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Erotism: Death and Sensuality
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."
280 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1957
About the author
Georges Bataille
213 books2,146 followersFrench essayist, philosophical theorist, and novelist, often called the "metaphysician of evil." Bataille was interested in sex, death, degradation, and the power and potential of the obscene. He rejected traditional literature and considered that the ultimate aim of all intellectual, artistic, or religious activity should be the annihilation of the rational individual in a violent, transcendental act of communion. Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and Philippe Sollers have all written enthusiastically about his work.
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October 29, 2012
You won’t stick your hand down your bathing suit ever again after reading this. Bataille will see to that. And yet this author's misgivings about the erotic seem somehow misplaced. They serve as springboards to jump off on tangents. Our writer throws in a bunch of psychoanalysis, too, but only insofar as it gets us to the religious take on man’s psychic esoterica.
But first let’s look at what Bataille gets right.
He starts with "continuity," an aspiration that for humans is the essence of being. It's what we discontinuous beings want from sex, but our primordial emergence from animal to human marks the change from nature to culture. Taboos meant to deny our animal side quarantine both sex and death so that we can get work done. Death, and then sex, become a kind of psychic violence: Either involves a transgression of taboos; either violates the status quo of culture.
This transgression generates eroticism. Religion for its part transforms transgression into sin. Thus, the Catholic Church becomes the most able defender of our humanity, preserving eroticism by upholding taboos.
At the same time, our need to work turns people into objects for other people, and only our animal nature can stop that. Sexuality, then, is “the greatest barrier to the reduction of a man to the level of a thing.” The erotic returns to humans their subjective dignity.
So the body becomes poetic and pure, and its erotic defilement is brought on by the sanctioned sin of marriage. Thus, the Church safeguards our dignity through its prohibitions.
Got that? Good. I'll buy it. But now Bataille starts to go off track.
Eroticism for him applies only to straight, married, pious males. He neither mentions nor acknowledges female sexuality, nor anything outside lawful relations. He wavers as to whether even this constricted eroticism is disgusting or not, but reaches no final verdict. This same waffling permeates most of his conclusions.
With sex equal to death, “man must die to live“ he keeps telling us. He bases this on the enormous expenditure of energy the sex act requires, energy denied to work. Bataille makes death look good and sex bad -- he might as well be talking about salmon and spiders.
He hammers away at the energy wasted by sex, forgetting that intercourse takes just a few minutes, whereas humans usually work all day long. I can’t tell what’s more in play here, the Church or the vogue of psychoanalysis, but similar flights of fancy come up later in The Denial of Death, a dreadful ripoff of the same theme.
Bataille’s discursive style gives his thinking a profound Hegelian veneer hinting of intellectual alacrity. But he seems to think Hegel grants us license to say just anything. His concept of eroticism is a floating abstraction backed up by hearsay upon hearsay, evidence like, “There is no reason to believe their [mystics’] experience is not genuine, according to people who know such practitioners.”
As the book goes on a frank disgust for the erotic emerges. The author uses the better part of one page to denounce obscenity, which he finds to be the creation of a “repugnant” class of people “vomited forth” by society. This bourgeois writer slams the lower classes for letting whores take over the streets, accusing them of intending to destroy society, refusing to work and using the “advantages of insubordination” to slake their lust. Erotic thoughts disturb him. He draws on his Church for support, but I doubt Catholic theology espouses the level of revulsion over eroticism that his writing achieves.
Beyond the diatribes the writing is clunky, repetitive, indifferent and archaic (“venereal orgasms“). The psychoanalysis and anthropology are outdated, and the Catholic references are suspect. The truth is, this book has no bearing on anything today. It’s hard to believe the author of Blue of Noon also wrote this flapdoodle, but I believe that's why I thought I'd like it.
Bataille is good at literature; he’s bad at social commentary. I advise readers to skip this one.
But first let’s look at what Bataille gets right.
He starts with "continuity," an aspiration that for humans is the essence of being. It's what we discontinuous beings want from sex, but our primordial emergence from animal to human marks the change from nature to culture. Taboos meant to deny our animal side quarantine both sex and death so that we can get work done. Death, and then sex, become a kind of psychic violence: Either involves a transgression of taboos; either violates the status quo of culture.
This transgression generates eroticism. Religion for its part transforms transgression into sin. Thus, the Catholic Church becomes the most able defender of our humanity, preserving eroticism by upholding taboos.
At the same time, our need to work turns people into objects for other people, and only our animal nature can stop that. Sexuality, then, is “the greatest barrier to the reduction of a man to the level of a thing.” The erotic returns to humans their subjective dignity.
So the body becomes poetic and pure, and its erotic defilement is brought on by the sanctioned sin of marriage. Thus, the Church safeguards our dignity through its prohibitions.
Got that? Good. I'll buy it. But now Bataille starts to go off track.
Eroticism for him applies only to straight, married, pious males. He neither mentions nor acknowledges female sexuality, nor anything outside lawful relations. He wavers as to whether even this constricted eroticism is disgusting or not, but reaches no final verdict. This same waffling permeates most of his conclusions.
With sex equal to death, “man must die to live“ he keeps telling us. He bases this on the enormous expenditure of energy the sex act requires, energy denied to work. Bataille makes death look good and sex bad -- he might as well be talking about salmon and spiders.
He hammers away at the energy wasted by sex, forgetting that intercourse takes just a few minutes, whereas humans usually work all day long. I can’t tell what’s more in play here, the Church or the vogue of psychoanalysis, but similar flights of fancy come up later in The Denial of Death, a dreadful ripoff of the same theme.
Bataille’s discursive style gives his thinking a profound Hegelian veneer hinting of intellectual alacrity. But he seems to think Hegel grants us license to say just anything. His concept of eroticism is a floating abstraction backed up by hearsay upon hearsay, evidence like, “There is no reason to believe their [mystics’] experience is not genuine, according to people who know such practitioners.”
As the book goes on a frank disgust for the erotic emerges. The author uses the better part of one page to denounce obscenity, which he finds to be the creation of a “repugnant” class of people “vomited forth” by society. This bourgeois writer slams the lower classes for letting whores take over the streets, accusing them of intending to destroy society, refusing to work and using the “advantages of insubordination” to slake their lust. Erotic thoughts disturb him. He draws on his Church for support, but I doubt Catholic theology espouses the level of revulsion over eroticism that his writing achieves.
