Life is a pre-req to death

Bataille's notion of communication involves a dialectic with two positives (hence a non-dialectic) where two sovereigns confront death not in view of an end but as an end in itself: "confronting death," in fact, "puts the subjects at stake-"l'être en eux-mêmes [est] mis en jeu" (Sur Nietzsche 61). Further, Bataille affirms that "[p]ersonne n'est-un instant-souverain qui ne se perde" (OC VIII 429). It is the Nietzschean self-forgetfulness that is here evoked; a self-forgetfulness which implies a transgression of the limits of both communicating subjects. Again, for Bataille "[l]a 'communication' n'a lieu qu'entre deux êtres mis en jeu-déchirés, suspendus, l'un et l'autre penchés au-dessus de leur néant" (Sur Nietzsche 62). However, if according to Nietzsche, self-forgetfulness takes place in solitude, for Bataille it necessitates the presence of an "other."(5) Communication in fact, asks for "deux êtres mis en jeu" who participate in what he defines as "une fête immotivée" (Sur Nietzsche 31). There the sovereign loses himself (se perde) with the other, through the other, in the other, in a process of "mutual laceration" (Essential 105) which is simultaneously tragic and ludic. The emphasis on the other is Hegelian, but unlike dialectics, communication does not confront the subject with an object (Gegen-stand, something that stands against the subject). As Bataille puts it (apparently echoing Baudelaire), communication takes place with "un semblable," "mon frère" (OC VIII 289). And he adds: "Cela suppose la communication de sujet à sujet" (OC VIII 288). Bataille's notion of communication is not based upon a "violent hierarchy" (Derrida's term) but rather upon egalitarianism. Moreover, transgressing the limits of the subject implies that the two subjects already possess (in potential) the characteristics of sovereignty. Hence, the status of sovereign is not achieved as a result of a fight to the death, but requires the subject to be open to an other who is outside the limits of the self. Derrida speaks of the "trembling" to which Bataille submits Hegelian concepts (253). This trembling, I would argue, has its source in Nietzsche (6): "The figs fall from the trees" says Zarathustra, "they are good and sweet, and when they fall, their red skins are rent. A north wind am I unto ripe figs" (qtd. in Philosophy 135). If we apply this passage to Bataille's philosophy, we could say that inherent in this "fall" is an explosion of Hegelian concepts, and in particular, as we have seen, the notion of Herrshaft. Further, communication, for Bataille, involves a similar "fall" which rents (déchire) the skin of the subjects (their limits) exposing the red flesh which lies beneath the skin. According to the French philosopher, Nietzsche's critique of the subject is more radical than Hegel's, since, as he puts it in "Hegel, la mort et le sacrifice," Hegel's philosophy, and I would add Kojève's interpretation of it, is "une théologie, où l'homme aurait pris la place de Dieu" (OC XII 329). Hegel's "theology" preserves the identity of the subject. Now, Bataille makes his position to this "theology" clear as he writes: "I don't believe in God-from the inability to believe in self" (Essential 10). By establishing a direct link between the death of the subject and the death of God, Bataille extends his critique of "beings" into the larger, ontological, critique of "Being." Implicit in this theoretical move is the articulation of the ontology of sovereignty. Bataille's philosophy is Nietzschean insofar as it is grounded in experience and in the immanence of the body. Communication, for Bataille is first and foremost a bodily affair. Hence the interrogation of the limits of the subject starts from an interrogation of what we could call the "gates," or openings of the body: the mouth, the vagina, the anus and the eyes are for Bataille central places for philosophical investigation because at these gates, the integrity of the subject is questioned; its limits can be transgressed. They are spaces of transition where a "glissement hors de soi" (OC VIII 246) can take place. These bodily openings, which Bataille also defines as "blessures," (Sur Nietzsche 64) found his conception of the sovereign subject. In fact, each "blessure" can be linked to a specific dimension of communication which obsesses Bataille. His central themes match different bodily openings: the mouth connects to laughter; the vagina to eroticism; the eyes to tears; the anus to the excrements which he links to death. Through these openings the subject is traversed by different fluxes and its integrity, totality and stability is challenged. They allow for the possibility of a glissement of the subject's being. The same could be said of Bataille's corpus: it is a unitary entity, which, like a body, escapes the totalizing temptation of closure. Despite the fact that Bataille defines sovereignty in terms of the Kojèvian/Hegelian "nothingness" (Bataille's Rien), his conception of communication is built upon the Nietzschean ontological distinction between the Dionysian and the Apollonian. In fact, the ontological movement that takes place in communication "exige que l'on glisse" (OC VI 158) from an "insufficient" and "discontinuous" being to a reality of "continuity" that transcends binary oppositions (Erotism 13-14). To put it more simply, communication introduces a movement from the "many" to the "One"; from a "discontinuity of being" to a "continuity of being;" from separate "beings" to a common ontological ground ("Being"). The source of Bataille's ontology is clear: it stems from Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy which in turn, is construed upon Schopenhauer's distinction between will and representation. "As a sailor sits in a small boat in a boundless raging sea," writes Schopenhauer," surrounded on all sides by heaving mountainous waves, trusting to his frail vessel; so does the individual man sit calmly in the middle of a world of torment, trusting to the principium individuationis" (Birth 21) .