Life keeps going and you don't need to be especially qualified to participate in it. One of my earlier fears was being kept out of life. It was more than a fear because this was what was occurring. God was the negation of my individual sense of being. Now this is particularly hard to understand as Judeo-Christian ideology insists that you need this negation or otherwise you become schizophrenic. Lacan's theorising encapsulates this threat, as he insists that the state of psychosis is an infantile state of experiencing infinity. Not to want to be everything is hatred of salvation, says Bataille, but reality imposes limits in the form of God. Thus one's infinity is fed back piecemeal, no longer as a whole. It is rationed out and perhaps never fully redeemed by the processes of life lived in a state of servility.
The name of the negation of being imposed by God is "castration". This accords with the Freudian idea that one's infinity -- that is, one's original infantile state -- is sexualised. So a limited infinity is a state of castration. According to this system, castration is not a bad outcome, but actually desirable, as it saves one from psychosis -- the limitless experience of meaning.
The nature of castration is not quantified. It can imply a very limited experience of meaning or none at all. The measurement is imprecise since to experience anything less than infinity, necessarily and as a matter of course, implies that the castration of the original nature has been successful. One is not mad. But one is closed in immanence. That is not redemption either. One must climb a ladder upward, to gain back more of one's wholeness, but one can never expect the whole of the whole -- the fullest possibility for restoration is put off until after one's death. Thus one is lead to posit a heaven where infinity is recuperated.
According to this formulation to be mad is not to conform to the dictates of God as they limit one's immediate access to infinity. Also, nonconformity is sexualised and reframed as feminine failure rather than paradise. This distortion and restatement of the Garden of Eden myth is that a return to the original paradise is forbidden.
You can start to see how Bataille and Lacan roughly parallel each other in their theories, with one difference. While Lacan is happy to embrace the Judeo-Christian unity of Freud and French Catholicism, Bataille is a disbeliever in the Christian God. Therefore he does not vivify his "law". Rather, he sees God's law as a psychological construct, nothing more.
For Bataille, God is the rigidification of infinite reality into a narrow truth principle. That's not something an external agent does to us, but something we do to ourselves. Bataille also differs from his contemporary Lacan in his understanding as to why we are inclined to impose on ourselves such an arbitrary limit. We don't do this because we are noble, but to the contrary, because we are afraid and desire rules that govern us to give us a feeling of security. We even readily accept the servility we impose on ourselves as necessary and based in truth because we are afraid to see that the law of God is one we arbitrarily impose ourselves.
There is no real, existing God and that changes everything. For one, it means that the Garden of Eden is not longer closed off by some external agent. That which closes it consists inside your head.
An angel blocks the gateway back to paradise, but that is an agent inside your head. Bataille says, if truth is a woman, the only way to treat her is with extreme debauchery. The rigidified notion of truth needs to be defiled. That way, infinity opens up and a return to Eden is facilitated.
The name of the negation of being imposed by God is "castration". This accords with the Freudian idea that one's infinity -- that is, one's original infantile state -- is sexualised. So a limited infinity is a state of castration. According to this system, castration is not a bad outcome, but actually desirable, as it saves one from psychosis -- the limitless experience of meaning.
The nature of castration is not quantified. It can imply a very limited experience of meaning or none at all. The measurement is imprecise since to experience anything less than infinity, necessarily and as a matter of course, implies that the castration of the original nature has been successful. One is not mad. But one is closed in immanence. That is not redemption either. One must climb a ladder upward, to gain back more of one's wholeness, but one can never expect the whole of the whole -- the fullest possibility for restoration is put off until after one's death. Thus one is lead to posit a heaven where infinity is recuperated.
According to this formulation to be mad is not to conform to the dictates of God as they limit one's immediate access to infinity. Also, nonconformity is sexualised and reframed as feminine failure rather than paradise. This distortion and restatement of the Garden of Eden myth is that a return to the original paradise is forbidden.
You can start to see how Bataille and Lacan roughly parallel each other in their theories, with one difference. While Lacan is happy to embrace the Judeo-Christian unity of Freud and French Catholicism, Bataille is a disbeliever in the Christian God. Therefore he does not vivify his "law". Rather, he sees God's law as a psychological construct, nothing more.
For Bataille, God is the rigidification of infinite reality into a narrow truth principle. That's not something an external agent does to us, but something we do to ourselves. Bataille also differs from his contemporary Lacan in his understanding as to why we are inclined to impose on ourselves such an arbitrary limit. We don't do this because we are noble, but to the contrary, because we are afraid and desire rules that govern us to give us a feeling of security. We even readily accept the servility we impose on ourselves as necessary and based in truth because we are afraid to see that the law of God is one we arbitrarily impose ourselves.
There is no real, existing God and that changes everything. For one, it means that the Garden of Eden is not longer closed off by some external agent. That which closes it consists inside your head.
An angel blocks the gateway back to paradise, but that is an agent inside your head. Bataille says, if truth is a woman, the only way to treat her is with extreme debauchery. The rigidified notion of truth needs to be defiled. That way, infinity opens up and a return to Eden is facilitated.
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