation that no material response can satisfy, no trick with words deceive. We seek the heights. Each one of us can ignore this search if he has a mind to, but mankind as a whole aspires to these heights; they are the only definition of his nature, his only justification and significance.”
April 12, 2021
'The religious side of erotism was the one that mattered most to the church, the one that called forth her full wrath. Witches were burnt, low-class prostitutes allowed to live. But degradation of prostitution was stressed and used to illustrate the nature of sin. The present situation results from the duel attitude of the Church, and its corollary, the duel attitude in men's minds. When the sacred and the Good were held to be identical, when religious eroticism was et outside the pale, the rational denial of Evil was the rejoiner. Then followed a world in which condemned transgression meant nothing and profanation itself almost lost its force. The only remaining escape-valve was hopeless degradation. Falling from grace was a dead-end for the fallen, but degraded eroticism was a sort of incitement without the satanic quality. For no-one believed in the devil now, and even to condemn eroticism as such was meaningless. Degradation at least continued to signify Evil, though no longer an Evil denounced by other people none too sure that they did in fact condemn it. Prostitutes fall as low as they do because they acquiesce in their own sordid condition. That may happen involuntarily, but the use of course language looks like a conscious decision; it is a way of spurning human dignity. Human life is the Good, and so acceptance of degradation is a way of spitting upon the good, a way of spitting upon human dignity'
—from The Object of Desire: Prostitution
July 8, 2020
تناول الكاتب الأيروسية من الجانب التاريخي،الديني، الثقافي، اللغوي، والنفسي- الباطني، بإشكالياته، وبلسان أو معجم فلسفي. و بكونها إشكالية ذاتية تضرب في جذور الباطن السحيق بصفة واعية ولاواعية . وما تثيره من شعور وارتباك داخلي في الذهن والتصور من نشوة الاحتياج؛ الشهوة،والرغبة وتمثلاتها الجسدانية والجنسانية، والمحرم، الذي يؤجج المعترك الداخلي بين النفور المنقاد بالضمير ، و التوق الماجن بلذة الوصول " فخ الجسد."
كما تناول الأيروسية في التصميم المفهومي . والأيروسية كجزء من صورة الجسد " الجسد الأيروسي، والعلاقات الأيروسية" ، وكذا كونها بصمة وهوية شخصية أو إنسانية.، ومن ناحية أو زاوية الشأن العام، أو العلاقات التي تجمعنا سوياً. وتأثيرها على القيم الفردية والجماعية. و ب الذات الرائية من الثبات إلى التحول. والأيروسية بين التصوف والزهد.
الكتاب يطرح في العمق سؤال الكينونة والماهية وتحققها عبر مسار الحس المشترك.
فظييييع!!!!
كما تناول الأيروسية في التصميم المفهومي . والأيروسية كجزء من صورة الجسد " الجسد الأيروسي، والعلاقات الأيروسية" ، وكذا كونها بصمة وهوية شخصية أو إنسانية.، ومن ناحية أو زاوية الشأن العام، أو العلاقات التي تجمعنا سوياً. وتأثيرها على القيم الفردية والجماعية. و ب الذات الرائية من الثبات إلى التحول. والأيروسية بين التصوف والزهد.
الكتاب يطرح في العمق سؤال الكينونة والماهية وتحققها عبر مسار الحس المشترك.
فظييييع!!!!
December 2, 2013
Oh, those French! I picked this one up because I'd heard folks talk learnedly about Bataille in the same breath as Derrida, Lacan and Foucault and wanted to know what the fuss was about. Reading the cover blurb and looking at the table of contents I went on to formulate an expectation of finally finding out where people like deSade were coming from--a mystery since I covertly first read Dad's Grove Press edition in early adolescence. Well, although I found tidbits of interest herein, I did not come to understand the obsessive fascination some, like the author, have with transgression, with evil, with perversity and so on. No, that's not quite true. I must admit to some fascination with the offbeat and forbidden myself, but when it comes to wickedness, to hurting others in real practice, I just don't get it. Is this because of my conditioning and would being naughty, really naughty, help me overcome such limitations? Is this what the business is for some people? Indeed, I've known a few, even dated a one, who intentionally transgressed taboos of various kinds, but none to the point of physically hurting anybody or even writing as if to encourage such practices. The real distinction would appear to be one between between the taboo against actually physically (or even psychologically) disabling another and all other taboos. The first is really taboo--ethically forbidden. The second are all, I suspect, dubitable. Perhaps if one is brought up in a culture suffused with those weaker taboos, as a Catholic like Bataille or de Sade may have been, then the acts of transgression against them might lead to some sort of inertial impulse to go on and make the ultimate, ethical transgression. Having been brought up myself in a relatively liberal culture by a relatively liberal family, there weren't many taboos to fight against and I never developed the impulse to get so carried away.
Read
May 13, 2013A strong thesis that has a lot of resonance for my own thoughts on human experience. It required fairly constant mental editorialising however to filter out the extreme gender bias, the complete ignoring of homosexuality, and a tendency to a high level of repetition. These points aside though, it was a thought provoking read that sought to cut through bourgeoise niceties and stare honestly at sex and death.
November 11, 2018
Devo confessar que a primeira vez que li O erotismo numa outra edição achei-o demasiado falocêntrico, mas eu estava sendo anacrônica ao julgá-lo assim, pois o mundo (e a literatura) era falocêntrico quando foi escrito, felizmente com o passar das décadas vieram o estudos de gênero e podemos agora aproveitar o que há de bom no livro de Bataille revisando para nossos propósitos, que no meu caso aborda pesquisa em torno de Hilda Hilst, pois convenhamos, não se estuda Hilst sem entender Bataille.
July 11, 2022
Employing structuralist-anthropological categories like the taboo and transgression, and existential categories like anguish, nausea and horror, this philosophical work on human sexuality analyzes eroticism in terms of violence, religion and death. In the latter half of the book, Bataille comments on others who have written on human sexuality. For instance, he writes critically of Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior In The Human Male, Volume 2, which came out only three years before Bataille wrote this book. In addition to finding alternate interpretations of Kinsey’s data, he argues that the report is too scientistic. He analyzes the Marquis de Sade’s writings, arguing that they are to be interpreted in terms of those ideas that are the most paradoxical. Commenting on Claude Levi-Strauss, he suggests a different approach that could be taken to exogamy. Like Georg Groddeck (Book of the IT) and Ernest Becker (The Denial of Death), Bataille discusses unpleasant and embarrassing subjects typically avoided by more “polite” writers.
Note: despite what the blurb on the back of the City Lights edition says, there is no mention anywhere in the book of Emily Bronte (the writer must have been thinking of Bataille's Literature and Evil, in which there is a chapter on Bronte).
Acquired Jul 30, 2009
Attic Books, London, Ontario
Note: despite what the blurb on the back of the City Lights edition says, there is no mention anywhere in the book of Emily Bronte (the writer must have been thinking of Bataille's Literature and Evil, in which there is a chapter on Bronte).
Acquired Jul 30, 2009
Attic Books, London, Ontario
November 19, 2017
I can say with certainty that this is a life changing book for me. I've started reading it for a second time as I'm sure there's a lot that I've missed. I can see how many readers could be repelled by Bataille's deconstruction of the heavy, harsh realities he grapples with. The subject matter, by itself, is brutally real. Some sentences jump out at me with absolute clarity; others remain murky and mysterious, refusing to give up their secrets -- Even after a second reading. Contradictions exist within the space of a sentence in this work. Bataille breaks down concepts that are at once elemental yet complex -- For example, "continuity" versus "discontinuity". This is an oversimplification, but in essence, Bataille examines the overlap between life and death; between existence and non-existence; and the role eroticism plays within that arena.
Bataille has been referred to as the "metaphysician of evil", a moniker that I find to be sensational. According to Bataille, eroticism moves man towards death; or alternatively, man moves towards death in pursuing the erotic, which he cannot help but doing, since eroticism is intrinsic to his very nature. Work acts as a barrier against the potentially malign influence of decadent eroticism. Although sex and sexuality in themselves are amoral -- Bataille makes use of a moral perspective in his study of the connection between eroticism and death. Human sacrifice (and its evolution into pastel Christianity / puritanical monotheism) and the writings of Marquis DeSade appear as two memorable themes in this work; as several other Goodreads reviewers have noted -- The chapter on DeSade is compelling.
While reading "Erotism" I asked myself the question: "Must I now view life through Bataille's dark prism? And the answer was unequivocally: "Yes". On a technical note, I find the translation to be problematic [this has been observed by other Goodreads reviewers as well]; typos abound and while many of them are innocuous -- There are instances where both the typos and the mistranslations possibly contribute to misinterpretation of specific shades of meaning.
