Eroticizing Aesthetics

In the Real with Bataille and Lacan

Eroticizing Aesthetics cover

Eroticizing Aesthetics

In the Real with Bataille and Lacan

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Description

Bringing together Bataille with Lacan and Nietzsche, Tim Themi examines the role of aesthetics implicit in each and how this invokes an erotic process celebrating the real of what is usually excluded from articulation. Bataille came to deem eroticism as the standpoint from which to grasp humanity as a whole, based on his understanding of our transition to humanity being founded on a series of taboos placed on inner animality. An erotic outlet for the latter was historically the aesthetic dimensions of our religions, but Bataille’s view of how this was gradually diminished has much in keeping with Nietzsche’s critique of Christian-Platonic dualism and Lacan’s of the desexualised Good of Western metaphysics. Building from these often surprising proximities, Themi closely examines Bataille’s many interventions into the history of aesthetics — from his confrontations with Breton’s surrealism to his own novels and encounter with the animal cave paintings of Lascaux — radically re-illuminating the corollary phenomena of Dionysos in Nietzsche’s philosophy and the “jouissance [enjoyment] of transgression” in the psychoanalysis of Lacan. A new ethical criterion for aesthetic works and creations on this basis becomes possible.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
INTRODUCTION

1BATAILLE, NIETZSCHE, LACAN, AND THE REAL OF EROTICS
1.1Palaeolithic Transition from Animal to Human
1.2 Death of Tragedy from Socrates' Incompetence
1.3Taboo on Transgression from Yahweh's Ignorance
1.4Capitalism's Curious Service of Goods

2 METAPHORISING THE SPLIT GAZE OF BATAILLE'S STORY OF EYE
2.1 Surface Formalism: Metonymic Crosscuts of Metaphoric Chains
2.2 Depth Contents: The Violence of the Eye's Transgression
2.3 Sade's Sovereign Man: The Rape of Priest's Eye by the Gaze

3 BATAILLE, NIETZSCHE, LACAN AND THE REAL OF AESTHETICS
3.1 Dissident Surrealism: Bataille's Documents Critique of Aesthetics
3.2 Lascaux Caves: Divine Animality as the Originary Real of Aesthetics
3.3 The Accursed Sovereignty of Art, and Nietzsche

4 NIETZSCHE'S AFFIRMING PSYCHOANALYSIS IN FREUD, SURREALIST MODERNSIM, BATAILLE, AND LACAN
4.1 Germanophone Context: Nietzsche and Freud
4.2 Francophone Context: Bataille, Surrealism, Modernism, Lacan
4.3 Di

Product details

Published 15 Mar 2024
Format Paperback
Edition 1st
Extent 230
ISBN 9781538147849
Imprint Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Illustrations 1 b/w photos;
Dimensions 228 x 150 mm
Series Global Aesthetic Research
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

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