Bataille on anxiety

I am … postponing, for a short time, the exposition of my analysis of anxiety. And yet, that is the crucial analysis that alone can adequately circumscribe the opposition of two political methods; that of fear and the anxious search for a solution … and that of freedom of mind, which issues from the global resources of life, a freedom for which, instantly everything is rich … I insist on the fact that, to freedom of mind, the search for a solution is an exuberance, a superfluity; this gives it an incomparable force. To solve political problems becomes difficult for those who allow anxiety [l'angoisse] alone to pose them. It is necessary for anxiety to pose them. But their solution demands at a certain point the removal of this anxiety.

Georges Bataille: Method of meditation

The servile intelligence serves folly, but folly is sovereign: I can change nothing without it.

/…/

The idea of silence (the inaccessible) is disarming!
I am unable to speak of an absence of meaning without giving it a meaning it doesn’t have. /…/
In the end, being is offered to us as impossible!

/../

Every problem is in a certain sense a problem of the use of time.

/…/

Scientific work is more than servile, crippled. The needs to which it responds are foreign to knowledge. They are:
1. The curiosity of those who do crossword puzzles /…/
2. The needs of the collector (to accumulate and organize curiosities);
3. Love of work, intense output;
4. The taste for a rigorous honesty;
5. The worries of an academic (career, honour, money).
At its origin, often enough, a desire for sovereign knowledge, to go as far as one can go, a desire so quickly born, nullifies itself, by accepting subordinate tasks. /…/ Science is practiced by men in whom the desire to know is dead.

/…/

One must choose: one is unable to subordinate oneself to some ulterior result and “to be sovereignly” at the same time. (Because “to be sovereignly” means “not being able to wait”.)

/…/

If I lead being to the extreme limit of reflection, to its misunderstanding of itself, like the infinite, starry expanse of the night, I FALL ASLEEP.

/…/

Often enough, sufficient leisure is left for me to order my thought, in obedience to the rules. But today I express this movement: “Sleep invades me…”: It is more difficult! In other words, I arrive at the sovereign operation, wherein thought accepts no subordinate object and losing itself in a sovereign object, annihilates the demand for thought within itself.

/…/

When I am laughing or having an orgasm, the impossible is before me. I am happy but every thing is impossible.

The simple truth:
Servile activity is possible (on the condition of remaining enslaved, subordinate – to other men, to principles, or even to the necessity of production – human existence has a possibility in front of itself).

But sovereign existence is in no way, for even an instant, separated from the impossible; I will live sovereignly only at the heights of the impossible and what does this book mean if not:

LEAVE THE POSSIBLE TO THOSE WHO LOVE IT.

/…/

Part II
Decisive Position

Principles
1. If I wish it, to laugh is to think, but this is a sovereign moment.

/…/

Not only does the sovereign operation not subordinate itself to anything, it is indifferent to the effects that might result;

/…/

knowledge relating objects to the sovereign moment in the end risks being confounded with this moment itself.
This knowledge that one could call free (but that I prefer to call neutral) is the use of a function detached (free) from the servitude that is its principle: the function related the unknown to the known (to the solid), whereas dating it from the moment when it detaches itself, it relates the known to the unknown.

13. What I’ve just said seems to oppose itself to the fact that without a sketch, at least, of neutral knowledge, a sovereign operation could not be represented. /…/
The sovereign operation engages these developments: they are the residue of a trace left in the memory and of the subsistence of these functions, but, insofar as it takes place, it is indifferent to and mocks this residue.

/…/

16. In order to describe it better, I would like to situate it in an ensemble of apparently sovereign behaviors. Other than ecstacy, these are:
* intoxication;
* erotic effusion;
* laughter;
* sacrificial effusion;
* poetic effusion.