Bataille has been referred to as the "metaphysician of evil", a moniker that I find to be sensational. According to Bataille, eroticism moves man towards death; or alternatively, man moves towards death in pursuing the erotic, which he cannot help but doing, since eroticism is intrinsic to his very nature. Work acts as a barrier against the potentially malign influence of decadent eroticism. Although sex and sexuality in themselves are amoral -- Bataille makes use of a moral perspective in his study of the connection between eroticism and death. Human sacrifice (and its evolution into pastel Christianity / puritanical monotheism) and the writings of Marquis DeSade appear as two memorable themes in this work; as several other Goodreads reviewers have noted -- The chapter on DeSade is compelling.
While reading "Erotism" I asked myself the question: "Must I now view life through Bataille's dark prism? And the answer was unequivocally: "Yes". On a technical note, I find the translation to be problematic [this has been observed by other Goodreads reviewers as well]; typos abound and while many of them are innocuous -- There are instances where both the typos and the mistranslations possibly contribute to misinterpretation of specific shades of meaning.
June 17, 2025
This is an awesome read for the asexual perverts and gooner monks out there! And speaking of...
Everything seems to be about gooning these days! All the instagram reels are fetish content, all the ads are pornographic, the financial market is failing transposed continence, everything everything yada yada. It's a perversion of eroticism, what a shame! Real gooning is about play, and ultimately a denial of the pornographic, but obviously everyone else is stupider than me.
Anyways, everyone thinks Bataille was just an "edgelord" (by everyone, I mean a Medium article from five years ago, so I'm overinflating the hate to make my redemption of him seem more important and at greater risk to myself, sue me). He's very well regarded though, and for good reason.
Why is everyone all up in arms about drag queens and groomer libel and subliminal demonic messages in media that's virally infecting and indoctrinating us with ideology, especially the poor children? Well what's obvious is that for the Puritan white American mind, the only way to excite the erotic is to violently disavow it. The witch hunt is the Puritan's pornography. They've really figured out a good way to obsessively think about the taboo while anxiously disavowing any allure to it, because obviously their fixation with it is a moral crusade. Thanks Bataille for the insight on this.
I'm at a cafe right now in Tempe AZ, and someone is filming a tiktok that I am in the background of and I feel very awkward. Sigh.
Everything seems to be about gooning these days! All the instagram reels are fetish content, all the ads are pornographic, the financial market is failing transposed continence, everything everything yada yada. It's a perversion of eroticism, what a shame! Real gooning is about play, and ultimately a denial of the pornographic, but obviously everyone else is stupider than me.
Anyways, everyone thinks Bataille was just an "edgelord" (by everyone, I mean a Medium article from five years ago, so I'm overinflating the hate to make my redemption of him seem more important and at greater risk to myself, sue me). He's very well regarded though, and for good reason.
Why is everyone all up in arms about drag queens and groomer libel and subliminal demonic messages in media that's virally infecting and indoctrinating us with ideology, especially the poor children? Well what's obvious is that for the Puritan white American mind, the only way to excite the erotic is to violently disavow it. The witch hunt is the Puritan's pornography. They've really figured out a good way to obsessively think about the taboo while anxiously disavowing any allure to it, because obviously their fixation with it is a moral crusade. Thanks Bataille for the insight on this.
I'm at a cafe right now in Tempe AZ, and someone is filming a tiktok that I am in the background of and I feel very awkward. Sigh.
March 9, 2015
His ideas are thought-provoking but ultimately ridiculous. Although he grudgingly admits that there are people who don't think of sex as a taboo, the bulk of his book goes on to describe all sex as a transgression of those selfsame taboos. He also misses the the significance of the Kinsey Reports, which he nevertheless discusses for a good chapter, and considering that this is a book on sexual taboos I'm a bit surprised that he never once discussed homosexuality. In fact, most of his discussion of sexual taboo is extremely heteronormative, focusing on reproductivity, etc. He's at his best when doing a literary analysis of Marquis de Sade, and there he has some good insights. But I think his ideas are going to resonate only with people who come to the book with his same neuroses.
January 14, 2025
Brillante la forma de Bataille de abordar la idea del erotismo como un aspecto de la vida interior de la persona desde el prisma de la violencia, las prohibiciones y el pecado. La reflexión central gira entorno a la afirmación de la muerte como el sentido último del erotismo en tanto que "nunca, humanamente, aparece la prohibición sin una revelación del placer, ni nunca surge un placer sin el sentimiento de lo prohibido".
Key words: muerte, verdad, prohibición, angustia, pecado, cadáver, plétora, dignidad, incesto, deseo, tristeza, hábito, libertad, orgía, transgresión, cristianismo, belleza, sacrificio, prostitución, matrimonio. Vamos, un temazo. Da para una tesis doctoral.
Key words: muerte, verdad, prohibición, angustia, pecado, cadáver, plétora, dignidad, incesto, deseo, tristeza, hábito, libertad, orgía, transgresión, cristianismo, belleza, sacrificio, prostitución, matrimonio. Vamos, un temazo. Da para una tesis doctoral.
January 25, 2026
Die Erotik hat mir sehr gut gefallen und war zugleich anders, als ich es erwartet hatte. Trotz seines theoretischen Anspruchs ist das Buch eine überraschend intensive und sehr bereichernde Leseerfahrung. Texte dieser Art haben oft die Angewohnheit, sperrig oder schwer verständlich zu sein, doch genau das ist hier nicht der Fall. Bataille schreibt klar, präzise und mit einer Dringlichkeit, die einen beim Lesen hält.
Was Bataille interessiert, ist Erotik nicht als privater Genuss, sondern als Grenzerfahrung. Erotik wird bei ihm zu einer grundlegenden menschlichen Bewegung, die Ordnung unterbricht und den Menschen an jene Punkte führt, an denen Leben, Tod, Gewalt und Sakralität ineinander übergehen. Gerade diese Perspektive macht das Buch so faszinierend. Es geht weniger um Sexualität im engeren Sinne als um das Verhältnis von Tabu und Überschreitung und um die Frage, warum Menschen überhaupt Regeln brauchen, um sie dann zu brechen.
Besonders eindrucksvoll ist, wie Bataille zeigt, dass Erotik immer mit Gefahr verbunden ist. Mit dem Verlust von Kontrolle, mit dem Auflösen des Ichs, mit der Nähe zum Tod. Diese Gedanken sind provokant, aber nie effekthascherisch. Sie entfalten sich langsam und wirken gerade deshalb lange nach. Auch die Unterscheidung zwischen körperlicher, liebender und sakraler Erotik öffnet neue Blickwinkel auf Erfahrungen, die man oft für selbstverständlich hält.
Trotz der Schwere der Themen bleibt das Buch gut lesbar. Bataille argumentiert ruhig, mit vielen Beispielen aus Religion, Ethnologie, Literatur und Kunst. Man merkt, dass hier nicht nur gedacht, sondern auch erfahren wird. Die Texte verlangen Aufmerksamkeit, aber sie überfordern nicht.
Die Erotik ist kein Buch, das man schnell konsumiert. Es ist eine meditative, fordernde und zugleich sehr lohnende Lektüre. Ein Werk, das den Blick auf Sexualität, auf Religion und auf das Menschsein insgesamt verändert. Für mich eine große Bereicherung und ein Buch, zu dem man immer wieder zurückkehren kann.
Was Bataille interessiert, ist Erotik nicht als privater Genuss, sondern als Grenzerfahrung. Erotik wird bei ihm zu einer grundlegenden menschlichen Bewegung, die Ordnung unterbricht und den Menschen an jene Punkte führt, an denen Leben, Tod, Gewalt und Sakralität ineinander übergehen. Gerade diese Perspektive macht das Buch so faszinierend. Es geht weniger um Sexualität im engeren Sinne als um das Verhältnis von Tabu und Überschreitung und um die Frage, warum Menschen überhaupt Regeln brauchen, um sie dann zu brechen.
Besonders eindrucksvoll ist, wie Bataille zeigt, dass Erotik immer mit Gefahr verbunden ist. Mit dem Verlust von Kontrolle, mit dem Auflösen des Ichs, mit der Nähe zum Tod. Diese Gedanken sind provokant, aber nie effekthascherisch. Sie entfalten sich langsam und wirken gerade deshalb lange nach. Auch die Unterscheidung zwischen körperlicher, liebender und sakraler Erotik öffnet neue Blickwinkel auf Erfahrungen, die man oft für selbstverständlich hält.
