Story of the Eye

by Georges Bataille

The disagreements arise only in the estimate of the psychological and social consequences of its dissemination, and therefore in the formulating of tactics and policy.

Another argument: pornographic writing can’t evidence any care for its means of expression as such (the concern of literature), since the aim of pornography is to inspire a set of nonverbal fantasies in which language plays a debased, merely instrumental role.

Pornography is one of the branches of literature—science fiction is another—aiming at disorientation, at psychic dislocation.

Human sexuality is, quite apart from Christian repressions, a highly questionable phenomenon, and belongs, at least potentially, among the extreme rather than the ordinary experiences of humanity.

Everyone has felt (at least in fantasy) the erotic glamour of physical cruelty and an erotic lure in things that are vile and repulsive.