Beyond the diatribes the writing is clunky, repetitive, indifferent and archaic (“venereal orgasms“). The psychoanalysis and anthropology are outdated, and the Catholic references are suspect. The truth is, this book has no bearing on anything today. It’s hard to believe the author of Blue of Noon also wrote this flapdoodle, but I believe that's why I thought I'd like it.
Bataille is good at literature; he’s bad at social commentary. I advise readers to skip this one.
April 28, 2023
Multă vreme o carte-cult, eseul lui Bataille își arată deja vîrsta...
Autorul crede că erotismul (pe care îl deosebește de sexualitate) reprezintă nostalgia continuității, a unității de odinioară. Opinia lui îmi amintește de mitul hermafroditului din Banchetul lui Platon. Iubirea e căutare a jumătății pierdute. Nimic nu e întîmplător în iubire: ea ține de ordinea necesității și nu de aceea a hazardului.
Dar cum legăm practicile erotice solitare de dorința de continuitate, de nostalgia sufletului pereche? Astfel de practici nu țin de erotism, ar spune Georges Bataille, ci de simpla sexualitate, un mecanism fiziologic.
Iubirea platonică e pur vizuală. Nu presupune celelalte simțuri: tactilul, gustul, mirosul.
Continuitatea de care vorbește Bataille ține de o filosofie vitalistă, e una a fluxului vital. Ea leagă sacrul și profanul, indivizii care țin la solitudinea lor. Desființează moartea, limitele, anulează izolarea, separația, desființează partea și o integrează într-un întreg. Opinia aceasta se deosebește oarecum de viziunea lui Platon, a căutării sufletului pierdut.
Citez: „Înțelesul ultim al erotismului este fuziunea, suprimarea limitei”.
Cîteva pagini se referă la „delectatio morosa” (comentată de unii teologi medievali): ea este o formă prelungită de ispitire: „În delectatio morosa, frumusețea obiectului, atracția-i sexuală au dispărut. Numai amintirea lor subzistă... De aici înainte, obiectul e mai puțin un obiect, cît o atmosferă legată de o stare sufletească și e imposibil să spunem dacă e vorba de oroare sau de atracție”
Autorul crede că erotismul (pe care îl deosebește de sexualitate) reprezintă nostalgia continuității, a unității de odinioară. Opinia lui îmi amintește de mitul hermafroditului din Banchetul lui Platon. Iubirea e căutare a jumătății pierdute. Nimic nu e întîmplător în iubire: ea ține de ordinea necesității și nu de aceea a hazardului.
Dar cum legăm practicile erotice solitare de dorința de continuitate, de nostalgia sufletului pereche? Astfel de practici nu țin de erotism, ar spune Georges Bataille, ci de simpla sexualitate, un mecanism fiziologic.
Iubirea platonică e pur vizuală. Nu presupune celelalte simțuri: tactilul, gustul, mirosul.
Continuitatea de care vorbește Bataille ține de o filosofie vitalistă, e una a fluxului vital. Ea leagă sacrul și profanul, indivizii care țin la solitudinea lor. Desființează moartea, limitele, anulează izolarea, separația, desființează partea și o integrează într-un întreg. Opinia aceasta se deosebește oarecum de viziunea lui Platon, a căutării sufletului pierdut.
Citez: „Înțelesul ultim al erotismului este fuziunea, suprimarea limitei”.
Cîteva pagini se referă la „delectatio morosa” (comentată de unii teologi medievali): ea este o formă prelungită de ispitire: „În delectatio morosa, frumusețea obiectului, atracția-i sexuală au dispărut. Numai amintirea lor subzistă... De aici înainte, obiectul e mai puțin un obiect, cît o atmosferă legată de o stare sufletească și e imposibil să spunem dacă e vorba de oroare sau de atracție”
July 15, 2018
‘Our only real pleasure is to squander our resources to no purpose, just as if a wound were bleeding away inside us; we always want to be sure of the uselessness or the ruinousness of our extravagance. We want to feel as remote from the world as we can. As remote as we can: that is hardly strong enough; we want a world turned upside down and inside out. The truth of eroticism is treason.’
‘It is the desire to live while ceasing to live, or to die without ceasing to live’
Bataille’s eroticism is ‘the assenting to life prior to death’. The conceptual identity of eroticism is historically diffuse & contingent, from primitive man to modern / postmodern consumer society, it is a phantom hand guiding every imaginable facet of life. For Bataille this arises from any terrain where a taboo is set. The abstraction of sexuality from the carnal act itself has to do with the complex interplay of prohibitions and desire which shift with historico-cultural paradigms. Taboos are a litigal-religious necessity for policing the boundaries of violence, ugliness, decay, excrement and (crucially) death. All of which induce fear, revulsion and rapturous desire; and for a society to survive, the fear must be gridlocked into law and the desire forbidden. But banishing something from civilized life inevitably and necessarily strengthens its fascination. The experience of continuity between the monotony of life and the abyssal beauty & terror of death can be bridged via onanism, worship, sacrifice and degradation; heightened to heaving summits by the cold iron bars of taboo.
Bataille wasn’t advocating a cessation of social boundaries. Stuff like free love and libertinism appalled him; full sexual licentiousness would eradicate the very thing it sought to liberate. Continuity comes at the expense of scarcity & degradation which incite violence and horror. To this end, The Catholic Church, like the bloodthirsty Aztec Gods, safeguards the integrity of eroticism’s entrancing otherworldliness.
The book is duly anthropological. Cave art and study of contemporary hunter-gatherer societies like the San People or the horticulturalist tribes across the ‘Hunter Gatherer Spectrum’ in Papua New Guinea give us important anthropological insights into non-state forms of social organization and culture. This is a window into sexual practice less ossified by bloated (post)industrial cultures. The bureaucracy of civilization after a certain stage advances our sense of futurity to the point of stymying an authentic continuity with delirious thanatropic underpinning of erotic experience. The expenditures of ritual hedonism are incompatible with a society revolving around work, where labour is the sum total of ontology, so the erotic becomes a sepulchral ambiguity; the examples Bataille employs to this point are far reaching & very convincing. Categories from structural anthropology like taboo and transgression are important here but Bataille carries them further than most cod-structuralists would dare & he extracts its logic for deployment into his own historical age. As we can easily do to ours; and the basic principles remain sturdy.
