Eroticizing aesthetics: in the real with Bataille and Lacan

231 Pages·2021·1.463 MB·English

by  Tim Themi

Eroticizing Aesthetics
Global Aesthetic Research
Series Editor: Joseph J. Tanke, Associate Professor,
Department of Philosophy, University of Hawaii
The Global Aesthetic Research series publishes cutting-edge research in the field of aes-
thetics. It contains books that explore the principles at work in our encounters with art and
nature that interrogate the foundations of artistic, literary and cultural criticism and that
articulate the theory of the discipline’s central concepts.
Titles in the Series
Early Modern Aesthetics, J. Colin McQuillan
Foucault on the Arts and Letters: Perspectives for the 21st Century, Catherine M. Soussloff
Architectural and Urban Reflections after Deleuze and Guattari, edited by Constantin V.
Boundas and Vana Tentokali
Living Off Landscape: Or the Unthought-Of in Reason, Francois Jullien, translated by
Pedro Rodriguez
Between Nature and Culture: The Aesthetics of Modified Environments, Emily Brady, Isis
Brook and Jonathan Prior
Reviewing the Past: The Presence of Ruins, Zoltán Somhegyi
François Jullien's Unexceptional Thought: A Critical Introduction, Arne De Boever
Figural Space: Semiotics and the Aesthetic Imaginary, William D. Melaney
Eroticizing Aesthetics: In the Real with Bataille and Lacan, Tim Themi
Eroticizing Aesthetics
In the Real with Bataille and Lacan
Tim Themi

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Rowman & Littlefield
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www .rowman .com
6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom
Selection, Editorial Matter, Introduction, Chapter 3, Chapter 6 and Conclusion Copyright
© 2021 by Tim Themi.
This volume contains revised versions of the following publications and are reproduced
with permission:
Themi, Tim. “Bataille and the Erotics of the Real.” Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical
Philosophy 24 (2015): 312-35.
Themi, Tim. “Lacan, Barthes, Bataille, and the Meaning of the Eye—or Gaze.” The
Undecidable Unconscious: A Journal of Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis 3 (2016):
93-123. University of Nebraska Press.
Themi, Tim. “Nietzsche’s Relation with Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Surrealist
Modernism, Bataille and Lacan.” In Understanding Nietzsche, Understanding
Modernism, edited by Brian Pines and Douglas Burnham, 189–207. London:
Bloomsbury, 2019.
Themi, Tim. “Bataille, Literature, Happiness, and Evil.” Continental Thought and
Theory: A Journal of Intellectual Freedom 2-3 (2019): 180-201.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
ISBN: HB 978-1-5381-4782-5
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Names: Themi, Tim, 1975-, author.
Title: Eroticizing aesthetics : in the real with Bataille and Lacan / Tim Themi.
Description: Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield, [2021] | Series: Global

aesthetic research | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021005560 (print) | LCCN 2021005561 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781538147825 | ISBN 9781538147849 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781538147832 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Love. | Erotica. | Aesthetics. | Bataille, Georges, 1897–1962. |
Lacan, Jacques, 1901–1981. | Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844–1900.
Classification: LCC BH301.L65 T44 2021 (print) | LCC BH301.L65 (ebook) |
DDC 111/.85—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005560

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005561

∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Dedication
For Laure…
O Persephone, you nourish all,
Always, and kill them, too.
HYMN TO PERSEPHONE

Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
1 Bataille, Nietzsche, Lacan, and the Real of Erotics 15
1.1 Palaeolithic Transition from Animal to Human 16
1.2 Death of Tragedy from Socrates’ Incompetence 20
1.3 Taboo on Transgression from Yahweh’s Ignorance 26
1.4 Capitalism’s Curious Service of Goods 32
2 Metaphorizing the Split Gaze of Bataille’s Story of Eye 47
2.1 Surface Formalism: Metonymic Cross-cuts of Metaphoric
Chains 48
2.2 Depth Contents: The Violence of the Eye’s Transgression 54
2.3 Sade’s Sovereign Man: The Rape of Priest’s Eye by the Gaze 59

3 Bataille, Nietzsche, Lacan, and the Real of Aesthetics 75

3.1 Dissident Surrealism: Bataille’s Documents Critique of
Aesthetics 76
3.2 Lascaux Caves: Divine Animality as the Originary Real

of Aesthetics 81
3.3 The Accursed Sovereignty of Art, and Nietzsche 88

4 Nietzsche’s Affirming Psychoanalysis in Freud, Surrealist
Modernism, Bataille, and Lacan 97

4.1 Germanophone Context: Nietzsche and Freud 98

vii
viii Contents
4.2 Francophone Context: Bataille, Surrealism, Modernism,
Lacan 106
4.3 Dionysian Context: Presence of Myth in Absence 113
5 From Dionysos to Devil: Bataille’s Evil Happiness of Literature 125
5.1 Literature’s Quest for Happiness of the Erotic 126
5.2 Literature as Condescension of Desire to Evil 130
5.3 Poetry’s Force of Sovereignty from the Rut of Literature 134
5.4 Art and Politics: Separate Connection of the Imaginary
and Symbolic in the Real 140
6 Eternal Returns: Erotic Politics in Bataille’s Blue of Noon 149
6.1 Superficial Socialisms – The Case of Lazare 150
6.2 Superficial Surrealisms – The Case of Xenie 154
6.3 Libidinal Demands for Death – The Return of
Dirty Doro-thea 159
6.4 Split-Subjects of Political Economy – Left, Right, Left . . . 163
Conclusion 173
Bibliography 187
Index 203
About the Author 217
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of chapter 1 appeared as “Bataille and the Erotics of the
Real,” Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy 24 (2015): 312–35;
chapter 2 as “Lacan, Barthes, Bataille, and the Meaning of the Eye—
or Gaze,” The Undecidable Unconscious: A Journal of Deconstruction
and Psychoanalysis 3 (2016): 93–123 (University of Nebraska Press);
chapter 4 as “Nietzsche’s Relation with Psychoanalysis: From Freud to
Surrealist Modernism, Bataille and Lacan,” in Understanding Nietzsche,
Understanding Modernism (Bloomsbury 2019); and chapter 5 as “Bataille,
Literature, Happiness, and Evil,” Continental Thought and Theory: A Journal
of Intellectual Freedom 2–3 (2019): 180–201. These have been further
reworked into a sequential whole for the present book, and I would like
to thank all the editors and reviewers involved, in particular Jared Russell
from the Institute of Psychoanalytic Training and Research, New York. I
must also acknowledge Dr Alison Horbury from the School of Culture and
Communication at The University of Melbourne.

ix