The sunny skies and warm sand of Cable Beach, Broome, WA
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Bataille on Discontuity, Eroticism and Death
Been reading a book, Eroticism by George Bataille, on and off recently. More off then on due to the convoluted language and philisophical ways of expression... but I found it really enjoyable and fulfilling. Its as though I've found someone more intellegent to articulate thoughts I've internalized but never taken the time to sit down and think about. I particularly identified with the below sections. Being an atheist I found it refreshing to get a different view on life outside the christian explanation.
"In asexual reproduction, the organism, a single cell, divides at a certain point in it's growth. Two nuclei are formed and from one single being two new beings are derived. But we cannot say that one being has given birth to a second being. The two new beings are equally products of the first. The first being has disappeared. It is to all intents and purposes dead, in that it doeas not survive in either of the two beings it has produced. It does not decompose in the way that sexual animals do when they die, but it ceases to exist. It ceases to exist in so far as it was discontinous. But at one stage of the reproductive process there was continuity. There is a point at which the original one becomes two. As soon as there are two, there is again discontiuty for each of the beings. But the process entails one instant of continuity between the two of them. The first one dies, but as it dies there is this moment of continuity between the two new beings.
The same continuity cannot occur in the death of sexual creatures, where reproduction is in theory independent of death and disappearance. But sexual reproduction, basically a matter of cellular division just like asexual reproduction, brings in a new kind of transition from discontinuity to continuity. Sperm and ovum are to begin with discontinuous entities, but they unite, and consequently a contuity comes into existence between them to form a new entity from the death and disappearance of the seperate beings. The new entity is itself discontinuous, but it bears within itself the transition to continiuty, the fusion, fatal to both, of two separate beings...
...On the most fundamental level there are transitions from continuous to to discontinuous or from discontinuous to continuous. We are discontinous beings, individuals who perish in isolation in the midst of an incomprehensible adventure, but we yearn for our lost continuity. We find the state of affairs that binds us to our random and ephemeral indiviuality hard to bear. Along with our tormenting desire that evanescent thing should last, there stands our obsession with a primal continuity linking us with everything that is. This nostalgia has nothing to do with knowledge of the basic facts I have mentioned. A man can suffer at the thought of not existing in the world like a wave lost among many other waves, even if he knows nothing about the division and fusion of simple cells. But this nostalgia is responsible for the three forms of eroticism in man."
He goes on to explain the differnt forms of eroticism. From what I can understand the three are; Sexual, Friendship/Paternal/Maternal (similiar to eros and agape) and finally Religious eroticism which is the most interesting.
And thats it... all pretty spot on I think... except for that bit about the lost waves, I don't know what he was going on about there. I've often thought to myself sex and death are definitely related and the ultimate truths in understanding ourselves, both of heavily supressed in christian society... but why? for me Bataille has scratched away a layer from this complex question.
"In asexual reproduction, the organism, a single cell, divides at a certain point in it's growth. Two nuclei are formed and from one single being two new beings are derived. But we cannot say that one being has given birth to a second being. The two new beings are equally products of the first. The first being has disappeared. It is to all intents and purposes dead, in that it doeas not survive in either of the two beings it has produced. It does not decompose in the way that sexual animals do when they die, but it ceases to exist. It ceases to exist in so far as it was discontinous. But at one stage of the reproductive process there was continuity. There is a point at which the original one becomes two. As soon as there are two, there is again discontiuty for each of the beings. But the process entails one instant of continuity between the two of them. The first one dies, but as it dies there is this moment of continuity between the two new beings.
The same continuity cannot occur in the death of sexual creatures, where reproduction is in theory independent of death and disappearance. But sexual reproduction, basically a matter of cellular division just like asexual reproduction, brings in a new kind of transition from discontinuity to continuity. Sperm and ovum are to begin with discontinuous entities, but they unite, and consequently a contuity comes into existence between them to form a new entity from the death and disappearance of the seperate beings. The new entity is itself discontinuous, but it bears within itself the transition to continiuty, the fusion, fatal to both, of two separate beings...
...On the most fundamental level there are transitions from continuous to to discontinuous or from discontinuous to continuous. We are discontinous beings, individuals who perish in isolation in the midst of an incomprehensible adventure, but we yearn for our lost continuity. We find the state of affairs that binds us to our random and ephemeral indiviuality hard to bear. Along with our tormenting desire that evanescent thing should last, there stands our obsession with a primal continuity linking us with everything that is. This nostalgia has nothing to do with knowledge of the basic facts I have mentioned. A man can suffer at the thought of not existing in the world like a wave lost among many other waves, even if he knows nothing about the division and fusion of simple cells. But this nostalgia is responsible for the three forms of eroticism in man."
He goes on to explain the differnt forms of eroticism. From what I can understand the three are; Sexual, Friendship/Paternal/Maternal (similiar to eros and agape) and finally Religious eroticism which is the most interesting.
And thats it... all pretty spot on I think... except for that bit about the lost waves, I don't know what he was going on about there. I've often thought to myself sex and death are definitely related and the ultimate truths in understanding ourselves, both of heavily supressed in christian society... but why? for me Bataille has scratched away a layer from this complex question.
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