/…/

18. The behaviors I have just listed are effusive in that they demand muscular movements of little importance and consume energy without any other effect than a kind of interior illumination /…/

19. Previously, I designated the sovereign operation under the names of inner experience or the extreme of the possible. And now I designate it under the name meditation. Changing words signifies the boredom of using whatever word it should be (sovereign operation is, of all the names, the most fastidious: comic operation, in a sense, would be less misleading). I like meditation better despite its pioous appearence.

20. In laughter, sacrifice, or poetry, even partly in eroticism, effusion is obtained through a modification, willing or not, in the order of objects: poetry makes use of changes on the level of images; sacrifice, in general, destroys beings; laughter results from diverse changes.
In drunkenness, on the contrary, and willingly, the subject himself is modified: it is the same in meditation.

/…/

22. In meditation, the overwrought subject looks for himself.
He refuses himself the right to remain enclosed in the sphere of activity.
Still, he refuses exterior means: toxins, erotic partners, or alterations in objects (comic, sacrificial, poetic).

/…/

35. I am writing in order to nullify a game of subordinate operations (it is, when all is said and done, superflous).

36. The sovereign operation, whose authority results only from itself – expiates this authority at the same time. If it atoned for it, it would have some point of application, it would look for an empire, for duration. But authenticity refuses this: it is only powerlessness, absence of duration, hateful (or gay) destruction of itself, dissatisfaction.

/…/

In the end everyting puts me at risk, I remain suspended, stripped, in a definitive solitude: before the impenetrable simplicity of what is; and the depths of the world opened, what I see and what I know no longer has any meaning, any limits, and I will stop myself only after having advanced the furthest that I can.

/…/

But the smallest activity or the least project puts an end to the game – and I am, lacking play, brought back into the prison of useful objects, loaded with meaning.

.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. this is still, the instant .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . . . . . . . . . . this, presently, neither my absence nor me, neither death nor light – and my absence and me, death and light – a light laugh rises in me like the sea, fills the absence immensely. All that is – IS TOO MUCH.

Georges Bataille on the summit and the decline (March 5, 1944)

I. (Fundamental proposition). It is a question of opposing not good to evil but the “moral summit”, which is different from the good, to the “decline”, which has nothing to do with evil and whose necessity determines, on the contrary, the modalities of the good.
The summit responds to excess, to the exuberance of forces. It takes tragic intensity to its limit. It relates to measureless expenditures of energy, to the violation of the integrity of beings. It is therefore closer to evil than to good.
Decline – responding to moments of exhaustion, of fatigue – grants all value to concerns for preserving and enriching the being. Rules of morality result from decline.

/…/

‘communication cannot take place from one full and intact being to another: communication wants being twith their being at stake, places at the limit of death, of nothingness; the moral summit is a moment of risk taking, of the suspension of being beyond itself, at the limit of nothingness.

II. In “communication”, in love, desire has nothingness as its object. It is like this with any “sacrifice”.

/…/

IV. Humans only “communicate” – live – outside of themselves and since they must “communicate”, they must want this evil, this deseceation which, putting the being within themselves at risk, renders them penetrable to one another . . . Thus: all “communication” partakes of suicide and crime . . . In this light, evil appears as a life source!

/…/

Communication, essentialy, wanting being to be overstepped: essentially, what is rejected in evil is concern for the future. /…/

In common judgment, the essence of a moral act is being servile to some utility, to return to the good of some being a movement in which the being aspires to surpass being. In this way, morality is no more than a negation or morality.

If i suppress consideration of the future, I am unable to resist temptation . . . To tell the truth, this state of happy openness is not humanly imaginable. Human nature as such cannot reject its concern for the future /…/

As long as we are animated by a youthful effervescence, we consent to dangerous squandering. But when these forces begin to fail us, . . . when we begin to decline, we become preoccupied . . . with accumulation . . . with enriching ourselves for difficulties yet to come. We act. And action, effort can only have an aquisition of forces as its goal.

/…/

X. We must go further. To formulate such criticism is already to decline. The act of “speaking” of a morality of the summit itself arises from a morality of decline.