That said, the anthropological research Bataille uses was the best available at the time, mostly stuff from Durkheim, Hubert and Mauss. Claude Le vi-Strauss’ dubious theory of incest has an entire chapter devoted to it. This stuff is mostly out of date. It doesn’t really matter. Although Bataille's conclusions rest on some obsolete info they are still convincing. Good philosophy may draw from supplanted regimes of knowledge and still make persuasive claims which endure long after the research itself has been falsified. And I think contemporary developments in sociology & anthropology actually advance many of Bataille’s claims.
Less-ink-than-you-would-think has been spilled on the involvement of Bataille with Lacan. Despite their personal intimacy (they were friends--and Lacan would go on to impregnate and marry Bataille’s estranged wife Sylvia) there are few explicit references to one another in their work. But Lacan is here, if you know where to look. The vanishing objects of desire are located in the enigma of the other, experienced as a sharp pang of lack unlocatable in the maps & grids of the symbolic; Bataille’s thermodynamic solar expenditures, the profane furnace of being, of wanting and of burning our sacred possessions to escape the martyrdom of time. Surplus and plenty, the ill-omened repositories of wealth which characterize industrial age economic privilege are the harbinger of a barren and anhedonic life. There is no doubt that Lacan read Bataille but whether or not he approved of this, um, unorthodox arrangement of his ideas is unknown to me.
I find Bataille’s reading of Sade much more interesting than Sade’s own books, which have always slightly bored me. The manichaean inversion of good and evil, the profusion of sex and violence, always seemed slightly...obvious. Not shocking at all. But Bataille extracts a more complex reading, digging under the soiled flesh of Sade’s unpleasant books and reasoning that most torture, tyranny and bloodshed is not the work of sadistic libertines but rather is sanctioned by the state and wreathed in its antiseptic language; ‘foreign intervention’, ‘austerity’, ‘correctional facility’ all refer to organized death and slavery, comfortably within our purview of acceptable violence. Sade’s characters don’t greasepaint over their horrific cruelties; they are described in loving detail. The act of violence, in which we are all complicit (particularly us first worlders), is animated by Bataille’s logic of expenditure, of squandering & ruining as an act of purification unvarnished by officiated sterility.
There are blemishes on this book. Written from the bourgeois-male perspective, many of the references to the working classes come across as condescending or thoughtless. And Bataille makes the all too familiar tin-eared claim about women enjoying fantasies of rape. While Bataille’s consideration of women as the locus of male sexual desire, and thus violence, is mostly cogent and always interesting, there is never a serious attempt to implant the point of view in...literally anyone else. Eroticism is infinitely variable but it is only considered from the world-historical-default of the male perspective.
That said, in only several months time Bataille has become enormously important to me. And I’m not even close to done, I still have so many books to read from him.
‘It is the desire to live while ceasing to live, or to die without ceasing to live’
Bataille’s eroticism is ‘the assenting to life prior to death’. The conceptual identity of eroticism is historically diffuse & contingent, from primitive man to modern / postmodern consumer society, it is a phantom hand guiding every imaginable facet of life. For Bataille this arises from any terrain where a taboo is set. The abstraction of sexuality from the carnal act itself has to do with the complex interplay of prohibitions and desire which shift with historico-cultural paradigms. Taboos are a litigal-religious necessity for policing the boundaries of violence, ugliness, decay, excrement and (crucially) death. All of which induce fear, revulsion and rapturous desire; and for a society to survive, the fear must be gridlocked into law and the desire forbidden. But banishing something from civilized life inevitably and necessarily strengthens its fascination. The experience of continuity between the monotony of life and the abyssal beauty & terror of death can be bridged via onanism, worship, sacrifice and degradation; heightened to heaving summits by the cold iron bars of taboo.
Bataille wasn’t advocating a cessation of social boundaries. Stuff like free love and libertinism appalled him; full sexual licentiousness would eradicate the very thing it sought to liberate. Continuity comes at the expense of scarcity & degradation which incite violence and horror. To this end, The Catholic Church, like the bloodthirsty Aztec Gods, safeguards the integrity of eroticism’s entrancing otherworldliness.
The book is duly anthropological. Cave art and study of contemporary hunter-gatherer societies like the San People or the horticulturalist tribes across the ‘Hunter Gatherer Spectrum’ in Papua New Guinea give us important anthropological insights into non-state forms of social organization and culture. This is a window into sexual practice less ossified by bloated (post)industrial cultures. The bureaucracy of civilization after a certain stage advances our sense of futurity to the point of stymying an authentic continuity with delirious thanatropic underpinning of erotic experience. The expenditures of ritual hedonism are incompatible with a society revolving around work, where labour is the sum total of ontology, so the erotic becomes a sepulchral ambiguity; the examples Bataille employs to this point are far reaching & very convincing. Categories from structural anthropology like taboo and transgression are important here but Bataille carries them further than most cod-structuralists would dare & he extracts its logic for deployment into his own historical age. As we can easily do to ours; and the basic principles remain sturdy.
That said, the anthropological research Bataille uses was the best available at the time, mostly stuff from Durkheim, Hubert and Mauss. Claude Le vi-Strauss’ dubious theory of incest has an entire chapter devoted to it. This stuff is mostly out of date. It doesn’t really matter. Although Bataille's conclusions rest on some obsolete info they are still convincing. Good philosophy may draw from supplanted regimes of knowledge and still make persuasive claims which endure long after the research itself has been falsified. And I think contemporary developments in sociology & anthropology actually advance many of Bataille’s claims.
Less-ink-than-you-would-think has been spilled on the involvement of Bataille with Lacan. Despite their personal intimacy (they were friends--and Lacan would go on to impregnate and marry Bataille’s estranged wife Sylvia) there are few explicit references to one another in their work. But Lacan is here, if you know where to look. The vanishing objects of desire are located in the enigma of the other, experienced as a sharp pang of lack unlocatable in the maps & grids of the symbolic; Bataille’s thermodynamic solar expenditures, the profane furnace of being, of wanting and of burning our sacred possessions to escape the martyrdom of time. Surplus and plenty, the ill-omened repositories of wealth which characterize industrial age economic privilege are the harbinger of a barren and anhedonic life. There is no doubt that Lacan read Bataille but whether or not he approved of this, um, unorthodox arrangement of his ideas is unknown to me.