Trotz der Schwere der Themen bleibt das Buch gut lesbar. Bataille argumentiert ruhig, mit vielen Beispielen aus Religion, Ethnologie, Literatur und Kunst. Man merkt, dass hier nicht nur gedacht, sondern auch erfahren wird. Die Texte verlangen Aufmerksamkeit, aber sie überfordern nicht.
Die Erotik ist kein Buch, das man schnell konsumiert. Es ist eine meditative, fordernde und zugleich sehr lohnende Lektüre. Ein Werk, das den Blick auf Sexualität, auf Religion und auf das Menschsein insgesamt verändert. Für mich eine große Bereicherung und ein Buch, zu dem man immer wieder zurückkehren kann.
April 10, 2020
Very good. This is the first book of his I read that wasn't Story of the Eye, about 2 and a half years ago.
The idea of mysticism, sensuality, and death being intimately connected is profound, as is the tying of taboos and transgressions to a religious feeling. His general project of describing the religious experience from a materialist-atheist point of view is fascinating.
His thinking is "unsystematic", but every concept of his feels interconnected. But they're connected in such a way that no one concept feels absolutely central, i.e. there doesn't seem to be a theoretical "ground". But if there is one, it might just be eroticism.
Read Bataille!!
The idea of mysticism, sensuality, and death being intimately connected is profound, as is the tying of taboos and transgressions to a religious feeling. His general project of describing the religious experience from a materialist-atheist point of view is fascinating.
His thinking is "unsystematic", but every concept of his feels interconnected. But they're connected in such a way that no one concept feels absolutely central, i.e. there doesn't seem to be a theoretical "ground". But if there is one, it might just be eroticism.
Read Bataille!!
April 6, 2013
Here's a book title and cover art that elicit some subway sideways glances if you're into that sort of sexy thing and yet can stomach relatively non-sexy - and sadly, problematic* - theory.
Now that I've read Bataille's fiction, historical non-fiction and theory (and not ever a poem but a quick google search just verified that those exist, upon which I would've bet the quite unproductive farm), I can assume his poetry has merit. He is actually a great writer but I haven't yet read him writing greatly. It's very annoying. (I always defend that a great writer can exist even if he hasn't ever written greatly, but I know that's an unpopular - and obviously putrid-with-self-delusion - view.) Anyway, the guy has some gorgeous, provocative stuff in here, gems both in form and function. Theorists usually don't make me tear up; this is an atypical example of the tone but come on: "In human affairs example is catching. A man enters the dance because the dance makes him dance." I love that. And there is some really delicate, nice stuff in the beginning of this book, as he's establishing the main theme (man's desperate, paradoxical quest for continuity in his pitiful, limited existence as realized through biological, spiritual and cultural attitudes and behaviors around sex and sex-related stuffs). Then it degrades.
Enter the most annoying pitfall of amateur theory: the need to fill a book with words but running out of them, thus resorting to dragging in a bunch of other crapheads and explaining why they're, in whole or part, crap. Oy, you know no one cares! Go back to actually saying things; you had me as a solo act. Basically, B's very impressive start weakens after he abandons supporting evidence for sloppy finger pointing and then, well, down goes Frazier.
* Even some of his first principles are just ludicrous. It's driving me nuts that I can't find the passage referring to the inherent transcendence of various human body parts. And there is a section called "Violence is silent and de Sade's use of language is a contradiction in terms". Teehee.
Now that I've read Bataille's fiction, historical non-fiction and theory (and not ever a poem but a quick google search just verified that those exist, upon which I would've bet the quite unproductive farm), I can assume his poetry has merit. He is actually a great writer but I haven't yet read him writing greatly. It's very annoying. (I always defend that a great writer can exist even if he hasn't ever written greatly, but I know that's an unpopular - and obviously putrid-with-self-delusion - view.) Anyway, the guy has some gorgeous, provocative stuff in here, gems both in form and function. Theorists usually don't make me tear up; this is an atypical example of the tone but come on: "In human affairs example is catching. A man enters the dance because the dance makes him dance." I love that. And there is some really delicate, nice stuff in the beginning of this book, as he's establishing the main theme (man's desperate, paradoxical quest for continuity in his pitiful, limited existence as realized through biological, spiritual and cultural attitudes and behaviors around sex and sex-related stuffs). Then it degrades.
Enter the most annoying pitfall of amateur theory: the need to fill a book with words but running out of them, thus resorting to dragging in a bunch of other crapheads and explaining why they're, in whole or part, crap. Oy, you know no one cares! Go back to actually saying things; you had me as a solo act. Basically, B's very impressive start weakens after he abandons supporting evidence for sloppy finger pointing and then, well, down goes Frazier.
* Even some of his first principles are just ludicrous. It's driving me nuts that I can't find the passage referring to the inherent transcendence of various human body parts. And there is a section called "Violence is silent and de Sade's use of language is a contradiction in terms". Teehee.
May 25, 2014
The whole thing is a wonderful and blasphemous! Someone at the coffee shop asked me who Bataille was and I told him "a religious Nietzsche." Indeed, this is the case. Bataille somehow, fitting in expositions of human sacrifice, sexual violence, incest, and all other kinds of assorted weird ass shit, manages to paint the most beautiful and lascivious portrait of the night one could ever hope for while ultimately reminding us of the necessity of that ray of light of human consciousness for us to enjoy any of it at all. Still we will always crave that return to continuity, the world of language and exchange insufficient for inner experience to fuse in continuity with The Other. Beauty and trauma all around.
April 20, 2017
I like to think of death as a final sexual act of some sort. There is something so beautiful in the gesture that is totally erotic. Bataille looks in the taboo and finds pleasure.
![Profile Image for Keith [on semi hiatus].](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fusers%2F1541020315i%2F84884940._UX200_CR0%2C0%2C200%2C200_.jpg&w=128&q=75)
June 3, 2020
If you're a Georges Bataille fan then that's likely the only reason you're coming to read his views on Eroticism, everything in this book has an essence to what he has written that you've likely read, although for me I'm not the biggest fan of Mysticism so I'll scrap that from a 5 to a 4.
You'll read this if you're a fan and if you're not then at the end you'll likely want to read Tears of Eros or Madame Edwarda next. My path was as follows: the My Mother/Madame Edwarda/The Dead Man release by Penguin followed by Story of the Eye followed by Blue of Noon.
I've now read Eroticism and I'll be following this up with The Impossible which will be followed up by Tears of Eros.
To quote Georges Bataille and to wrap up this review:
"It is not necessary to answer the riddle of existence; it is not even necessary to ask it. But the fact that a man may possibly neither answer it nor even ask it does not eliminate that riddle. If I were to be asked what we are I should answer: 'We are the door to everything that can be, we are the expectation that no material response can satisfy, no trick with words deceive. We seek the heights. Each one of us can ignore this search if he has a mind to, but mankind as a whole aspires to these heights; they are the only definition of his nature, his only justification and significance.'"
You'll read this if you're a fan and if you're not then at the end you'll likely want to read Tears of Eros or Madame Edwarda next. My path was as follows: the My Mother/Madame Edwarda/The Dead Man release by Penguin followed by Story of the Eye followed by Blue of Noon.
I've now read Eroticism and I'll be following this up with The Impossible which will be followed up by Tears of Eros.
To quote Georges Bataille and to wrap up this review:
"It is not necessary to answer the riddle of existence; it is not even necessary to ask it. But the fact that a man may possibly neither answer it nor even ask it does not eliminate that riddle. If I were to be asked what we are I should answer: 'We are the door to everything that can be, we are the expectation that no material response can satisfy, no trick with words deceive. We seek the heights. Each one of us can ignore this search if he has a mind to, but mankind as a whole aspires to these heights; they are the only definition of his nature, his only justification and significance.'"
November 14, 2016
(Diario de lectura)
Hace dos años lo leí por primera vez, vuelvo y encuentro una potencia, un atrevimiento teórico increíble. Pocas visiones de mundo tan ricas, de jardines que se bifurcan tanto como la de Bataille.
Particularmente genial el cap. sobre Sade (El lenguaje de Sade es el de la víctima; La violencia es silenciosa y el lenguaje de Sade es paradójico; El lenguaje de Sade nos aleja de la violencia...)
No puedo posponer más el estudio de Hegel, de quien sólo leí sus trabajos sobre estética. Ahí va.
December 29, 2024
Bataille hace un análisis historico para ligar los opuestos, el erotismo y la muerte. Aprendí.. más que de erotismo... un par de cosas aterradoras.
