Jennifer, as Nick Land wrote, "In truth, Bataille seems to me far less an intellectual predicament than a sexual and
religious one, transecting the lethargic suicide upon which we are all embarked. To accept his writings is an impossibility, to resist them an irrelevance. One is excited
abnormally, appalled, but without refuge. Nausea perhaps? Such melodrama comes rapidly to amuse (although we still vomit, just as we die)."
Ain't that a hoot?
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Jennifer Armstrong We are all embarked upon a lethargic suicide because we are all in the grips of Superego, which makes us will the wills of the powers over us, rather than willing our own wills. All of Bataille's writings can be considered as an attempt to break this spell, to set us free from the hypnotic hold of Superego.
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Superego has a suffocating grip on us because we are afraid to die. It's part of Hegel's Lordship and Bondage dialectic. It is also the meaning behind Freud's concept of "castration". We accept others having power over us so that we can continue to live. In the case of Freud, one accepts a patriarchal restriction of one's innate powers so that one can maintain a form of going on living. (ie. to live in the civilised world, one accepts 'castration').
Bataille's violent imagery is designed to get us to face our worst fears -- the fear of death (Hegel) and castration (Freud). It is only by facing these things that we can transcend them properly (Nietzsche). Of course, the whole project is extremely Marxist and revolutionary.
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