I find Bataille’s reading of Sade much more interesting than Sade’s own books, which have always slightly bored me. The manichaean inversion of good and evil, the profusion of sex and violence, always seemed slightly...obvious. Not shocking at all. But Bataille extracts a more complex reading, digging under the soiled flesh of Sade’s unpleasant books and reasoning that most torture, tyranny and bloodshed is not the work of sadistic libertines but rather is sanctioned by the state and wreathed in its antiseptic language; ‘foreign intervention’, ‘austerity’, ‘correctional facility’ all refer to organized death and slavery, comfortably within our purview of acceptable violence. Sade’s characters don’t greasepaint over their horrific cruelties; they are described in loving detail. The act of violence, in which we are all complicit (particularly us first worlders), is animated by Bataille’s logic of expenditure, of squandering & ruining as an act of purification unvarnished by officiated sterility.
There are blemishes on this book. Written from the bourgeois-male perspective, many of the references to the working classes come across as condescending or thoughtless. And Bataille makes the all too familiar tin-eared claim about women enjoying fantasies of rape. While Bataille’s consideration of women as the locus of male sexual desire, and thus violence, is mostly cogent and always interesting, there is never a serious attempt to implant the point of view in...literally anyone else. Eroticism is infinitely variable but it is only considered from the world-historical-default of the male perspective.
That said, in only several months time Bataille has become enormously important to me. And I’m not even close to done, I still have so many books to read from him.
September 12, 2016
no.
bourgeois, heteronormative, sexist, boring, no.
bourgeois, heteronormative, sexist, boring, no.
July 31, 2019
i am going to fuck god and die doing it, as is my spiritual birthright
April 12, 2021
'The religious side of erotism was the one that mattered most to the church, the one that called forth her full wrath. Witches were burnt, low-class prostitutes allowed to live. But degradation of prostitution was stressed and used to illustrate the nature of sin. The present situation results from the duel attitude of the Church, and its corollary, the duel attitude in men's minds. When the sacred and the Good were held to be identical, when religious eroticism was et outside the pale, the rational denial of Evil was the rejoiner. Then followed a world in which condemned transgression meant nothing and profanation itself almost lost its force. The only remaining escape-valve was hopeless degradation. Falling from grace was a dead-end for the fallen, but degraded eroticism was a sort of incitement without the satanic quality. For no-one believed in the devil now, and even to condemn eroticism as such was meaningless. Degradation at least continued to signify Evil, though no longer an Evil denounced by other people none too sure that they did in fact condemn it. Prostitutes fall as low as they do because they acquiesce in their own sordid condition. That may happen involuntarily, but the use of course language looks like a conscious decision; it is a way of spurning human dignity. Human life is the Good, and so acceptance of degradation is a way of spitting upon the good, a way of spitting upon human dignity'
—from The Object of Desire: Prostitution
February 11, 2021
“If I were to be asked what we are, I should answer: we are the door to everything that can be, we are the expectation that no material response can satisfy, no trick with words deceive. We seek the heights. Each one of us can ignore this search if he has a mind to, but mankind as a whole aspires to these heights; they are the only definition of his nature, his only justification and significance.”
November 22, 2020
One of my top 10 most important books of all time tbh, all reality is sex with a dead god, if u think I'm wrong read this book and then study the occult for 10 years and then talk to me
July 8, 2020
تناول الكاتب الأيروسية من الجانب التاريخي،الديني، الثقافي، اللغوي، والنفسي- الباطني، بإشكالياته، وبلسان أو معجم فلسفي. و بكونها إشكالية ذاتية تضرب في جذور الباطن السحيق بصفة واعية ولاواعية . وما تثيره من شعور وارتباك داخلي في الذهن والتصور من نشوة الاحتياج؛ الشهوة،والرغبة وتمثلاتها الجسدانية والجنسانية، والمحرم، الذي يؤجج المعترك الداخلي بين النفور المنقاد بالضمير ، و التوق الماجن بلذة الوصول " فخ الجسد."
كما تناول الأيروسية في التصميم المفهومي . والأيروسية كجزء من صورة الجسد " الجسد الأيروسي، والعلاقات الأيروسية" ، وكذا كونها بصمة وهوية شخصية أو إنسانية.، ومن ناحية أو زاوية الشأن العام، أو العلاقات التي تجمعنا سوياً. وتأثيرها على القيم الفردية والجماعية. و ب الذات الرائية من الثبات إلى التحول. والأيروسية بين التصوف والزهد.
الكتاب يطرح في العمق سؤال الكينونة والماهية وتحققها عبر مسار الحس المشترك.
فظييييع!!!!
كما تناول الأيروسية في التصميم المفهومي . والأيروسية كجزء من صورة الجسد " الجسد الأيروسي، والعلاقات الأيروسية" ، وكذا كونها بصمة وهوية شخصية أو إنسانية.، ومن ناحية أو زاوية الشأن العام، أو العلاقات التي تجمعنا سوياً. وتأثيرها على القيم الفردية والجماعية. و ب الذات الرائية من الثبات إلى التحول. والأيروسية بين التصوف والزهد.
الكتاب يطرح في العمق سؤال الكينونة والماهية وتحققها عبر مسار الحس المشترك.
فظييييع!!!!
December 2, 2013
Oh, those French! I picked this one up because I'd heard folks talk learnedly about Bataille in the same breath as Derrida, Lacan and Foucault and wanted to know what the fuss was about. Reading the cover blurb and looking at the table of contents I went on to formulate an expectation of finally finding out where people like deSade were coming from--a mystery since I covertly first read Dad's Grove Press edition in early adolescence. Well, although I found tidbits of interest herein, I did not come to understand the obsessive fascination some, like the author, have with transgression, with evil, with perversity and so on. No, that's not quite true. I must admit to some fascination with the offbeat and forbidden myself, but when it comes to wickedness, to hurting others in real practice, I just don't get it. Is this because of my conditioning and would being naughty, really naughty, help me overcome such limitations? Is this what the business is for some people? Indeed, I've known a few, even dated a one, who intentionally transgressed taboos of various kinds, but none to the point of physically hurting anybody or even writing as if to encourage such practices. The real distinction would appear to be one between between the taboo against actually physically (or even psychologically) disabling another and all other taboos. The first is really taboo--ethically forbidden. The second are all, I suspect, dubitable. Perhaps if one is brought up in a culture suffused with those weaker taboos, as a Catholic like Bataille or de Sade may have been, then the acts of transgression against them might lead to some sort of inertial impulse to go on and make the ultimate, ethical transgression. Having been brought up myself in a relatively liberal culture by a relatively liberal family, there weren't many taboos to fight against and I never developed the impulse to get so carried away.
