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October 10, 2003
I am tiring of the discussion of Nietzsche. I think I'll move on to Bataille. The main thing about Bataille, which all the Nietzsche stuff points to, is sovereignty. What follows is largely a condensation of the discussion arising from Bataille's interview with Marguerite Duras, which appears in her long out of print book, Outside. The interview with Duras took place a few years before Bataille's death.
Bataille intended that the posthumously published third volume of The Accursed Share would deal with the question of sovereignty and Nietzsche was to be a central focus, despite what Bataille called his 'prefascist errors'. He remained significant to Bataille because of his search for the sovereign value. If being a moral philosopher is being concerned with value, then Bataille saw Nietzsche as a moral philosopher. But he also thought that Nietzsche was incomprehensible if he was seen as in any way upholding the kinds of values upheld in fascist societies, which are essentially military values. Sovereignty is opposed to military values. The latter are not authentically sovereign because their aim is to achieve a precise goal. A sovereign attitude is the antithesis of a work ethic. We work to gain an advantage. If our attitude is sovereign we no longer worry about anything. Generals and politicians are like travelling salesmen. 'Nietzsche, on the other hand, defined himself in terms of his refusal to calculate political advantages.' He understood that a sovereign goal could not be subordinated. A cow in a pasture is a better manifestation of sovereignty than a king.
For Bataille, this did not signify political inaction, a simple inner retreat. Indeed, for him, communism is in accord with sovereignty as the supreme human value, because communism cannot allow any principle that is above human life. The problem is that almost all roads to communism traversed thus far, which are basically 'socialist', have led to the subordination of the individual to something transcendent and alienating. Bataille was thinking in particular of subordination to production. Subordination to something which the individual is not limits that individual's needs-satisfactions. In the Kafka essay in Literature And Evil Bataille sees socialism as the most advanced stage of the process of subordination advanced in the Enlightenment. This is in accord with Nietzsche's evaluation of socialism in The Antichrist.
Sovereignty leads to privation rather than privilege. Even in a socialist society workers would have had more rights and greater means than intellectuals. Privation is the means by which intellectuals have more immediate access to sovereignty than manual labourers. Duras remarked that for both Nietzsche and Bataille sovereignty is 'both an open road and a dead end'. Bataille merely replied that it is about not setting limits.
He suggested that as soon as one moves towards sovereignty 'one encounters God'. The idea of unlimitedness is associated with God. To experience sovereignty is to 'place oneself in the position of God'; which is 'equivalent to being tortured'. Being God means being in harmony with all that is, including the worst. Indeed, all that exists is willed by God, including the worst. Bataille finds this idea comic.
The need to accept and respect the existence of others is the major obstacle to the pursuit of sovereignty. Social existence is on the whole satisfying to us, still we can't resist a fit of temper. 'An individual in the grip of his temper is a madman. One might even say that a madman is the perfect image of the sovereign.' Even if we choose not to generally behave like a madman, we have to give madness its due.
There is sovereignty as an experience and there is the artistic expression of sovereignty, the topic of Bataille's book, Literature And Evil. Bataille's approach to artistic expression is essentially surrealist. He writes at random until the process leads to the point where he can do nothing but make a book. It is a process that is close to automatic writing.
Bataille did not live in hope but took satisfaction in understanding. This was why he could not be a communist, for to be a communist meant investing hope in the world. 'I lack the vocation of those who feel responsible for the world' he remarked. 'I believe that the demands of the workers are unanswerable by their adversaries...but...I am not even a communist.' Communism is desirable for Bataille but he finds in himself just an ordinary person, thinking 'more or less what other people think', not a political activist. In this respect he is more like a sovereign, or someone waiting for the advent of sovereignty and writing about it.
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