Trevor,
I've also been struggling with Bataille's On Nietzsche. I too have been wondering what is going on in this text. My solution is to read it as a proto-weblog.
It is not a weblog as a personal diary in the sense of the content of many of the Adelaide weblogs. Most of these are concerned with, 'I did this, I've got problems with the boss at work, I went to this see this film at a cinema in Rundle Street, I'm having problems with my hair dresser, I'm having a bad day, I passed my exams at uni. with these grades etc.'
Many of these dairy weblogs are very good at this, even if they are very reticent about their sexual experiences.
Bataille's "weblog" is more a poetic/philosophical journal that articulates or rather explores his concerns with his inner experience in a conversation with Nietzsche's texts on a regular basis.
In Chapter 2 of On Nietzsche we find Bataille exploring morality in terms of breaking the moral law of the old codes and beginning a difficult journey of exploring other possibilites beyond the good. Bataille puts down few ideas down, then links to passages in Nietzsche's The Will to Power. ( I can never find the dam quotes).
These links are about turning away from the past, creating the future, increasing our freedom, celebrating our liveliness, living in hopefulness. The future is sketched as seen as surpassing limits.
Just as an aside. You can see Foucault in a lot of this in freedom as living through surpassing the limits. These are the limits of moral codes not the surpassing of biological limits through the genetic engineering of our offspring.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at December 11, 2003 07:38 AM | TrackBack