Erotism

Death & Sensuality

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Georges Bataille: Erotism (Paperback, 1986, City Lights Books)

Paperback, 276 pages

English language

Published Nov. 18, 1986 by City Lights Books.

ISBN:
978-0-87286-190-9
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5 stars (1 review)

Taboo and sacrifice, transgression and language, death and sensuality—Georges Bataille pursues these themes with an original, often startling perspective. He challenges any single discourse on the erotic. The scope of his inquiry ranges from Emily Bronte to Sade, from St. Therese to Claude Levi-Strauss, and Dr. Kinsey; and the subjects he covers include prostitution, mythical ecstasy, cruelty, and organized war. Investigating desire prior to and extending beyond the realm of sexuality, he argues that eroticism is "a psychological quest not alien to death."

1 edition

materialism for eros

5 stars

As I had been reading this book, I thought it was perhaps no coincidence that Georges Bataille and Jacques Lacan were sort of around rather similar circles. I wonder now how the role of surplus or excess life that, under the auspices of psychological or cultural taboo, constitutes the erotic transmuted into the Lacanian concept of "surplus enjoyment," if it had at all. It may be coincidental, as Bataille was a materialist and Lacan, insofar as he conceptualizes the psyche in terms of a semiotic process, could be considered a kind of "materialist" (the psyche is precisely what can be "read"). However, Georges Bataille has a unique pull vis-a-vis Lacan due to the way he engages in interpretation of facts of biology and observations of anthropology in order to extract philosophical insight. I very much like this approach, though I find it would have been more rigorous in this case …

Subjects

  • Anthropology
  • Philosophical Anthropology
  • Base Materialism
  • Sexuality Studies
  • Philosophy
  • Metaphysics
  • Psychology
  • Sexual Psychology
  • Philosophy of Sex
  • Philosophy of the Body

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