March 19, 2015
"Erotism is the affirmation of life, even in death" - Georges Bataille.
Sex and death, the sacred and the profane, the longing for the divine... Bataille mixes philosophy and anthropology to talk about eroticism, touching a wide range of subjects, from human sacrifice and cannibalism to the Christian notion of sin and that which is diabolical. A must read!
Sex and death, the sacred and the profane, the longing for the divine... Bataille mixes philosophy and anthropology to talk about eroticism, touching a wide range of subjects, from human sacrifice and cannibalism to the Christian notion of sin and that which is diabolical. A must read!
Read
May 13, 2013A strong thesis that has a lot of resonance for my own thoughts on human experience. It required fairly constant mental editorialising however to filter out the extreme gender bias, the complete ignoring of homosexuality, and a tendency to a high level of repetition. These points aside though, it was a thought provoking read that sought to cut through bourgeoise niceties and stare honestly at sex and death.
July 11, 2022
Employing structuralist-anthropological categories like the taboo and transgression, and existential categories like anguish, nausea and horror, this philosophical work on human sexuality analyzes eroticism in terms of violence, religion and death. In the latter half of the book, Bataille comments on others who have written on human sexuality. For instance, he writes critically of Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior In The Human Male, Volume 2, which came out only three years before Bataille wrote this book. In addition to finding alternate interpretations of Kinsey’s data, he argues that the report is too scientistic. He analyzes the Marquis de Sade’s writings, arguing that they are to be interpreted in terms of those ideas that are the most paradoxical. Commenting on Claude Levi-Strauss, he suggests a different approach that could be taken to exogamy. Like Georg Groddeck (Book of the IT) and Ernest Becker (The Denial of Death), Bataille discusses unpleasant and embarrassing subjects typically avoided by more “polite” writers.
Note: despite what the blurb on the back of the City Lights edition says, there is no mention anywhere in the book of Emily Bronte (the writer must have been thinking of Bataille's Literature and Evil, in which there is a chapter on Bronte).
Acquired Jul 30, 2009
Attic Books, London, Ontario
Note: despite what the blurb on the back of the City Lights edition says, there is no mention anywhere in the book of Emily Bronte (the writer must have been thinking of Bataille's Literature and Evil, in which there is a chapter on Bronte).
Acquired Jul 30, 2009
Attic Books, London, Ontario
November 11, 2018
Devo confessar que a primeira vez que li O erotismo numa outra edição achei-o demasiado falocêntrico, mas eu estava sendo anacrônica ao julgá-lo assim, pois o mundo (e a literatura) era falocêntrico quando foi escrito, felizmente com o passar das décadas vieram o estudos de gênero e podemos agora aproveitar o que há de bom no livro de Bataille revisando para nossos propósitos, que no meu caso aborda pesquisa em torno de Hilda Hilst, pois convenhamos, não se estuda Hilst sem entender Bataille.
November 19, 2017
I can say with certainty that this is a life changing book for me. I've started reading it for a second time as I'm sure there's a lot that I've missed. I can see how many readers could be repelled by Bataille's deconstruction of the heavy, harsh realities he grapples with. The subject matter, by itself, is brutally real. Some sentences jump out at me with absolute clarity; others remain murky and mysterious, refusing to give up their secrets -- Even after a second reading. Contradictions exist within the space of a sentence in this work. Bataille breaks down concepts that are at once elemental yet complex -- For example, "continuity" versus "discontinuity". This is an oversimplification, but in essence, Bataille examines the overlap between life and death; between existence and non-existence; and the role eroticism plays within that arena.
Bataille has been referred to as the "metaphysician of evil", a moniker that I find to be sensational. According to Bataille, eroticism moves man towards death; or alternatively, man moves towards death in pursuing the erotic, which he cannot help but doing, since eroticism is intrinsic to his very nature. Work acts as a barrier against the potentially malign influence of decadent eroticism. Although sex and sexuality in themselves are amoral -- Bataille makes use of a moral perspective in his study of the connection between eroticism and death. Human sacrifice (and its evolution into pastel Christianity / puritanical monotheism) and the writings of Marquis DeSade appear as two memorable themes in this work; as several other Goodreads reviewers have noted -- The chapter on DeSade is compelling.
While reading "Erotism" I asked myself the question: "Must I now view life through Bataille's dark prism? And the answer was unequivocally: "Yes". On a technical note, I find the translation to be problematic [this has been observed by other Goodreads reviewers as well]; typos abound and while many of them are innocuous -- There are instances where both the typos and the mistranslations possibly contribute to misinterpretation of specific shades of meaning.
Bataille has been referred to as the "metaphysician of evil", a moniker that I find to be sensational. According to Bataille, eroticism moves man towards death; or alternatively, man moves towards death in pursuing the erotic, which he cannot help but doing, since eroticism is intrinsic to his very nature. Work acts as a barrier against the potentially malign influence of decadent eroticism. Although sex and sexuality in themselves are amoral -- Bataille makes use of a moral perspective in his study of the connection between eroticism and death. Human sacrifice (and its evolution into pastel Christianity / puritanical monotheism) and the writings of Marquis DeSade appear as two memorable themes in this work; as several other Goodreads reviewers have noted -- The chapter on DeSade is compelling.
While reading "Erotism" I asked myself the question: "Must I now view life through Bataille's dark prism? And the answer was unequivocally: "Yes". On a technical note, I find the translation to be problematic [this has been observed by other Goodreads reviewers as well]; typos abound and while many of them are innocuous -- There are instances where both the typos and the mistranslations possibly contribute to misinterpretation of specific shades of meaning.
February 25, 2009
Provocerend filosofisch werk dat bij eerste diagonale lezing vrij toegankelijk lijkt, maar al snel uitmondt in een labyrintisch discours dat moeilijk te volgen is. Bataille (1897-1962) was geobsedeerd door taboes, zowel in zijn persoonlijke leven als in zijn teksten, en in zijn oeuvre is het dan ook dood, geweld, seks, verderf en andere vrolijke en perverse materie die de kern uitmaakt. Aanvankelijk werd hij in de armen gesloten door de surrealisten, maar die hadden het duidelijk niet begrepen op zijn obsessies. Tot zijn dood bleef Bataille een einzelgänger, maar dan wel eentje die postuum invloedrijk werd: o.m. Foucault en Lacan zouden later met hem koketteren. Interessant is ook dat hij o.m. een cruciale invloed zou betekenen op het werk van avant-garde componist John Zorn, die vergelijkbare obsessies met pornografie, marteling en morbide mystiek verwerkte in zijn hardcore/jazz platen met Naked City en Painkiller en bij uitbreiding ook een paar generaties schrijvers die te verzamelen zijn onder de ‘transgressieve literatuur’, zoals Dennis Cooper, William Burroughs, William Vollmann, Brett Easton Ellis (ttv American Psycho) en Hubert Selby Jr., die thema’s als homofilie, incest, pedofilie, prostitutie, transsexualiteit, (auto-)mutilatie, etc, niet uit de weg gaan. Ontspanninglectuur pur sang dus, waarbij seksualiteit en dood consequent hand in hand gaan.
