Bataille as shaman

Bataille identifies immanence with the real rather than socially defined self, but even more specifically with various modes of pleasurable destruction (thus “mutilation” in his terms can be read as a shamanic desire to unlearn society’s rules and systems of knowledge, in order that one may learn anew from experience, and with fresh eyes). This approach is identifiable, in Bataille’s terms, with “sovereignty”. To allow one’s socially defined self to undergo mutilation in order to learn afresh is a mode of shamanic voyage. Conversely, transcendence and work are defined as socially regulated or “profane” departure from one’s self and the experience of immanence and its associated ecstasies of destruction.