Bataille and Nietzsche: the rhetoric of "destruction"

Cryptically (or not so cryptically), much of Bataille's writing can be considered as a retraining of the Superego for nonconformity to servitude and slavery. Transgression is not for its own sake, nor to indulge whims and desire. It involves a reorientation towards the world on the basis of one's individual strength to do that which was previously forbidden for one to do. Transgressive engagement is thus undertaken between the individual and himself (formerly his society's mores, that have been introjected as Superego). There is much at stake here -- much to lose. But every gain is an improvement in the range and power of one's will. The territory that one ultimately conquers, though, is one's self.

Nietzsche has a similar (although differently nuanced relationship to the question of his Superego). Zarathustra desires to break the law tables of "the good and the just". Such principled destruction also requires transgression of the Christian value judgements that had commanded European society. These values would probably have been internalised by his intended readers, meaning that, in a way, to destroy the value judgements of the "good and the just" meant destroying themselves, and recreating themselves anew:

What is the greatest thing ye can experience? It is the hour of great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becometh loathsome unto you, and so also your reason and virtue.

The hour when ye say: "What good is my happiness! It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency. But my happiness should justify existence itself!"

The hour when ye say: "What good is my reason! Doth it long for knowledge as the lion for his food? It is poverty and pollution and wretched self- complacency!"

The hour when ye say: "What good is my virtue! As yet it hath not made me passionate. How weary I am of my good and my bad! It is all poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency!"

The hour when ye say: "What good is my justice! I do not see that I am fervour and fuel. The just, however, are fervour and fuel!"

The hour when we say: "What good is my pity! Is not pity the cross on which he is nailed who loveth man? But my pity is not a crucifixion."

Have ye ever spoken thus? Have ye ever cried thus? Ah! would that I had heard you crying thus!

It is not your sin--it is your self-satisfaction that crieth unto heaven; your very sparingness in sin crieth unto heaven!

Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the frenzy with which ye should be inoculated?

Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that lightning, he is that frenzy!--[my bolds]

Whereas Nietzsche self-identifies as an aristocrat (despite being economically of the middle classes or less, as an ex-professor, who was barely able to survive on his pension) and wants to ascend to the heights of his consciousness on the basis of self-contempt, Bataille chooses a different method.

Bataille self-identifies as a proletarian, an everyday worker (his genuine status, in Marx's sense, despite being a librarian). Bataille want to conquer the superego that would make him submissive to the boss's commands. He wants to think differently, recover his wholeness as an individual, to have the courage to be his own person. But this kind of "sovereignty" [Bataille's term] requires the strength to command and dominate one's Superego (which would have one inwardly -- as well as externally -- conform to those who have power over one). The Superego has to learn who is really the boss -- and that is why Bataille continually subverts it. His point is to teach it a number of lessons.

Thus, both Nietzsche and Bataille use the rhetoric of "destruction" when both are actually talking about the psychological prerequisite for self-commanding.