April 6, 2013
Here's a book title and cover art that elicit some subway sideways glances if you're into that sort of sexy thing and yet can stomach relatively non-sexy - and sadly, problematic* - theory.
Now that I've read Bataille's fiction, historical non-fiction and theory (and not ever a poem but a quick google search just verified that those exist, upon which I would've bet the quite unproductive farm), I can assume his poetry has merit. He is actually a great writer but I haven't yet read him writing greatly. It's very annoying. (I always defend that a great writer can exist even if he hasn't ever written greatly, but I know that's an unpopular - and obviously putrid-with-self-delusion - view.) Anyway, the guy has some gorgeous, provocative stuff in here, gems both in form and function. Theorists usually don't make me tear up; this is an atypical example of the tone but come on: "In human affairs example is catching. A man enters the dance because the dance makes him dance." I love that. And there is some really delicate, nice stuff in the beginning of this book, as he's establishing the main theme (man's desperate, paradoxical quest for continuity in his pitiful, limited existence as realized through biological, spiritual and cultural attitudes and behaviors around sex and sex-related stuffs). Then it degrades.
Enter the most annoying pitfall of amateur theory: the need to fill a book with words but running out of them, thus resorting to dragging in a bunch of other crapheads and explaining why they're, in whole or part, crap. Oy, you know no one cares! Go back to actually saying things; you had me as a solo act. Basically, B's very impressive start weakens after he abandons supporting evidence for sloppy finger pointing and then, well, down goes Frazier.
* Even some of his first principles are just ludicrous. It's driving me nuts that I can't find the passage referring to the inherent transcendence of various human body parts. And there is a section called "Violence is silent and de Sade's use of language is a contradiction in terms". Teehee.
Now that I've read Bataille's fiction, historical non-fiction and theory (and not ever a poem but a quick google search just verified that those exist, upon which I would've bet the quite unproductive farm), I can assume his poetry has merit. He is actually a great writer but I haven't yet read him writing greatly. It's very annoying. (I always defend that a great writer can exist even if he hasn't ever written greatly, but I know that's an unpopular - and obviously putrid-with-self-delusion - view.) Anyway, the guy has some gorgeous, provocative stuff in here, gems both in form and function. Theorists usually don't make me tear up; this is an atypical example of the tone but come on: "In human affairs example is catching. A man enters the dance because the dance makes him dance." I love that. And there is some really delicate, nice stuff in the beginning of this book, as he's establishing the main theme (man's desperate, paradoxical quest for continuity in his pitiful, limited existence as realized through biological, spiritual and cultural attitudes and behaviors around sex and sex-related stuffs). Then it degrades.
Enter the most annoying pitfall of amateur theory: the need to fill a book with words but running out of them, thus resorting to dragging in a bunch of other crapheads and explaining why they're, in whole or part, crap. Oy, you know no one cares! Go back to actually saying things; you had me as a solo act. Basically, B's very impressive start weakens after he abandons supporting evidence for sloppy finger pointing and then, well, down goes Frazier.
* Even some of his first principles are just ludicrous. It's driving me nuts that I can't find the passage referring to the inherent transcendence of various human body parts. And there is a section called "Violence is silent and de Sade's use of language is a contradiction in terms". Teehee.
March 9, 2015
His ideas are thought-provoking but ultimately ridiculous. Although he grudgingly admits that there are people who don't think of sex as a taboo, the bulk of his book goes on to describe all sex as a transgression of those selfsame taboos. He also misses the the significance of the Kinsey Reports, which he nevertheless discusses for a good chapter, and considering that this is a book on sexual taboos I'm a bit surprised that he never once discussed homosexuality. In fact, most of his discussion of sexual taboo is extremely heteronormative, focusing on reproductivity, etc. He's at his best when doing a literary analysis of Marquis de Sade, and there he has some good insights. But I think his ideas are going to resonate only with people who come to the book with his same neuroses.
April 10, 2020
Very good. This is the first book of his I read that wasn't Story of the Eye, about 2 and a half years ago.
The idea of mysticism, sensuality, and death being intimately connected is profound, as is the tying of taboos and transgressions to a religious feeling. His general project of describing the religious experience from a materialist-atheist point of view is fascinating.
His thinking is "unsystematic", but every concept of his feels interconnected. But they're connected in such a way that no one concept feels absolutely central, i.e. there doesn't seem to be a theoretical "ground". But if there is one, it might just be eroticism.
Read Bataille!!
The idea of mysticism, sensuality, and death being intimately connected is profound, as is the tying of taboos and transgressions to a religious feeling. His general project of describing the religious experience from a materialist-atheist point of view is fascinating.
His thinking is "unsystematic", but every concept of his feels interconnected. But they're connected in such a way that no one concept feels absolutely central, i.e. there doesn't seem to be a theoretical "ground". But if there is one, it might just be eroticism.
Read Bataille!!
November 14, 2016
(Diario de lectura)
Hace dos años lo leí por primera vez, vuelvo y encuentro una potencia, un atrevimiento teórico increíble. Pocas visiones de mundo tan ricas, de jardines que se bifurcan tanto como la de Bataille.
Particularmente genial el cap. sobre Sade (El lenguaje de Sade es el de la víctima; La violencia es silenciosa y el lenguaje de Sade es paradójico; El lenguaje de Sade nos aleja de la violencia...)
No puedo posponer más el estudio de Hegel, de quien sólo leí sus trabajos sobre estética. Ahí va.
![Profile Image for Keith [on semi hiatus].](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1541020315i/84884940._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg)
June 3, 2020
If you're a Georges Bataille fan then that's likely the only reason you're coming to read his views on Eroticism, everything in this book has an essence to what he has written that you've likely read, although for me I'm not the biggest fan of Mysticism so I'll scrap that from a 5 to a 4.