/…/

XI. Like Kafka’s Castle, in the end, the summit is nothing but the inaccessible. It slips away from us, at least insofar as we don’t stop being human, speaking. Besides, we cannot oppose the summit to the decline like evil to good. The summit is not “what one must reach”, decline not “what one must abolish”. Just as the summit is, in the end, nothing but the inaccessible, decline is from the very beginning inevitable.
(”The summit is, in essence, the place at the limit where life is impossible.”)

XII. Through history the reasons that a human being might have for going to the summit (the good for the nation, justice, salvation, etc.) have developed. “But the difficulty is to go to the summit without a reason, without a pretext.”
“. . . Every gamle, every ascent, every sacrifice being, like sensual excess, a loss of strength, an expenditure, we must justify our expenditures every time with a promise of gain, be it illusory or not.” Even though a revolutionary action would establish the classless society – beyond which a historical action could no longer arise – it seems that, humanly speaking, the amount of energy produced is always greater than the amount necessary for its production. Hence this perpetual overfull seething og energy – which continually leads us to the summit – constituting the malefic share.

/…/

XIV. (Conclusion). Within hostile and silent nature, what becomes of human autonomy? “Maybe the desire to know has only one meaning: to serve as motive for the desire to question. No doubt knowledge is necessary for the autonomy of that action – by which it transformed the world – procures for humanity. But beyond the conditions of doing, knowledge finally appears as a decoy, when faced with the interrogation that commands it. When this interrogation fails, we laugh. The raptures of exstasy and the fires of Eros are so many questions – without responses – to which we submit nature and our nature. /…/ It is by leaving the interrogation open as an inner wound that I maintain chance, a possible access toward the summit . . .”

Bataille and dialectics

Asger Sørensen (Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School):
“The inner experience of living matter: Bataille and dialectics”
Philosophy & Social Criticism, vol. 33 no. 5, pp. 597-615

Like Marx, Bataille states that his thought is the ‘opposite’ of Hegel’s, but he immediately afterwards adds: ‘I only found myself there dialectically, if I may say so, Hegelically’. /…/

though initially arguing for the now common position reserving dialectics only for the praxis of the changeable human world, Bataille keeps the possibility open for reintroducing nature into the realm of dialectics /…/

Bataille thinks of his dialectics as the result of a determinate negation of Hegel’s, which of course maintains the Hegelian dialectic in the dialectics of Bataille as Moment. /…/

Desire is necessary for the fusion of sexual reproduction and therefore for the growth of life, when first it has become sexualized; but desire is also a negation of life, creating contradictions within life at various levels. /…/ The necessity of choosing between the objects of desire introduces a pause, a temporal discontinuity that inhibits the continuous process of life /…/
As a contradiction conscious life appears within life itself, not as something anti-thetic coming from outside life, but exactly as the determinate negation of life by life itself. /…/

Bataille opposes Hegel’s undifferentiated and ahistorical concept of life and introduces a development, both within the process of life’s reproduction of it-self and in the evolution from asexual to sexual reproduction. /…/ Bataille conceives of the dialectics of nature as constituting ‘a sort of natural history’ already in his early writings. /…/ In contrast to Hegel, Bataille thinks of life as historical, although this history has neither a beginning nor any end /…/

To Bataille what is prohibited in the taboo is the ‘violence’ of nature, and the human attitude is precisely the ‘refusal’ of such a violence. /…/ The human ‘no’ to natural violence, however, is never definitive. According to Bataille it is only a pause, ‘a momentary suspension, ot a final standstill’. The basic non-logical difference does not disappear, it just reaches a temporary unity, and this unity makes life’s activity human, i.e. makes activity conscious and reasonable as poiesis and praxis. /…/

