Bataille: The fall (from grace?) is endless

I am contemplating Bataille, and whether his corrective of Neechy's idea of a kind of partial shamanisation is appropriate.

Bataille, of course, brings his Catholicism to bear on the issue, at least in the mythological reframing that he sometimes uses, if not actually so much in terms of what is being got at concerning the nature of inner experience and the disruptive effect that this can have (ie. ought to have) on one's social relations.

The appropriation by Neechy of shamanic experience ("inner experience" in Bataille's terms) for a philosophy that, in its final stages, is quite patriarchal, produces at very least "a tension" between two opposing trends of emotion and thought that govern inwardness.

Neechy's most shamanistic book, Thus Spake Zarathustra, points the way to shamanistic self-destruction and regeneration of selfhood in a way that bebefits originality of one's emotional life and thought. In the sense that the book counsels a movement away from socially conditioned thoughts and ideas, it does in fact also counsel the means and method for a "fall from grace" -- for where is moral value upheld and reinforced if not WITHIN society, as opposed from apart from it? (The individual has no independent moral status apart from society, which is to say purely within herself.)

Yet, as we approach a later work, Beyond Good and Evil, patriarchal values pertaining to marriage and to women sprout forth quite vociferously. The generalisations that Neechy brings to the fore may or may not have been true -- in general -- about 19th Century women. The recipe for "severity" with women is of course (severely) patriarchal, and could at easily have sprung from Moses' mouth, or form that of some other religious masturbator, rather than from someone living in a time beyond the age of Jesus. There is rigidity here -- a stiffness that is "thanatos" from a shamanic, which is to say, inwards perspective. Could it be true that one has encountered a severe and finalising truth here? If most of the run of the mill and garden variety -- which is to say, highly social -- Neechians are any indication to go by, their death-embrace with misogynistic emotions (which, by the way, automatically inhibit the development of "inward experience") is justified by Neechy himself!

Despite this commitment to a determined social climbing on the backs, shoulders and torsos of women -- the commitment that defines Patriarchy Itself -- Neechy's caution about rigidity in the embrace of truth was sounded (to deaf ears and already castrated eyes) in the introductory paragraph, where his Lordship speaks of how: "the terrible seriousness and clumsy importunity with which [truth seekers] have paid their addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly methods for winning a woman". Also, from Zarathustra: “Do not be jealous, lover of truth, because of these inflexible and oppressive men! Truth has never yet clung to the arm of an inflexible man." Here -- at least -- Neechy is shamanic.

Despite this caution, there is an intense need to adopt the posture of a social climber in order to embrace misogynistic and patriarchal mores (actually, either the latter or the former term is a redundancy). The rule of males is a must, and it has to be along the lines of social values established since the beginning of civilisation (or at least, the agricultural turn of human social organisation). Women have to be dominated -- and it must be by some patriarchal breast-beater (some gesticulating ape)!

Shamanic values take us in the opposite direction. The fall from "civilisation", from society and its established mores, is endless and final, says Bataille. Inner experience has its own determinations and trajectory, and they always take us away from the mores established within society in order to safeguard it from chaos and uncertainty.

Shamanic values ARE, however, the introduction of chaos and uncertainty into the psychological sphere, and ultimately into the sphere of social relations.

One who has received the dubious honour and curse of shamanic initiation (as was the case with Nietzsche, and as was the case with Bataille) does not have the choice to suspend his fall from grace. It will happen whether he wants it to or not. And the little patriarchal ledge or stone he holds on in order to secure himself will not help one iota in the long term.