Bataille

Of what I wrote in my last entry, the thing I feel the most foolish about is the claim that in his dialogues, Plato has Socrates reacting to important thinkers or bodies of thought more as books than as people (despite their personification in dialogue partners)… I don’t know if there’s any truth to that. For the comment to have any value I would have to explain what I mean by that… and to do that would or will take time and I’ll have to go back and look over relevant dialogues. I wanted to read the Protagorus today, but I didn’t have time. Anyway,
Of the books I spent some time with today, the one I’ll make some notes on is Georges Bataille’s ‘la literature et le mal’ (literature and evil – should that require translation). The book makes the claim that literature is in its essence intimately linked to Evil – it is basically an expression of Evil (he also links it to childhood, implying at the outset that there is a close connection between Evil and childhood as well). For the claim to make any sense, Bataille has to define Evil, which he sets out to do using a series of authors almost as case studies – the book is clearly largely meant to counter Sartre (who he talks about most in the chapters on Baudelaire and Genet – each of whom Sartre had written books on), each chapter/ author introduces a slightly different definition of evil, distinct from, but not incompatible with the others, mostly expressed through various dichotomies (for example: good = work and privileging the future, while evil = idleness and privileging the present, which is the similar to saying good is gathering or saving while evil is expenditure and release, or creation verse destruction), gradually adding nuance to the term (also discussing the problematic attempt to ‘embrace’ Evil in writers in his chapters on Sade, Kafka and Proust – by embracing something, you generally are defining it as a sort of good – in order for a person to define what something as evil, he must have already embraced and taken to heart an opposing set of values against which it would be judged… an amoral individual will likely do things that others would define as evil, but they will not be evil to him and he will certainly not do them BECAUSE they are evil). In the final chapter on Genet, all of the previous thoughts on Evil sort of combine… the chapters are sketches, devoted more to advancing the reflection on Evil than trying to understanding the authors involved. I‘ve read the book in its entirety before, and I once left a copy on a plane by accident, but I’m going to have to reread it this week for something I’ll be writing. This evening I just reread the first chapter on Emily Bronte. Bataille begins by positing a connection between death and love or sexuality. The first definitions of good seem to be reason, and the conventions or order necessary for society to remain stable and coherent – evil seems to be on the side of passion and the freedom of childhood – not only is the connection between childhood and Evil clear, but it is also clear that Evil, which can never have an extremely clear definition, is not conceived of as bad, or undesirable- it is both transgressive and necessary. It belongs to the space that society officially excludes but must also make space for (in the same way we have days set aside, like New Years’ and Halloween, when you are actually supposed to get drunk, Thanksgiving when you are supposed to eat too much, and Christmas when you are supposed to spend to much – I realize I’m banalizing, but those examples seem close at hand). Evil is more or less the originary state from against which Good defines itself, but from which Good can never really separate (reason trying to assert itself against chance, order against chaos).