Resumen:
• La fenomenología batailleana del erotismo demuestra que, en su esencia, el erotismo está vinculado con la sangre, que no hay erotismo sin sangre y lo que la sangre simboliza: la muerte. “el erotismo es la aprobación de la vida hasta en la muerte”.
• El erotismo surge de la dialéctica entre lo continuo (ser) y lo discontinuo (el sujeto) que experimenta el deseo de continuidad (que no puede sino ser deseo de muerte).
• Bataille analiza 3 tipo sde erotismo:
o El erotismo de los cuerpos – violación del ser de los participantes, un movimiento donde la desunión de los cueros busca la continuidad del ser. Encontrar ese bloque originario indiviso que no puede ser logrado (porque sería morir y morir es ya no lograrlo nunca). Pero nos brinda el límite, en el punto donde se desfallece “la pequeña muerte”
o Del corazón: búsqueda de la unidad rota por la discontinuidad, mediante la pasión amorsosa. Es también la búsqueda de un imposible, trata de unirse al ser amado. Se necesita tanto ser (amado), que es el único puente posible para salir de la angustiante soledad del ser humano, que ante la sola idea de perderlo surge el fantasma de la muerte. El deseo surge como pasión amorosa mientras que es en realidad voluntad de muerte.
o El sagrado: lo sagrado es la continuidad del ser que se revela mediante la muerte de un ser discontinuo.
• Toda puesta en marcha erótica tiene como principio una destrucción de la estructura del ser cerrado
• Lo que está en juego en el erotismo es siempre la disolución de las formas constituidas
• La poesía lleva al mismo punto que cada forma del erotismo: a la indistinción a la confusión de los objetos distintos. Nos lleva a la eternidad nos lleva a la muerte por la muerte a la continuidad.
• Por la poesía que abre un hueco en el lenguaje, el proceso de negatividad o destrucción irrumpe en lo más profundo de lo humano y lo trastoca: el mundo, con el “hombre” incluido, deja de ser lo que era para ser otra cosa, siempre lo otro de un sí inexistente, y en eso como en la locura la sangre del erotismo adquiere su verdadero esplendor porque es el verdadero hambre, el verdadero deseo, el de mortalidad.
LA CONCIENCIA DE LA MUERTE
• El erotismo está ligado al conocimeinto de la muerte.
• La muerte está asociada a las lágrimas y a veces el deseo sexual a la risa. Pero la risa no es, lo contrario de las lágrimas: tanto el objetivo de la risa como el de las lágrimas se vinculan a una especie de violencia que interrumpe el curso regular, el curso habitual de las cosas.
• Es evidente que el desorden sexual nos produce lágrimas, pero siemrpe nos trastorna, a veces nos devasta y una de dos: o nos hace reir o nos compromete en la violencia del abrazo.
• El momento erótico es la cima de la vida cuya mayor fuerza e intensidad se muestran en el momento en que dos seres se atraen, se acoplan y se perpetúan. Se trata de la vida, se trata de reproducirla, pero reproduciéndose la vida desborda: al desbordar alcanza el extremo delirio.
• Contrariamente, es a causa de que somos humanos y de que vivimos en la sombría perspectiva de la muerte, que conocemos la violencia exasperada, la violencia desesperada del erotismo.
LOS SURREALISTAS
• El surrealismo es manierismo .. en la medida en que traduce la violencia tensa sin la c ual no podríamos liberarnos de la conenxión. El manierismo es la búsqueda de la fiebre. Quiere marcar así la unidad fundamental de las pinturas cuya obsesión es traducir la fiebre: la fiebre, el deseo, la pasión ardiente. El rasgo esencial de los surresalistas es el odio a la convención. S´lo esto les hizo amar el calor del erotismo, el irrespirable calor que desprende el erotismo… esencialmente
la pintura de la que hablo está en ebullición, vive, arde.
CONCLUSION:
Lo que no es consciente no es humano.
No podemos ser, no podemos vivir humanamente sino a través de los meandros del tiempo: sólo el conjunto del tiempo compone y completa la vida humana.
• Un momento sólo tiene sentido en relación al conjunto de los momentos. En cada instante sólo somos fragmentos desprovistos de sentido s no los vinculamos a otros fragmentos. ¿Cómo podríamos remitirnos al conjunto acabado?
• El erotismo en cierto sentido es la salida, la salida infame del horror.
MUNDO ACTUAL
• Lo que amenaza actualmente a los hombres no es el goce material. El goce material es, en principio, contrario al acrecentamiento de las riquezas. Pero el acrecentamiento de las riquezas es – al menos en parte – contrario al goce que podemos esperar de ellas. El acrecentamiento de las riquezas lleva a la sobreproducción, de la cual sólo la guerra es la salida. No quiero decir que el erotismo sea el único remedio a la amenaza de la miseria, ligada al acrecentamiento irracional de las riquezas. Pero sin el cálculo de las diversas posibilidades de consumo opuestas a la guerra, y de las que el goce erótico – el consumo de la energía en el instante – es el tipo, no podríamos descubrir una salida que fundaría la razón.
Resumen:
• La fenomenología batailleana del erotismo demuestra que, en su esencia, el erotismo está vinculado con la sangre, que no hay erotismo sin sangre y lo que la sangre simboliza: la muerte. “el erotismo es la aprobación de la vida hasta en la muerte”.
• El erotismo surge de la dialéctica entre lo continuo (ser) y lo discontinuo (el sujeto) que experimenta el deseo de continuidad (que no puede sino ser deseo de muerte).
• Bataille analiza 3 tipo sde erotismo:
o El erotismo de los cuerpos – violación del ser de los participantes, un movimiento donde la desunión de los cueros busca la continuidad del ser. Encontrar ese bloque originario indiviso que no puede ser logrado (porque sería morir y morir es ya no lograrlo nunca). Pero nos brinda el límite, en el punto donde se desfallece “la pequeña muerte”
o Del corazón: búsqueda de la unidad rota por la discontinuidad, mediante la pasión amorsosa. Es también la búsqueda de un imposible, trata de unirse al ser amado. Se necesita tanto ser (amado), que es el único puente posible para salir de la angustiante soledad del ser humano, que ante la sola idea de perderlo surge el fantasma de la muerte. El deseo surge como pasión amorosa mientras que es en realidad voluntad de muerte.
o El sagrado: lo sagrado es la continuidad del ser que se revela mediante la muerte de un ser discontinuo.
• Toda puesta en marcha erótica tiene como principio una destrucción de la estructura del ser cerrado
• Lo que está en juego en el erotismo es siempre la disolución de las formas constituidas
• La poesía lleva al mismo punto que cada forma del erotismo: a la indistinción a la confusión de los objetos distintos. Nos lleva a la eternidad nos lleva a la muerte por la muerte a la continuidad.
• Por la poesía que abre un hueco en el lenguaje, el proceso de negatividad o destrucción irrumpe en lo más profundo de lo humano y lo trastoca: el mundo, con el “hombre” incluido, deja de ser lo que era para ser otra cosa, siempre lo otro de un sí inexistente, y en eso como en la locura la sangre del erotismo adquiere su verdadero esplendor porque es el verdadero hambre, el verdadero deseo, el de mortalidad.
LA CONCIENCIA DE LA MUERTE
• El erotismo está ligado al conocimeinto de la muerte.
• La muerte está asociada a las lágrimas y a veces el deseo sexual a la risa. Pero la risa no es, lo contrario de las lágrimas: tanto el objetivo de la risa como el de las lágrimas se vinculan a una especie de violencia que interrumpe el curso regular, el curso habitual de las cosas.
• Es evidente que el desorden sexual nos produce lágrimas, pero siemrpe nos trastorna, a veces nos devasta y una de dos: o nos hace reir o nos compromete en la violencia del abrazo.
• El momento erótico es la cima de la vida cuya mayor fuerza e intensidad se muestran en el momento en que dos seres se atraen, se acoplan y se perpetúan. Se trata de la vida, se trata de reproducirla, pero reproduciéndose la vida desborda: al desbordar alcanza el extremo delirio.
• Contrariamente, es a causa de que somos humanos y de que vivimos en la sombría perspectiva de la muerte, que conocemos la violencia exasperada, la violencia desesperada del erotismo.
LOS SURREALISTAS
• El surrealismo es manierismo .. en la medida en que traduce la violencia tensa sin la c ual no podríamos liberarnos de la conenxión. El manierismo es la búsqueda de la fiebre. Quiere marcar así la unidad fundamental de las pinturas cuya obsesión es traducir la fiebre: la fiebre, el deseo, la pasión ardiente. El rasgo esencial de los surresalistas es el odio a la convención. S´lo esto les hizo amar el calor del erotismo, el irrespirable calor que desprende el erotismo… esencialmente
la pintura de la que hablo está en ebullición, vive, arde.
