Our explorations of part 11 of On Nietzsche show that Bataille is concerned with the experience at the very limits of life, at the extreme where death impinges. On this edge, communication as physical lovemaking, as desire that takes nothingness as its object, comes into play. It loosens the boundaries of our individual monadic existence. It is the desire for flesh that leads us to risking ourselves by relating to one another. It is in sex that we find the complex interplay of communication.
Make no mistake. We are exploring the life of the flesh. Unlike Hegel, who concentrated on (embodied) self-consciousness to explore relatedness, Bataille concentrates on bodies. He is writing a philosophy of sex.
In Chapter 111 Bataille explores death. He says:
"What is disclosed in defilement doesn't differ substantially from what is revealed in death---the dead body and excreted matter are both expressive of nothingness, while the dead body in addition participated in filth. Excrement is the dead part of me I have to get rid of, by making it disappear, finally annihilating it."
"Obscenity is a zone of nothingness we have to cross--without which beauty lacks the suspended, risked aspect tht brings about our damnation. Attractive, voluptuous nakedness finally triumps when defilement causes us to risk ourselves (though in other cases, nakedness fails because it remains ugliness wholly at the level of defilement)"
The theological language then intervenes and he starts talking about the defilement of temptation. He means temptation of the flesh: "under shameful conditions I give in ---and so pay for a streetwalker". His Catholicism means that this temptation eats away at him, torturing him:
"Crude obscenity gnaws away at my existence, its excremental nature rubbing off on me---this nothingness carried away by filth, this nothingness I should have expelled, this nothingness I should have distanced myself from ---amnd I'm left defenceless and vulnerable, opening myself to it in an exhausting wound."