David Racz 38 minutes ago · LINKED COMMENT
Walter Benjamin veered close to Bataillean destruction but differently. They both thought it Divine. Benjamin seems to see it ethically though in an idiosyncratic justice. It would be interesting to compare them.
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+David Racz The problem is that by combining or closely associating the two points of views (Bataille's -- and Benjamin's as you've described it), we get something that in my experience would be a fundamental contradiction.
Let me try to explain a bit...
One of the ways in which I was able to come to terms with the primitive destruction of my identity was by depersonalizing it, and seeing this destructive outcome as having been in the hands of a violent and superior power. Now, let me make it very, very clear, that the destruction of my identity was prescribed, condoned and constantly carried forward by moralists. Along with the fact the destroying my sense of my Rhodesian identity served their narcissistic interests and gave them all sorts of pleasures in doing what they did (for instance mob stalking), the moralists could tell themselves that they were doing something good, by getting ride of the nasty "colonial" mentality of the past.
I have been the victim of "idiosyncratic justice" and it demoralized me and almost made me crazy.
The only way I could overcome this downward slide and put myself back on a stable psychological road is by telling myself, over and over again, that there was nothing ethical about my destruction -- rather there was something glorious about being able to experience it AND survive it.
So I take the side of Bataille any day, rather than that of the idiosyncratic moralists, meting out their "justice". Bataille's formulation, is after all, on my side, whereas how could one recover from anything if one felt or thought that moralists had a right to do what they did?
Let me try to explain a bit...
One of the ways in which I was able to come to terms with the primitive destruction of my identity was by depersonalizing it, and seeing this destructive outcome as having been in the hands of a violent and superior power. Now, let me make it very, very clear, that the destruction of my identity was prescribed, condoned and constantly carried forward by moralists. Along with the fact the destroying my sense of my Rhodesian identity served their narcissistic interests and gave them all sorts of pleasures in doing what they did (for instance mob stalking), the moralists could tell themselves that they were doing something good, by getting ride of the nasty "colonial" mentality of the past.
I have been the victim of "idiosyncratic justice" and it demoralized me and almost made me crazy.
The only way I could overcome this downward slide and put myself back on a stable psychological road is by telling myself, over and over again, that there was nothing ethical about my destruction -- rather there was something glorious about being able to experience it AND survive it.
So I take the side of Bataille any day, rather than that of the idiosyncratic moralists, meting out their "justice". Bataille's formulation, is after all, on my side, whereas how could one recover from anything if one felt or thought that moralists had a right to do what they did?
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