CONCLUSION:
Lo que no es consciente no es humano.
No podemos ser, no podemos vivir humanamente sino a través de los meandros del tiempo: sólo el conjunto del tiempo compone y completa la vida humana.
• Un momento sólo tiene sentido en relación al conjunto de los momentos. En cada instante sólo somos fragmentos desprovistos de sentido s no los vinculamos a otros fragmentos. ¿Cómo podríamos remitirnos al conjunto acabado?
• El erotismo en cierto sentido es la salida, la salida infame del horror.
MUNDO ACTUAL
• Lo que amenaza actualmente a los hombres no es el goce material. El goce material es, en principio, contrario al acrecentamiento de las riquezas. Pero el acrecentamiento de las riquezas es – al menos en parte – contrario al goce que podemos esperar de ellas. El acrecentamiento de las riquezas lleva a la sobreproducción, de la cual sólo la guerra es la salida. No quiero decir que el erotismo sea el único remedio a la amenaza de la miseria, ligada al acrecentamiento irracional de las riquezas. Pero sin el cálculo de las diversas posibilidades de consumo opuestas a la guerra, y de las que el goce erótico – el consumo de la energía en el instante – es el tipo, no podríamos descubrir una salida que fundaría la razón.
March 22, 2017
L'erotismo di Bataille è un saggio indispensabile, importantissimo. Ripercorre tutto, dalla preistoria sino ad oggi stesso. Pochi quelli che capiscano cosa sia il divino.
January 4, 2026
Relectura gener 2026:
Ja fa més de tres anyets que el vaig llegir per primer cop i ha sigut un llibre que sempre tinc més o menys present. A sota hi ha la ressenya q vaig fer amb un resumet i tal.
Una cosa que de tant en tant penso és que l'Erotisme de Bataille anticipa la tesi de Foucault contra la hipòtesi repressiva de Freud defensant que el poder no només reprimeix, sinó que produeix, que la norma genera les seves mateixes transgressions. Aquesta idea foucaultiana és un dels pilars forts de la teoria queer. Bataille abans que Foucault estableix que la prohibició i la seva transgressió es coimpliquen tal com una sístole es segueix necessàriament d'una diàstole.
petonetss contra la inevitable discontinuïtat muacmuac
.........
Lectura agost 2022:
RESUM
L'erotisme de Bataille parteix de la idea de (dis)continuïtat. Els humans som discontinus en la mesura que la nostra mort només és nostra. Fins i tot, quan ens trobem dins d'un metro en hora punta envoltats d'humans estrenyent-nos per tots costats, ens mantenim separats d'ells. L'angoixa i la soledat de ser discontinus ens impulsen cap a la recerca de continuïtat. Una forma d'aquesta recerca és l'erotisme. Dos cossos abraçats sobre un llit difuminant els límits que els separa, cos dins de cos, s'estableix una continuïtat. La consecució total del desig de continuïtat és el desig de mort. Només en la mort desapareix la separació de l'humà per fondre's en la totalitat d'un món continu.
"Lo que está en juego en el erotismo es siempre una disolución de las formas constituidas. Repito: una disolución de esas formas de vida social, regular, que fundamentan el orden discontinuo de las individualidades que somos" (El erotismo, Introducción)
La voluntat eròtica de continuïtat s'articula a través de la transgressió de prohibicions. Així l'erotisme no existeix "tot i" les prohibicions (de matar, d'incest, de sacrifici...) sinó "a causa de" elles. Per Bataille, un moviment d'alliberament sexual basat en la transgressió no podria mai alliberar-nos de les prohibicions que ens controlen els desitjos. Transgressió i prohibició existeixen en mútua dependència.
"Si la prohibición deja de participar, si ya no creemos en lo prohibido, la transgresión es impossible" (El erotismo, cap XIII)
Les relacions sexuals eròtiques que ens descriu Bataille -la fusió dels cossos, el desig de mort...- són irracionals. Són moments en què el càlcul utilitarista de plaer-dolor (benefici-cost) perd sentit, ja que ens trobem en un etern present. En l'acte eròtic tot es fa pel mateix moment. El científic utilitarista amb el seu racional càlcul felicífic és incapaç de dir res respecte a l'erotisme. El punt de partida de Bataille no és el d'un científic que estudia l'erotisme des de fora sinó el d'un estudi des de dins del mateix fenomen.
L'erotisme és violència i és desorganització i s'oposa al treball. L'erotisme està prohibit, és privat, és irracional (però NO animal), en resum, és silenci. Però aquesta consideració funda una antinòmia que angoixarà a Bataille al llarg de tota la seva obra: com escriure, amb el llenguatge, sobre allò del que no es pot parlar, sobre allò que és irracional. El llenguatge és sempre discontinu (divideix el món en parts, trenca totalitats), l'erotisme és (desig de) continuïtat. Bataille és plenament conscient de l'antinòmia, defineix el seu propi intent de parlar de l'erotisme com a:
"...reflexión patética, que se aniquila a sí misma en un grito" (El erotismo, Estudio VII)
PROPOSTA DE LECTURA COMUNISTA
Per acabar -aquí m'allunyo del text- quines conseqüències té l'erotisme de Bataille per un moviment emancipador com és el comunisme?
1 La primera línia d'argumentació seria rebutjar la discontinuïtat del subjecte com a intrínseca i vincular-la a la forma de discontinuïtat característica del mode de producció capitalista: la separació del productor dels seus mitjans de subsistència. Aquesta divisió funda i reprodueix l'estat present de les coses. La voluntat de continuïtat (de mort) seria la voluntat de retornar els mitjans de producció als productors sobre una nova base de desenvolupament productiu fundant la possibilitat del comunisme. Això que he dit sona bé, però no és Bataille. A l'Estudi I, Bataille, s'apropa a aquesta posició comentant un article que demostra que qui més orgasmes té és qui no treballa (l'hampa (~el lumpen) i la burgesia). La classe treballadora, discontínua/alienada per definició està sempre separada de la possibilitat de continuïtat.
2 La segona línia d'argumentació seria acceptar que el subjecte sempre és discontinu. Sempre no, ho és des que l'home deixa de ser animal a través del treball (vinculat a la gestió de la mort) i a través del tabú (fundant la prohibició de la sexualitat i la transgressió d'aquesta: l'erotisme). L'única sortida d'aquest joc de prohibicions seria la superació de la història. Si la història té un inici perquè no pot tenir un final? El final de la història seria alguna cosa així com una continuïtat silenciosa i, potser, li podem donar el nom de comunisme.
Si algú s'ha llegit tot això, un kiss💖
PD: Realment, amb els primers 4-5 capítols es diu gairebé tot i a partir de llavors es repeteixen moltes coses. Així que si us fa mandra llegir tot el llibre, llegint les primeres pàgines n'hi ha prou per entendre la tesi principal.
PD 2: Llegit en un moment de fort desig de continuïtat 💔.
Ja fa més de tres anyets que el vaig llegir per primer cop i ha sigut un llibre que sempre tinc més o menys present. A sota hi ha la ressenya q vaig fer amb un resumet i tal.
Una cosa que de tant en tant penso és que l'Erotisme de Bataille anticipa la tesi de Foucault contra la hipòtesi repressiva de Freud defensant que el poder no només reprimeix, sinó que produeix, que la norma genera les seves mateixes transgressions. Aquesta idea foucaultiana és un dels pilars forts de la teoria queer. Bataille abans que Foucault estableix que la prohibició i la seva transgressió es coimpliquen tal com una sístole es segueix necessàriament d'una diàstole.
petonetss contra la inevitable discontinuïtat muacmuac
.........
Lectura agost 2022:
RESUM
L'erotisme de Bataille parteix de la idea de (dis)continuïtat. Els humans som discontinus en la mesura que la nostra mort només és nostra. Fins i tot, quan ens trobem dins d'un metro en hora punta envoltats d'humans estrenyent-nos per tots costats, ens mantenim separats d'ells. L'angoixa i la soledat de ser discontinus ens impulsen cap a la recerca de continuïtat. Una forma d'aquesta recerca és l'erotisme. Dos cossos abraçats sobre un llit difuminant els límits que els separa, cos dins de cos, s'estableix una continuïtat. La consecució total del desig de continuïtat és el desig de mort. Només en la mort desapareix la separació de l'humà per fondre's en la totalitat d'un món continu.