(7) Communication, for Bataille, as the Dionysian for Nietzsche, involves the shattering of the principium individuationis, a tearing down of the veil of Maya which constitutes, what Bataille calls, with a blink of the eye to Schopenhauer, the "illusion of a being which is isolated" (Essential 10; my emphasis). Communication, thus, involves an opening of the subject to the larger ground of Being. The sovereign's boat is constantly leaking. Yet, in order for communication to take place, the boat needs to keep floating. That is to say that for transgression to take place, the limits of the subject need to be preserved (Erotism 63; Foucault 34). The being of the sovereign subject is suspended upon the abîme-what Bataille also calls "une realité plus vaste" (OC II 246)-which means that the subject neither dwells safely within the limits of the "small, insufficient boat" of individuation, nor within the depth of the undifferentiated "raging sea," but in the space of contact in-between the two spheres. This precision is key in order to delineate the originality of Bataille's ontology of sovereignty. Bataille's conception of the communicating subject (i.e., of sovereignty) walks a thin line between its self-dissolution and its self-preservation. Hence the idea that he is above all a thinker of limits or borders. The sovereign's being, in fact, is "suspended" on the "bord de l'abîme" (Coupable V 355) but never actually falls, except, of course, in death. Hence, for Bataille, "[i]l s'agit d'approcher la mort" [it is approaching death] that is to say, the abîme, or the continuity of being, "d'aussi près qu'on peut l'endurer" [as close as one can endure] (337-338). The sovereign subject confronts death while preserving his life. His being is placed at the border between life and death. Hence, if Bataille defines philosophy as "existence striving to reach its limits" (Essential 146), it should be specified that the being of the subject is not found beyond its limits, as his use of "existence" seems to suggest (Ek-sistenz) since that would imply a total dissolution of the subject. Bataille's philosophy of transgression implies the preservation of the limits of the subject so that the sovereign can experience and endure death in life. The tension between self-expenditure (Nietzsche's Verschwendung) and self-preservation (linked to Hegel's Anerkennung) is analogous to the movement of a moth that is first attracted by the fire of a candle and subsequently distances itself from the fire in order to preserve its life.(8) This repeated back and forth movement recapitulates the movement of communication and is responsible for the underlying tension which traverses Bataille's philosophy. It is an inner (bodily) drive that attracts the moth to death and not, as it is the case for Hegel's master, a reasoned project in view of an end (recognition). The moth's self-sacrifice, in fact, is perfectly useless (it serves no purpose) and hence is truly sovereign. Bataille would call it "une négativité sans emploi." Or, as he says with respect to eroticism in his first and last interview before he died, "it is purely squandering, an expenditure of energy for itself" (in Essential 220). This movement forwards, towards the flame of self-dissolution (which takes place in death, eroticism, laughter…) and its retreat backwards, towards life and the limits it involves, epitomizes Bataille's notion of communication. A practice which for Bataille seems to have the characteristic of a fort-da game in which the subject is not in control of the movement. This movement, Bataille writes in the Preface to Madame Edwarda, happens "malgré nous" (III 11). Thus conceived the sovereign accepts the place of a toy in the hands of a child playing-a definition similar to Heraclitus' vision of life, which he defines as "a child at play, moving pieces in a game (Fragment 52, in GM 149). This view of communication is both tragic and joyful; violent and useless. A joyful tragedy, which challenges the limits of the subject; that puts the subject's being en jeu. If Bataille is deeply fascinated by death, decay and the dissolution of the subject in a continuity of being, he escapes the temptation to embrace death at the expense of life. His definition of eroticism sums up this fundamental tension: "Eroticism," he writes, "is assenting to life up to the point of death" (Erotism11). This applies not only to eroticism but also to all communicating activities such as laughter, play, tears, and ultimately to the ethos that sustains the totality of Bataille's philosophy. If Kojève defines dialectics as a "negating-negativity" (5), Bataille's communication can be read as an affirmative negativity. In fact, death is confronted and even invoked, but what is found in death is the ultimate affirmation of life. Negation of the integrity (the limits) of the subject leads to a radical affirmation of life. And if in the Preface to Madame Edwarda, Bataille can affirme "l'identité de l'être et de la mort" (OC III 10), let us also note that the identity of being and death is realized in life. Faithful to Nietzsche, Bataille does not become a negator of the will; a negator of life; a pessimist, a Buddhist or worse, a nihilist (some of the derogatory terms used by Nietzsche to retrospectively define his first and last master). Bataille remains truthful to life. While the ontological premises grounding sovereignty are taken from Schopenhauer (via Nietzsche), Bataille's conclusions are diametrically opposed to Nietzsche's first master. In fact, Bataille's philosophy can be seen as an affirmation of the will (he operates an inversion of values) through Dionysian practices (included sexuality which Schopenhauer condemned) that put the subject in touch with the ultimate ground of being, without dissolving him/her in it.