You'll read this if you're a fan and if you're not then at the end you'll likely want to read Tears of Eros or Madame Edwarda next. My path was as follows: the My Mother/Madame Edwarda/The Dead Man release by Penguin followed by Story of the Eye followed by Blue of Noon.
I've now read Eroticism and I'll be following this up with The Impossible which will be followed up by Tears of Eros.
To quote Georges Bataille and to wrap up this review:
"It is not necessary to answer the riddle of existence; it is not even necessary to ask it. But the fact that a man may possibly neither answer it nor even ask it does not eliminate that riddle. If I were to be asked what we are I should answer: 'We are the door to everything that can be, we are the expectation that no material response can satisfy, no trick with words deceive. We seek the heights. Each one of us can ignore this search if he has a mind to, but mankind as a whole aspires to these heights; they are the only definition of his nature, his only justification and significance.'"
You'll read this if you're a fan and if you're not then at the end you'll likely want to read Tears of Eros or Madame Edwarda next. My path was as follows: the My Mother/Madame Edwarda/The Dead Man release by Penguin followed by Story of the Eye followed by Blue of Noon.
I've now read Eroticism and I'll be following this up with The Impossible which will be followed up by Tears of Eros.
To quote Georges Bataille and to wrap up this review:
"It is not necessary to answer the riddle of existence; it is not even necessary to ask it. But the fact that a man may possibly neither answer it nor even ask it does not eliminate that riddle. If I were to be asked what we are I should answer: 'We are the door to everything that can be, we are the expectation that no material response can satisfy, no trick with words deceive. We seek the heights. Each one of us can ignore this search if he has a mind to, but mankind as a whole aspires to these heights; they are the only definition of his nature, his only justification and significance.'"
October 27, 2021
Brillante la forma de Bataille de abordar la idea del erotismo como un aspecto de la vida interior de la persona desde el prisma de la violencia, las prohibiciones y el pecado. La reflexión central gira entorno a la afirmación de la muerte como el sentido último del erotismo en tanto que "nunca, humanamente, aparece la prohibición sin una revelación del placer, ni nunca surge un placer sin el sentimiento de lo prohibido".
Key words: muerte, verdad, prohibición, angustia, pecado, cadáver, plétora, dignidad, incesto, deseo, tristeza, hábito, libertad, orgía, transgresión, cristianismo, belleza, sacrificio, prostitución, matrimonio. Vamos, un temazo. Da para una tesis doctoral.
Key words: muerte, verdad, prohibición, angustia, pecado, cadáver, plétora, dignidad, incesto, deseo, tristeza, hábito, libertad, orgía, transgresión, cristianismo, belleza, sacrificio, prostitución, matrimonio. Vamos, un temazo. Da para una tesis doctoral.
January 20, 2013
Bataille hace un análisis historico para ligar los opuestos, el erotismo y la muerte. Aprendí.. más que de erotismo... un par de cosas aterradoras.
Resumen:
• La fenomenología batailleana del erotismo demuestra que, en su esencia, el erotismo está vinculado con la sangre, que no hay erotismo sin sangre y lo que la sangre simboliza: la muerte. “el erotismo es la aprobación de la vida hasta en la muerte”.
• El erotismo surge de la dialéctica entre lo continuo (ser) y lo discontinuo (el sujeto) que experimenta el deseo de continuidad (que no puede sino ser deseo de muerte).
• Bataille analiza 3 tipo sde erotismo:
o El erotismo de los cuerpos – violación del ser de los participantes, un movimiento donde la desunión de los cueros busca la continuidad del ser. Encontrar ese bloque originario indiviso que no puede ser logrado (porque sería morir y morir es ya no lograrlo nunca). Pero nos brinda el límite, en el punto donde se desfallece “la pequeña muerte”
o Del corazón: búsqueda de la unidad rota por la discontinuidad, mediante la pasión amorsosa. Es también la búsqueda de un imposible, trata de unirse al ser amado. Se necesita tanto ser (amado), que es el único puente posible para salir de la angustiante soledad del ser humano, que ante la sola idea de perderlo surge el fantasma de la muerte. El deseo surge como pasión amorosa mientras que es en realidad voluntad de muerte.
o El sagrado: lo sagrado es la continuidad del ser que se revela mediante la muerte de un ser discontinuo.
• Toda puesta en marcha erótica tiene como principio una destrucción de la estructura del ser cerrado
• Lo que está en juego en el erotismo es siempre la disolución de las formas constituidas
• La poesía lleva al mismo punto que cada forma del erotismo: a la indistinción a la confusión de los objetos distintos. Nos lleva a la eternidad nos lleva a la muerte por la muerte a la continuidad.
• Por la poesía que abre un hueco en el lenguaje, el proceso de negatividad o destrucción irrumpe en lo más profundo de lo humano y lo trastoca: el mundo, con el “hombre” incluido, deja de ser lo que era para ser otra cosa, siempre lo otro de un sí inexistente, y en eso como en la locura la sangre del erotismo adquiere su verdadero esplendor porque es el verdadero hambre, el verdadero deseo, el de mortalidad.
LA CONCIENCIA DE LA MUERTE
• El erotismo está ligado al conocimeinto de la muerte.
• La muerte está asociada a las lágrimas y a veces el deseo sexual a la risa. Pero la risa no es, lo contrario de las lágrimas: tanto el objetivo de la risa como el de las lágrimas se vinculan a una especie de violencia que interrumpe el curso regular, el curso habitual de las cosas.
• Es evidente que el desorden sexual nos produce lágrimas, pero siemrpe nos trastorna, a veces nos devasta y una de dos: o nos hace reir o nos compromete en la violencia del abrazo.
• El momento erótico es la cima de la vida cuya mayor fuerza e intensidad se muestran en el momento en que dos seres se atraen, se acoplan y se perpetúan. Se trata de la vida, se trata de reproducirla, pero reproduciéndose la vida desborda: al desbordar alcanza el extremo delirio.
• Contrariamente, es a causa de que somos humanos y de que vivimos en la sombría perspectiva de la muerte, que conocemos la violencia exasperada, la violencia desesperada del erotismo.