"Lo que está en juego en el erotismo es siempre una disolución de las formas constituidas. Repito: una disolución de esas formas de vida social, regular, que fundamentan el orden discontinuo de las individualidades que somos" (El erotismo, Introducción)
La voluntat eròtica de continuïtat s'articula a través de la transgressió de prohibicions. Així l'erotisme no existeix "tot i" les prohibicions (de matar, d'incest, de sacrifici...) sinó "a causa de" elles. Per Bataille, un moviment d'alliberament sexual basat en la transgressió no podria mai alliberar-nos de les prohibicions que ens controlen els desitjos. Transgressió i prohibició existeixen en mútua dependència.
"Si la prohibición deja de participar, si ya no creemos en lo prohibido, la transgresión es impossible" (El erotismo, cap XIII)
Les relacions sexuals eròtiques que ens descriu Bataille -la fusió dels cossos, el desig de mort...- són irracionals. Són moments en què el càlcul utilitarista de plaer-dolor (benefici-cost) perd sentit, ja que ens trobem en un etern present. En l'acte eròtic tot es fa pel mateix moment. El científic utilitarista amb el seu racional càlcul felicífic és incapaç de dir res respecte a l'erotisme. El punt de partida de Bataille no és el d'un científic que estudia l'erotisme des de fora sinó el d'un estudi des de dins del mateix fenomen.
L'erotisme és violència i és desorganització i s'oposa al treball. L'erotisme està prohibit, és privat, és irracional (però NO animal), en resum, és silenci. Però aquesta consideració funda una antinòmia que angoixarà a Bataille al llarg de tota la seva obra: com escriure, amb el llenguatge, sobre allò del que no es pot parlar, sobre allò que és irracional. El llenguatge és sempre discontinu (divideix el món en parts, trenca totalitats), l'erotisme és (desig de) continuïtat. Bataille és plenament conscient de l'antinòmia, defineix el seu propi intent de parlar de l'erotisme com a:
"...reflexión patética, que se aniquila a sí misma en un grito" (El erotismo, Estudio VII)
PROPOSTA DE LECTURA COMUNISTA
Per acabar -aquí m'allunyo del text- quines conseqüències té l'erotisme de Bataille per un moviment emancipador com és el comunisme?
1 La primera línia d'argumentació seria rebutjar la discontinuïtat del subjecte com a intrínseca i vincular-la a la forma de discontinuïtat característica del mode de producció capitalista: la separació del productor dels seus mitjans de subsistència. Aquesta divisió funda i reprodueix l'estat present de les coses. La voluntat de continuïtat (de mort) seria la voluntat de retornar els mitjans de producció als productors sobre una nova base de desenvolupament productiu fundant la possibilitat del comunisme. Això que he dit sona bé, però no és Bataille. A l'Estudi I, Bataille, s'apropa a aquesta posició comentant un article que demostra que qui més orgasmes té és qui no treballa (l'hampa (~el lumpen) i la burgesia). La classe treballadora, discontínua/alienada per definició està sempre separada de la possibilitat de continuïtat.
2 La segona línia d'argumentació seria acceptar que el subjecte sempre és discontinu. Sempre no, ho és des que l'home deixa de ser animal a través del treball (vinculat a la gestió de la mort) i a través del tabú (fundant la prohibició de la sexualitat i la transgressió d'aquesta: l'erotisme). L'única sortida d'aquest joc de prohibicions seria la superació de la història. Si la història té un inici perquè no pot tenir un final? El final de la història seria alguna cosa així com una continuïtat silenciosa i, potser, li podem donar el nom de comunisme.
Si algú s'ha llegit tot això, un kiss💖
PD: Realment, amb els primers 4-5 capítols es diu gairebé tot i a partir de llavors es repeteixen moltes coses. Així que si us fa mandra llegir tot el llibre, llegint les primeres pàgines n'hi ha prou per entendre la tesi principal.
PD 2: Llegit en un moment de fort desig de continuïtat 💔.
March 8, 2026
When I was visiting Chicago, Cameron and I had a disagreement over this book on the phone while I was in west loop about to enter my very first soho house. This puzzle is age-old, simply finding a new vessel to fill its form everytime it re-emerges, and it will never be solved and merely repurposed. Our disagreement is about method. (I asked Cam how to characterize this disagreement. I would put it like this: In work like this, does there need to be a defensible claim? This made him annoyed. he kept insisting that I include this long-version of what he said, even though I don’t want to, because I recently have been exploring the role of ‘subtlety' in my goodreads reviews. But he keeps saying, "AGAIN, I’m NOT against there being a “claim” and a “defense”. But: What constitutes a claim? And what constitutes defense?”. He also objected to the scare quotes.) In my way, I find exemplars and counter-exemplars as evidence for and against a working definition of a concept. In his way, he wonders what the function of an exercise like this is. Afterall, this is not the way in which Bataille himself talks about his project. And we both are happy to talk about the style, but does that preclude talking about the substance? But I’ve decided I respect Bataille — and the greatest thing one can do with a writer they respect is to engage with it fully and thoroughly, on both your terms and theirs!
But before that, only a short bit on method:
Bataille is not very precise. I doubt many people are reading Bataille in pursuit of precision. But Bataille is a beautiful writer, fluid and intuitive, darting between metaphor and metonym, circular and cyclical like the eye for which he is so well known. And I’ve been revisiting my roots: binary opposition. To flip the coin and see the head and tail chasing each other, becoming the head becoming the tail becoming the head. Bataille captures this type of feeling very well, a dizzying web of associations and links. He also does so in a funny way which is that he writes with subheadings - this makes you feel like he’s about to give you a very structured argument but its all quite vague innit
He starts by saying he has little interest in the study of eroticism as a scientific endeavor because this is fundamentally a phenomenological approach, about the subjective experience of people. I’m grateful I read the Barthes before reading this because it did really highlight to me that Bataille did have a project and it was not just by Barthes’ charity that SotE could be clever. I’m not sorry for the 2.5star review, I stand by it. But I do acknowledge the project even if the object he produced is sloperella. Bataille says it best in the below quote, which is how he ends his introduction to the book. Super beautiful:
“Poetry leads to the same place as all forms of eroticism—to the blending and fusion of separate objects. It leads us to eternity, it leads us to death, and through death to continuity. Poetry is eternity; the sun matched with the sea.”
^when you can write like this, why write story of the eye?
And now, I must do what Cameron resists. Let us engage with the Claims.
His general argument is something like this:
He makes a few more other points that I think are slightly outside of the primary thesis of above, but they’re relevant. Stuff like this:
One engages with theory like this through objects and instances in the world. There are three salient ones that I encountered while reading this book. Again, the world grants you gifts that dovetail together with some regularity. They are as follows:
1. A twitter post by “WBE”, a Delicious Tacos styled alt-lit internet writer.
2. A documentary clip of user interviews for the AI companion “Friend” posted (created?) by the 23-year old CEO.
3. The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy.
I already knew this review would be quite long. But indulge me this as I explore each object in relation to Eroticism.
THE TWITTER POST BY WORST BOYFRIEND EVER:
I was in bed when I came across this one. Why one opts to scroll on their for you page on X and open & read a twitter post by someone with a shinji ikari pfp that requires 4-5 scrolls is beyond me. All I know is that I did it. And I found this post very evocative, because I found it very disgusting. Rejection by TT is a good counter-example to this: they’re functionally objects exploring the same thing. That is, about being debased. However, the critical difference is that TT allows himself distance by clearly writing about fictional characters. Although both are from first-person perspective, we know that TT is not a guy named craig, kant, alison, bee. This allows natural distance, and we never once have to worry or wonder if TT is a horrific person. If WBE is a fictional (or at least hyperbolized) character, he’s commited to not allowing the reader to know this. His substack is several pages of the same story: fucking dehumanized sluts, fetishization, the pathetic prison of his own lust and desire, of its fulfilment, of its denial, sexual violence, interpersonal violence, cynical dark lonely instrumental. There is no illusion of being a good person. This is a type of internet writer, one that operates in the currency of shame and desire, repellants and attraction. They’re proximate to other right-wing internet figures, particularly within the manosphere, the andrew tates of the world. But like TT, there is a critical difference: Manosphere Men project confidence. Cynical or not, they project their lives as Good, pleasurable, and that they’re in the right. The ones being degraded are the others around them - the women, the betacucks - and if you won’t degrade them, they’ll degrade themselves, and they’ll degrade each other. Alt-lit writers who share similar beliefs about how the world is ordered (of exploiting and being exploited) are different by this one virtue: they are intoxicated by exploring their own degradation - moral, spiritual, physical. Is there nothing more erotic than this?
