Bataille; Transgressive Eroticism

Bataille; Transgressive Eroticism

Bataille was interested in sex, death, degradation, and the power and potential of the obscene.  His theories rest largely on Eroticism and Mysticism. Although his work is overly erotic, his work is not considered pornographic, for he sees the sexual act to be a freedom of the spirit or 'sovernity'. He has greatly influenced the continued development of Poststructuralism. Bataille is usually known as the writer of dark, sometimes bizarre, always extraordinary and erotic prose in a surrealist exploration of taboos and transgression. Yet he extends to other works that offer profound insights into the nature of religion, anthropology and economics. As a thinker of totality, Bataille is quite unique in combining the history of religion, eroticism and production based upon non-individualist conceptions of man, his society and the economy.

Bataille believed that transgression existed beyond the reality of the spoken and written word, the discontinuous states of birth and death in states of anguish that he associates with the continuity of being in death. he used expressive use of language to demonstrate his theories. but he himself constantly battled with writing in inexpressible, describing a transgression from 

Bataille is probably best known for his erotic novels,which delve into a world of death, obscenity and horror.  Histoire de l'oeil (1928; The Story of the Eye) tells a story of a couple whom explore the limits of sexuality and subsequent death when Simone strangles her partner in an extreme sexual act. Le bleu du ciel (1945; The Blue of Noon) continues in a similar vein, set against the background of German Nazism and is about a drunk, Troppmann, who has two lovers, Lazare and Dorothea. In one scene Dorothea and Troppmann make love in a graveyard amongst the dead, again emphasising Bataille’s obsession with erotic death. 

His work has, however, attracted the attention of the most prominent French critics of his time, including Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Roland Barthes. But it would seem that he himself was influenced by Freud in breaking taboos, describing sexuality in the abstract and symbolic.

Georges Bataille is admired for his extensive knowledge and provocative approach into the human side of nature rarely seen in literature. 

Photographer unknown; Lingchi, loosening the ropes of the tortured victim; date unknown; photograph; book illustration; Chinese Torture / Supplice Chinois website

The Tears of Eros (1961) was Bataille's final book, an excursion in the history of eroticism and violence. In the last chapter he wrote about the Chinese torture pictured above, showing "an ecstatic man who is cut to hundred pieces". The strange, exalted facial expression of the man fascinated Bataille: "I have never stopped being obsessed by the image of this pain, at once ecstatic (?) and intolerable " Bataille actually claimed that meditating in front of the photograph allowed him to communicate with the torture victim.

Photographer unknown; Lingchi, the cutting of the left leg; date unknown; photograph; book illustration; Chinese Torture / Supplice Chinois website

The image comes from Taiwan. A young man, probably rendered semi-unconscious with opium, is meticulously hacked into pieces. The photograph captures the moment when his arms have been severed, his genitals cut off and pieces of flesh sliced off his chest. Surrounded by attentive observers (some of them bending their head so they can see better), the victim looks upward. The image dates from 1905, a time when China was opening up to the West. Indeed, a number of early documents brought back to the West deal with violence, chaos and cruelty, much to the admiration of Bataillle.

'To contemplate this image, according to Bataille, is both a mortification of the feelings and a liberation of tabooed erotic knowledge — a complex response that many people must find hard to credit. … Bataille is not saying that he takes pleasure in the sight of this excruciation. But he is saying that he can imagine extreme suffering as a kind of transfiguration. It is a view of suffering, of the pain of others, that is rooted in religious thinking, which links pain to sacrifice, sacrifice to exaltation — a view that could not be more alien to a modern sensibility'.

1905: Fou Tchou-Li, by a thousand cuts      http://www.executedtoday.com/2008/04/10/

Another important strand in Bataille’s work was his interest in myth and society in the late 1930’s. Bataille rejects society’s claim to define ontological truth, by claiming that reality is defined by myth itself. Bataille claims that society denies myth, creating a concept of reality that is in itself mythical.


In Bataille's view, the condition of existence of silence and we violate this silence by entering into discourse, by giving form to what is, in its essential nature, formless. Maybe Bataille is right in his views and even by consideration of such elements we are creating formlessness.

So to ask the question again.. What does Transgressive art  require form the audience? On reflection I think that transgressive art requires the audience to challenge our political, ethical and moral convictions. When I look at the work of David Harvey and even the above photographs of Bataille. I think these works are appealing because they fascinate. It makes me question whether I am a witnessing or  participating in an act when viewing these works.  Should I not be appalled? Transgressive art crosses bounderies, but what is it about a work of art that makes it transgressive? The audience, the response, the emotions it inflicts, the debates. It can only really be defined in relation to the audience. The audience will have boundaries,  whether they are political, moral or emotional, everyone has boundaries and these boundaries will be crossed in transgression. wouldn't it be interesting to record peoples responses.