If the conflict between the reasonable order of civilization and the subversive, violent pleasure of nature is understood theoretically as a logical contradiction it must be resolved /…/ A non-conflicting, i.e. a non-dialectical solution can only consist in siding with one or the other, idealizing either a self-defeating critique of civilization as such, or a pure and therefore senseless negation of nature as a whole. Hegel chose the last solution, accepting in the end only being uplifted to reason, spirit and absolute knowledge.
This is what Horkheimer termed the dogmatic aspect of Hegel’s philosophy. /…/

Instead, inspired by the dialectics of Bataille, one could understand the basic contradiction in and of human life as just a conflict, a tension inherent in humn and social eing as such, and as such an ontological condition that is dealt with – and thus solved – practically every day. The point to discuss politically is therefore not whether we can dissolve what the dialectical tradition would call the contradictions of the existing solution and reach the truth of the social being in question. The contradictions are always already solved practically, and the question is only how to make these practical solutions better.
No society is completely homogeneous, since any human being takes part in more than one social being, e.g. families, classes, subcultures, associations, etc. /…/

Bataille’s materialist dialectics /…/ risk becoming a mystifying ideology for a world organized only by the market, since no long-term political action, no persistent use of force, seems legitimate in Bataille’s perspective. /…/
Bataille describe the processes of nature and human culture dialectically, without comforting himself with dreams and hopes of ideals of a harmony that history or experience will realize in the end. /…/
In short, with an epistemology and an ontology like Bataille’s, it is very difficult to believe in anything worth dying for. And that is a shame.

C-M Edenborg om Georges Bataille

ur Carl-Michael Edenborgs förord till Ögats historia (Vertigo):

“Men just som med människor är det med böcker: man beundrar dem för deras fullkomlighet men älskar dem för deras brister. Ty i vissa texter är dessa brister sår som fortfarande blöder, spår av ögonblick så intensiva att skriften övergick till att bli en händelse.

Enligt Bataille (1897-1962), som aldrig officiellt erkände att han skrivit Ögats historia utan behöll pseudonymen Lord Auch, har människans tillvaro en dubbel natur, och hennes liv måste fortgå inom två olika sfärer. Den ena är överlevandets förnuftiga och nyttoinriktade dimension, där planeringen och vardagsmoralen har sin givna och nödvändiga plats, men alltid som blotta medel. Den andra är njutningens och överträdelsens heliga sfär, där våra liv förverkligar sin mening, i extasen, offret, förslösandet.”

Georges Bataille: Några fragment ur Ögats historia

37: “och för våra trötta ögon öppnade en dag mot en värld som bestod av blixt och morgonrodnad”

42: “Vi trampade hastigt, utan att vare sig skratta eller prata, i skamlöshetens, trötthetens och meningslöshetens samfällda isolering.”

42: “Denna plötsliga hallucination bredde nu ut sig lika gränslöst som, till exempel, det mänskliga samhällets totala mardröm med jord, atmosfär och himmel.”

42-43: “ersätta vår personliga visions universum och kyligt förverkliga vad som föreföll mig vara mina liderligheters slutmål, en geometrisk vitglödgning (en sammansmältning av bland annat livet och döden, varat och intigheten), fullständigt blixtrande.”

50: “Här måste jag säga att ingenting sådant har hänt mellan oss sedan dess, och så när som på ett undantag har vi slutat tala om ägg. Om vi fick syn på ägg kunde vi inte se på varandra utan att rodna, med en förvirrad fråga i blicken. /…/
svaret blev ett mått på den tomhet som öppnats i oss genom våra lekar med äggen.”

74: “Med tiden sögs vi upp av solljuset i en overklighet som motsvarade vår oro, vårt vanmäktiga begär att explodera, att vara nakna.”

101: “Dessa minnen brukar inte uppehålla mig. De har efter långa år förlorat sin förmåga att nå mig: tiden har neutraliserat dem. Endast deformerade och oigenkännliga kan de åter få liv; de har då under loppet av deformeringen fått en obscen innebörd.”