THE FRIEND AD:
The CEO behind Friend is 23. Do you know what this means? This means he was born in 2002.
If you don’t know what Friend is, google it. You may have to google it together with the term “ai” or “product”, if google believes you are an ESL speaker with little to no english and shows you the Oxford dictionary definition of what makes a “friend” (1. a person with whom you share a bond of mutual affection, trust, and support, often transcending time and distance). Whether you do or don’t know what Friend is, you should watch the first advertisement on youtube. It is offputting on purpose. They are capitalizing on the aesthetics of dystopia which is ballsy. This 23 year old CEO certainly has a vision, and I must respect his mind even if his frontal cortext has not yet fully developed.
It seems the 23-year old Friend CEO is shooting some user interviews of Friend users. It is set up like a documentary, but I assume they will operate as advertisements. They are quite idiosyncratic. The first one is a fancy-seeming balding man that calls the Friend his “muse”. The second one is a very normal looking teenage boy with a blonde middle part, who loves Jesus Christ his lord & savior, and sings Sabrina Carpenter in his bedroom. The third one was the one I saw first. It is a woman with oversized rainbow plushies in her room that has a seizure in a gas station parking lot, a minute into the clip. This, of course, came with the discourse and commentary from various internet voyeurs, expressing their disgust and perturbation. With the product, with the company, with the user. This is the genre of realist media.
Being voyeuristic is erotic. But this video was not erotic, despite its voyeurism. Cameron agreed — this video was not erotic. We tried to figure out why this was the case. If, as Bataille says, eroticism is proximity to degradation or corruption, why was this video, so clearly capitalizing on these elements, not erotic?
Let us revisit the question of first person and third person, as above. Under Bataille’s account, eroticism is about experiences of the continuous - if this isn’t death and violence, then it should be about dissolving the boundary between yourself and the other person. We agreed that for the creators of this video, e.g., for the person recording and interviewing and for the 23-year old CEO masterminding this, it is undoubtedly an erotic object. It is erotic because it is exploitative; you can simulate the vicious pleasure through the screen of the person who made these, watching the subject and watching the viewer. But for us, the viewership, why does it lose this feature? This makes me wonder: why is reading Rejection by TT an erotic experience? Why is it likely an erotic experience for WBE to degrade and humiliate himself spiritually on his stupid little blog? I thought I had gotten Bataille here - a counter-example! - felt smug for a moment. But of course, the answer is about implication.
The Friend videos did not make me feel continuous with the subject; I am not implicated. In fact, it has nothing to do with me. This video makes me feel subjectively foreign — from the creator, from the subject. That we live different realities. And so, although it had the same features as these other objects (pitiable, hard to watch, about degradation etc), it could not be erotic. It was fortifying the boundary between us. There is no transgression, no metonym, no fusion, no transcendence. Just you over there, and me over here, and the chasm between our experiences. Rejection resonates with me because of what I wrote in my Rejection review. Because I love to think about Rejection - because I am implicated. TT writes about the Craysian. I resist verbalizing it too much, because I’m scared it’ll age poorly the way that diasporabait did. But it is undeniable: Rejection is a core part of the Millennial asian american psyche. Always was, always will be, no matter what happens from here on out. Asians and Wasians will increasingly populate the fabric of America - but we will likely be of different kinds.
-
THE KREUTZER SONATA:
I’ve said what I've needed to say about this in my Kreutzer Sonata review, but let us just re-visit the most important parts. Again, I spent a lot of my time trying to figure out where Pozdnyshev ends and Tolstoy begins. It is a very nice object in the mix, because it is very symmetrical to both Rejection & WBE. Isn’t it kind of beautiful that men separated by literally hundreds of years can be united in their totally identical beliefs about the nature of Foids? I’d be remiss to not mention Nabokov here, not because of his belief about the nature of Foids but because of the discussion around first person, third person, implication & distance. As I’ve mentioned, people say that Nabokov and Tolstoy are both writers who are comfortable with their readers overly identifying them with their (morally reprehensible) protagonists. Nabokov, who wrote and performed “Pozdnyshev’s Address” and warned a literary critic to, “Ask yourself, if the symbol if you have detected is not your own footprint”. (🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥ouch!)
Again, I don’t necessarily think the evidence is looking great for Tolstoy. And this is simply the most perfect example object for Bataille’s Eroticism. It slots in perfectly, head to toe, and Tolstoy’s own proximity to these beliefs & ascetic commitments makes it all the more so. Tolstoy’s post-script perfectly illustrates this. There are some real gems in there. It is hard to pick just one quote. He makes the general claim that all sex and carnal love are indeed bad, even the type of sex and love that Catholics like (The type that God likes, which is in the type within the bounds of marriage and meant for reproduction). The Kreutzer Sonata is a warning against the siren song of this type of carnal love. One can connect this to Bataille’s nuptial flight - the instictual launch of the drones to the sky, to reproduce with the queen, which will end in their ultimate demise: “To return to eroticism in man, it would have the same significance for the religious undergoing temptation as death for the drone as it flies towards it, if the bee could decide freely as the monk can in full awareness of death in store. The religious cannot die a physical death; he will die to the divine life he desires.” Beautiful!!!
Tolstoy wrote the post-script because various people seem to have written him post-Kreutzer Sonata being like “wym?" and complained that he implied that chastity is awesome and sex is bad becuase it would destroy the human race. He gives some lukewarm response about how chastity is just an “ideal” and not a rule or a precept. But is it? I think he thinks we should end this sick cycle of eroticism. By never reproducing again and destroying the human race. And is that not the most erotic thing of all?
-
If you’ve made it here, thank you for reading. In the end, I think the reason I loved this book is because Bataille writes here something I’ve always intuitively and intrinsically believed: that there is a rich relationship between the erotic, death, destruction, corruption, transcendence, ecstasy, and ultimately, life. I’ve been reflecting on how-when-and-why I’ve obtained this belief — but i’ve had it forever. From reading Litchi Hikari Club a bit too early, the experience of religious fervor in the pit of the crowd during praise night, or the lord of the flies fanfiction on fanfiction.net? It goes without saying that this is all deeply non-normative. Tracing your own interest and instincts from childhood is a very mysterious exercise.
But before that, only a short bit on method:
Bataille is not very precise. I doubt many people are reading Bataille in pursuit of precision. But Bataille is a beautiful writer, fluid and intuitive, darting between metaphor and metonym, circular and cyclical like the eye for which he is so well known. And I’ve been revisiting my roots: binary opposition. To flip the coin and see the head and tail chasing each other, becoming the head becoming the tail becoming the head. Bataille captures this type of feeling very well, a dizzying web of associations and links. He also does so in a funny way which is that he writes with subheadings - this makes you feel like he’s about to give you a very structured argument but its all quite vague innit
He starts by saying he has little interest in the study of eroticism as a scientific endeavor because this is fundamentally a phenomenological approach, about the subjective experience of people. I’m grateful I read the Barthes before reading this because it did really highlight to me that Bataille did have a project and it was not just by Barthes’ charity that SotE could be clever. I’m not sorry for the 2.5star review, I stand by it. But I do acknowledge the project even if the object he produced is sloperella. Bataille says it best in the below quote, which is how he ends his introduction to the book. Super beautiful:
“Poetry leads to the same place as all forms of eroticism—to the blending and fusion of separate objects. It leads us to eternity, it leads us to death, and through death to continuity. Poetry is eternity; the sun matched with the sea.”
^when you can write like this, why write story of the eye?
And now, I must do what Cameron resists. Let us engage with the Claims.
His general argument is something like this:
1. Humans have the unique form of subjective experience ‘eroticism’, which is different from a pure ‘animal’ experince of sexuality.
2. Human life (and all natural life) is embedded in continuity and discontinuity. The continuous in that things reproduce and continue on over and over and over, and life is fundamentally continuous. He uses an image of the grass turning into a deer turning into a lion, with the increasing and endless energy that is produced and expended in this process.
3. The actual subjective experience of each individual human is discontinuous — we are discontinuous beings that are born and will die. We are discontinuous from each other in subjectivity (Neon Genesis Evangelion Human Instrumentality Project reheated these nachos). The human experience is marred with this tension.
4. The erotic is thus about: experiencing continuity as a discontinuous being through either dissolution of self, becoming continuous w someone else, or brushing up against death in life.