LOS SURREALISTAS
• El surrealismo es manierismo .. en la medida en que traduce la violencia tensa sin la c ual no podríamos liberarnos de la conenxión. El manierismo es la búsqueda de la fiebre. Quiere marcar así la unidad fundamental de las pinturas cuya obsesión es traducir la fiebre: la fiebre, el deseo, la pasión ardiente. El rasgo esencial de los surresalistas es el odio a la convención. S´lo esto les hizo amar el calor del erotismo, el irrespirable calor que desprende el erotismo… esencialmente
la pintura de la que hablo está en ebullición, vive, arde.
CONCLUSION:
Lo que no es consciente no es humano.
No podemos ser, no podemos vivir humanamente sino a través de los meandros del tiempo: sólo el conjunto del tiempo compone y completa la vida humana.
• Un momento sólo tiene sentido en relación al conjunto de los momentos. En cada instante sólo somos fragmentos desprovistos de sentido s no los vinculamos a otros fragmentos. ¿Cómo podríamos remitirnos al conjunto acabado?
• El erotismo en cierto sentido es la salida, la salida infame del horror.
MUNDO ACTUAL
• Lo que amenaza actualmente a los hombres no es el goce material. El goce material es, en principio, contrario al acrecentamiento de las riquezas. Pero el acrecentamiento de las riquezas es – al menos en parte – contrario al goce que podemos esperar de ellas. El acrecentamiento de las riquezas lleva a la sobreproducción, de la cual sólo la guerra es la salida. No quiero decir que el erotismo sea el único remedio a la amenaza de la miseria, ligada al acrecentamiento irracional de las riquezas. Pero sin el cálculo de las diversas posibilidades de consumo opuestas a la guerra, y de las que el goce erótico – el consumo de la energía en el instante – es el tipo, no podríamos descubrir una salida que fundaría la razón.
June 26, 2019
Por várias vezes eu comecei e não acabei de ler a edição digital deste livro que é um tratado sobre a sexualidade humana. Dessa vez, finalmente li todo ele, suas quase 400 páginas, da apresentação aos apêndices. O que oito horas esperando em um aeroporto não fazem, não é? Bem, posso dizer que a primeira parte do livro, que é o livro em si, é bem mais interessante que a segunda parte, que são ensaios diversos e que os apêndices, aqui organizados pelo tradutor Fernando Scheibe. Bataille insiste no seu livro em uma palavra cara para ele "o interdito", que é a zona de penumbra que provica o erotismo na espécie humana, o interdito entre a vida e a morte, o interdito entre o escondido e o revelado, entre o sagrado e o profano. Também é nessa dimensão religiosa do erótico que o filósofo insiste bastante, principalmente nos ensaios da segunda parte deste livro. Ele divide o erótico em três dimensões, a saber: do corpo, do coração e a dimensão sagrada. Do corpo é aquela que traz nossas reações mais fisiológicas, do coração são as reação ligadas ao sentimento, ao amor erótico e, finalmente a dimensão sagrada é a transcendência em nível erótico, aquela buscada por santos e religiosos. Bataille sempre foi considerado um escritor polêmico e não vai ser na nossa época que vai deixar de ser considerado. Mas é importante para os seres humanos que o leem - ou que se interessem por suas palavras - perceberem suas dimensões instintivas, animais e que o gozo e o nojo estão tão interligados quanto a vida está da morte, e perceberem que não são meros bichos como qualquer outro. Assim, quem sabe desçam do pedestal que colocam a importância da sua vida, como se outras práticas humanas nauseantes ou sexuais, não fizessem parte de sua existência.
May 25, 2014
The whole thing is a wonderful and blasphemous! Someone at the coffee shop asked me who Bataille was and I told him "a religious Nietzsche." Indeed, this is the case. Bataille somehow, fitting in expositions of human sacrifice, sexual violence, incest, and all other kinds of assorted weird ass shit, manages to paint the most beautiful and lascivious portrait of the night one could ever hope for while ultimately reminding us of the necessity of that ray of light of human consciousness for us to enjoy any of it at all. Still we will always crave that return to continuity, the world of language and exchange insufficient for inner experience to fuse in continuity with The Other. Beauty and trauma all around.
May 3, 2021
“Wat zouden wij zijn zonder de taal? Zij heeft ons gemaakt tot wat wij zijn. Alleen zij openbaart ons, aan de uiterste grens, het soevereine moment waarop zij er niet meer toe doet.
Maar wie spreekt erkent uiteindelijk zijn onmacht.” Pg. 199
Maar wie spreekt erkent uiteindelijk zijn onmacht.” Pg. 199
April 20, 2017
I like to think of death as a final sexual act of some sort. There is something so beautiful in the gesture that is totally erotic. Bataille looks in the taboo and finds pleasure.
March 22, 2017
L'erotismo di Bataille è un saggio indispensabile, importantissimo. Ripercorre tutto, dalla preistoria sino ad oggi stesso. Pochi quelli che capiscano cosa sia il divino.
May 25, 2021
Definitely informational, pretty comprehensible, in short worth a try.
Some parts were brilliant, with gripping phrases pinning down the very ethereal conjectures you've had floating around the tip of your tongue. Some revelations were completely new to me, some I suspected but never pondered on. Loved immensely the parts on profanity vs transgression, feast vs work, mysticism vs eroticism, obscene language and the notions of sin, profane, unclean and sacred.
Then some chapters were pretty boring (for me, the one on incest in the second part), and it definitely got repetetive at parts.
The language is accessible enough although at times awkward, I assign it to the specifics of English essayism, and this I reckon is also a translation. Some phrases presented here were worth a calligraphic emtry in your notebook, some were bulky and ugly but still got the point across.
And don't be fooled - a very major part of this book isn't directly talking about eroticism, which doesn't make it any less interesting. Recommended to anyone interested in topics of taboo and sanctity.
Some parts were brilliant, with gripping phrases pinning down the very ethereal conjectures you've had floating around the tip of your tongue. Some revelations were completely new to me, some I suspected but never pondered on. Loved immensely the parts on profanity vs transgression, feast vs work, mysticism vs eroticism, obscene language and the notions of sin, profane, unclean and sacred.
Then some chapters were pretty boring (for me, the one on incest in the second part), and it definitely got repetetive at parts.
The language is accessible enough although at times awkward, I assign it to the specifics of English essayism, and this I reckon is also a translation. Some phrases presented here were worth a calligraphic emtry in your notebook, some were bulky and ugly but still got the point across.
And don't be fooled - a very major part of this book isn't directly talking about eroticism, which doesn't make it any less interesting. Recommended to anyone interested in topics of taboo and sanctity.
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