Ordinariness, in shamanic terms, is wholly different from the ordinariness of the bourgeois housewife. Let me put it this way, in terms of Bataille's appraisal of Nietzsche. Nietzsche, he said, was a kind of ultra-Christian, who aimed to succeed in uncovering the truth as much as possible. That drive to success is the substance of moral transcendence. His morality transcended the everyday Christian's morality. It was more precise, more driven and more rigorous in its embrace of truth. Finally Nietzsche succumbed to shamanic ordinariness.
The will to transcend is also the will to fall, Bataille surmises. When Nietzsche's mind was broken down and he embraced an old horse in Turin, seeing reality anew, through tears and ecstasy, he encountered shamanic "ordinariness". This is how the will to transcend leads to immanence, its dialectic opposite. There is only so far one can go in terms of transcending societal and philosophical norms until something snaps.
Bataille depicts Nietzsche's situation as an ICARIAN COMPLEX. I'm inclined to the view that his appraisal makes sense in terms of physics alone. You can't strain against societal norms forever, because the heat of the sun eventually melts one's wings and gravity claims another victim.
But perhaps Nietzsche desired this specific encounter with ordinariness all along, Bataille supposes. It's not an ordinary ordinariness, after all, but one tinged with the perspectives of where one has been -- the heights one has scaled.
This notion of immanence is then very different from that of the bourgeois housewife who is locked inside her animality with a closed circle of consciousness all around her. (Simone de Beauvoir makes a very astute critique of this other sort of state.)
Where one has been will tend to color the meaning of where has arrived, so that the same word doesn't depict the same sense of knowledge.
When I speak of taking minibuses through Zimbabwe, some people think I am talking about immanence in the obvious or "bourgeois housewife" sense, but I insist that I am relating my experiences in terms that are shamanic.
The will to transcend is also the will to fall, Bataille surmises. When Nietzsche's mind was broken down and he embraced an old horse in Turin, seeing reality anew, through tears and ecstasy, he encountered shamanic "ordinariness". This is how the will to transcend leads to immanence, its dialectic opposite. There is only so far one can go in terms of transcending societal and philosophical norms until something snaps.
Bataille depicts Nietzsche's situation as an ICARIAN COMPLEX. I'm inclined to the view that his appraisal makes sense in terms of physics alone. You can't strain against societal norms forever, because the heat of the sun eventually melts one's wings and gravity claims another victim.
But perhaps Nietzsche desired this specific encounter with ordinariness all along, Bataille supposes. It's not an ordinary ordinariness, after all, but one tinged with the perspectives of where one has been -- the heights one has scaled.
This notion of immanence is then very different from that of the bourgeois housewife who is locked inside her animality with a closed circle of consciousness all around her. (Simone de Beauvoir makes a very astute critique of this other sort of state.)
Where one has been will tend to color the meaning of where has arrived, so that the same word doesn't depict the same sense of knowledge.
When I speak of taking minibuses through Zimbabwe, some people think I am talking about immanence in the obvious or "bourgeois housewife" sense, but I insist that I am relating my experiences in terms that are shamanic.
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