He makes a few more other points that I think are slightly outside of the primary thesis of above, but they’re relevant. Stuff like this:
1. Eroticism is about breaking taboos and transgressing. Having the prohibition to break is central.
2. Violence is erotic because of its relationship to death.
3. Mysticism and sensuality are not exactly the same, but they’re both erotic. They’re both erotic because they both have to do with continuity and discontinuity; and life and death.
4. We should bring back human sacrifice.
One engages with theory like this through objects and instances in the world. There are three salient ones that I encountered while reading this book. Again, the world grants you gifts that dovetail together with some regularity. They are as follows:
1. A twitter post by “WBE”, a Delicious Tacos styled alt-lit internet writer.
2. A documentary clip of user interviews for the AI companion “Friend” posted (created?) by the 23-year old CEO.
3. The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy.
I already knew this review would be quite long. But indulge me this as I explore each object in relation to Eroticism.
THE TWITTER POST BY WORST BOYFRIEND EVER:
I was in bed when I came across this one. Why one opts to scroll on their for you page on X and open & read a twitter post by someone with a shinji ikari pfp that requires 4-5 scrolls is beyond me. All I know is that I did it. And I found this post very evocative, because I found it very disgusting. Rejection by TT is a good counter-example to this: they’re functionally objects exploring the same thing. That is, about being debased. However, the critical difference is that TT allows himself distance by clearly writing about fictional characters. Although both are from first-person perspective, we know that TT is not a guy named craig, kant, alison, bee. This allows natural distance, and we never once have to worry or wonder if TT is a horrific person. If WBE is a fictional (or at least hyperbolized) character, he’s commited to not allowing the reader to know this. His substack is several pages of the same story: fucking dehumanized sluts, fetishization, the pathetic prison of his own lust and desire, of its fulfilment, of its denial, sexual violence, interpersonal violence, cynical dark lonely instrumental. There is no illusion of being a good person. This is a type of internet writer, one that operates in the currency of shame and desire, repellants and attraction. They’re proximate to other right-wing internet figures, particularly within the manosphere, the andrew tates of the world. But like TT, there is a critical difference: Manosphere Men project confidence. Cynical or not, they project their lives as Good, pleasurable, and that they’re in the right. The ones being degraded are the others around them - the women, the betacucks - and if you won’t degrade them, they’ll degrade themselves, and they’ll degrade each other. Alt-lit writers who share similar beliefs about how the world is ordered (of exploiting and being exploited) are different by this one virtue: they are intoxicated by exploring their own degradation - moral, spiritual, physical. Is there nothing more erotic than this?
THE FRIEND AD:
The CEO behind Friend is 23. Do you know what this means? This means he was born in 2002.
If you don’t know what Friend is, google it. You may have to google it together with the term “ai” or “product”, if google believes you are an ESL speaker with little to no english and shows you the Oxford dictionary definition of what makes a “friend” (1. a person with whom you share a bond of mutual affection, trust, and support, often transcending time and distance). Whether you do or don’t know what Friend is, you should watch the first advertisement on youtube. It is offputting on purpose. They are capitalizing on the aesthetics of dystopia which is ballsy. This 23 year old CEO certainly has a vision, and I must respect his mind even if his frontal cortext has not yet fully developed.
It seems the 23-year old Friend CEO is shooting some user interviews of Friend users. It is set up like a documentary, but I assume they will operate as advertisements. They are quite idiosyncratic. The first one is a fancy-seeming balding man that calls the Friend his “muse”. The second one is a very normal looking teenage boy with a blonde middle part, who loves Jesus Christ his lord & savior, and sings Sabrina Carpenter in his bedroom. The third one was the one I saw first. It is a woman with oversized rainbow plushies in her room that has a seizure in a gas station parking lot, a minute into the clip. This, of course, came with the discourse and commentary from various internet voyeurs, expressing their disgust and perturbation. With the product, with the company, with the user. This is the genre of realist media.
Being voyeuristic is erotic. But this video was not erotic, despite its voyeurism. Cameron agreed — this video was not erotic. We tried to figure out why this was the case. If, as Bataille says, eroticism is proximity to degradation or corruption, why was this video, so clearly capitalizing on these elements, not erotic?
Let us revisit the question of first person and third person, as above. Under Bataille’s account, eroticism is about experiences of the continuous - if this isn’t death and violence, then it should be about dissolving the boundary between yourself and the other person. We agreed that for the creators of this video, e.g., for the person recording and interviewing and for the 23-year old CEO masterminding this, it is undoubtedly an erotic object. It is erotic because it is exploitative; you can simulate the vicious pleasure through the screen of the person who made these, watching the subject and watching the viewer. But for us, the viewership, why does it lose this feature? This makes me wonder: why is reading Rejection by TT an erotic experience? Why is it likely an erotic experience for WBE to degrade and humiliate himself spiritually on his stupid little blog? I thought I had gotten Bataille here - a counter-example! - felt smug for a moment. But of course, the answer is about implication.
The Friend videos did not make me feel continuous with the subject; I am not implicated. In fact, it has nothing to do with me. This video makes me feel subjectively foreign — from the creator, from the subject. That we live different realities. And so, although it had the same features as these other objects (pitiable, hard to watch, about degradation etc), it could not be erotic. It was fortifying the boundary between us. There is no transgression, no metonym, no fusion, no transcendence. Just you over there, and me over here, and the chasm between our experiences. Rejection resonates with me because of what I wrote in my Rejection review. Because I love to think about Rejection - because I am implicated. TT writes about the Craysian. I resist verbalizing it too much, because I’m scared it’ll age poorly the way that diasporabait did. But it is undeniable: Rejection is a core part of the Millennial asian american psyche. Always was, always will be, no matter what happens from here on out. Asians and Wasians will increasingly populate the fabric of America - but we will likely be of different kinds.
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THE KREUTZER SONATA:
I’ve said what I've needed to say about this in my Kreutzer Sonata review, but let us just re-visit the most important parts. Again, I spent a lot of my time trying to figure out where Pozdnyshev ends and Tolstoy begins. It is a very nice object in the mix, because it is very symmetrical to both Rejection & WBE. Isn’t it kind of beautiful that men separated by literally hundreds of years can be united in their totally identical beliefs about the nature of Foids? I’d be remiss to not mention Nabokov here, not because of his belief about the nature of Foids but because of the discussion around first person, third person, implication & distance. As I’ve mentioned, people say that Nabokov and Tolstoy are both writers who are comfortable with their readers overly identifying them with their (morally reprehensible) protagonists. Nabokov, who wrote and performed “Pozdnyshev’s Address” and warned a literary critic to, “Ask yourself, if the symbol if you have detected is not your own footprint”. (🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥ouch!)
Again, I don’t necessarily think the evidence is looking great for Tolstoy. And this is simply the most perfect example object for Bataille’s Eroticism. It slots in perfectly, head to toe, and Tolstoy’s own proximity to these beliefs & ascetic commitments makes it all the more so. Tolstoy’s post-script perfectly illustrates this. There are some real gems in there. It is hard to pick just one quote. He makes the general claim that all sex and carnal love are indeed bad, even the type of sex and love that Catholics like (The type that God likes, which is in the type within the bounds of marriage and meant for reproduction). The Kreutzer Sonata is a warning against the siren song of this type of carnal love. One can connect this to Bataille’s nuptial flight - the instictual launch of the drones to the sky, to reproduce with the queen, which will end in their ultimate demise: “To return to eroticism in man, it would have the same significance for the religious undergoing temptation as death for the drone as it flies towards it, if the bee could decide freely as the monk can in full awareness of death in store. The religious cannot die a physical death; he will die to the divine life he desires.” Beautiful!!!
Tolstoy wrote the post-script because various people seem to have written him post-Kreutzer Sonata being like “wym?" and complained that he implied that chastity is awesome and sex is bad becuase it would destroy the human race. He gives some lukewarm response about how chastity is just an “ideal” and not a rule or a precept. But is it? I think he thinks we should end this sick cycle of eroticism. By never reproducing again and destroying the human race. And is that not the most erotic thing of all?
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If you’ve made it here, thank you for reading. In the end, I think the reason I loved this book is because Bataille writes here something I’ve always intuitively and intrinsically believed: that there is a rich relationship between the erotic, death, destruction, corruption, transcendence, ecstasy, and ultimately, life. I’ve been reflecting on how-when-and-why I’ve obtained this belief — but i’ve had it forever. From reading Litchi Hikari Club a bit too early, the experience of religious fervor in the pit of the crowd during praise night, or the lord of the flies fanfiction on fanfiction.net? It goes without saying that this is all deeply non-normative. Tracing your own interest and instincts from childhood is a very mysterious exercise.
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