Erotism: Death and Sensuality [Paperback]

Georges Bataille (Author), Mary Dalwood (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1986

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.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, French (translation)

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: City Lights Publishers (January 1, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0872861902
• ISBN-13: 978-0872861909
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #112,176 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sex, death, and violence--a high-falutin' theory of the good stuff..., January 14, 2008

By 

Mark Nadja "Literary Outlaw, author *Hardcore... (New York City) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Erotism: Death and Sensuality (Paperback)

If I had to pick one book for the Bataille newbie, it would be this one. *Erotism* puts forth the crux of Georges Bataille's critical thought in what is its clearest and most forthright expression. Here the man once called "the theoretician of evil" lays out for the educated layman his controversial and challenging views of the interrelationship of sexuality, violence, taboo, suffering, mysticism, and death. Most of the major ideas found in Bataille's more complicated philosophical works such as *The Accursed Share* are distilled here, as well as the philosophical underpinning of the infamous novels *Madame Edwarda* and *The Dead Man.*

Bataille is always perversely entertaining, if sometimes frustrating, having a facility to cast even the most lurid subjects in a language that can render pornography intellectually impenetrable. The problem is partly due to the fact that Bataille's main concern is to elucidate what he calls "extreme states of being," those experiences at the very limit of human possibility such as orgasm, visions, and death--phenomenon that philosophy has traditionally left out of the equation when considering human life. Because these extreme experiences are often irrational--or transcend rationality, as Bataille would prefer it--they usually fall outside the natural scope of philosophy, as well as language itself. Bataille, who tries to write about these inner states on the outer edge, can only do so by ultimately failing, which he readily acknowledges is necessarily the fate of anyone who tries to express the inexpressible.

In *Erotism,* Bataille, for the most part, confines himself to saying what can be said before it becomes unspeakable and that's what makes this book so much more readable than most of his other texts. Taboo as that which sets us apart from the animal and yet is meant to be transgressed in order that we may know the sacred. Sacrifice as a communal "crime" by which we contemplate the deathless state of continuity that is death itself. Work as the dike that keeps humanity from being swept away in a flood of sex and violence. Bataille follows the red thread that zig-zaggedly stitches together man's age-old fascination with sexual transgression and violent death. From the cave paintings of prehistory to the novels of Sade, from Saint Theresa's pseudo-sexual ecstasy to the Kinsey Report, the result is a wide-ranging and fascinating re-interpretation of the religious instinct in man from the point of view of our mortal obsession with filth and degradation. What Bataille has wrought is a philosophy of "evil" that itself is a thing of transgression, overturning much of what we thought we knew about morality, love, civilization, god, and all the rest of it, but most of all ourselves.

A sort of primer to Bataille, *Erotism* can be used as a skeleton key to access the treasures locked away in his more inaccessible works. A must-read for any philosophically inclined renegade interested in sex and death, *Erotism* justifies your morbid penchant for the corrupt and obscene. You really shouldn't have another orgasm without being cognizant of the insights to be found in this life-warping and mind-bending book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Freud transcended, August 13, 2007

By 

P. Cockeram (Harrisburg, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Erotism: Death and Sensuality (Paperback)

Bataille's text represents a cogent, penetrating examination of the topics of eroticism and death, as well as the violence that connects them. He explores some of the links between erotic activity and violence, providing a refreshingly intellectual perspective on subjects typically ruled by silence.

Where Freud noted a connection between sex and violence, Bataille explores this connection in light of its broader philosophical implications. His section on Christianity is particularly helpful in understanding how that religion has rendered an entire sphere of sacred experience unto the profane world, with grave consequences for human culture. Never indicting Christianity or condemning it outright, Bataille instead seeks to explain the condition of humanity in the mid- to late-twentieth century--a condition that still very much troubles us today.

22 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book made me feel dizzy, January 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Erotism: Death and Sensuality (Paperback)

This is one of the most amazing books I've ever read. Bataille contemplates humanity by means of erotism. He deals with love, sex, death and spirituality. He quests what makes human distinguished from other animals. He is vague sometimes, and leaps amazingly. Actually, I read the book in Korean, but I'd like to share the feeling with anyone who'd love to. If you liked this book, please write to me!