Bataille

Bataille really has to be read in the same vein as Nietzsche, or otherwise his injunctions sound pointlessly irrational. I think that liberals, in particular, have a hard time with him. They say, "What? Give up our morality along with our moral agenda?" Postmodernists think he is experimenting with concepts. Actually, no, it is none of these. He is inciting bloody revolution through shamanistic self-destruction and regeneration. But, above all, he is trying to get us accustomed to violence, so that we can tolerate martyrdom, destruction and death and the qualities that can lead to overturning the "noble" bourgeois order.



Louis Athusser suggested that we have the precise sort of superego that will fit us to our expected role in life, under the existing order. That is part of why Bataille's 'transgression' makes sense as a way of challenging that order through challenging its control over one's subjective self -- hence shamanistic destruction.