File spoon-archives/bataille.archive/bataille_1999/bataille.9908, message 158


From: MFaizi5009-AT-aol.com
Date: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 23:32:26 EDT
Subject: Re: dis und dat


In a message dated 8/20/99 1:20:35 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
borealis-AT-mail.wellsgray.net writes:

> Subj:  Re: dis und dat
>  Date:    8/20/99 1:20:35 AM Eastern Daylight Time
>  From:    borealis-AT-mail.wellsgray.net (J. Foster)
>  Sender:  owner-bataille-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>  Reply-to:    bataille-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>  To:  bataille-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>  
>  Faizi writes:
>  >If a man claims to possess an "unconsciousness," then, how is he a man?
>  
>  Everyone has an unconscious mind. It functions, and performs many
>  operations, cognitive and emotive. A simple demonstration of the power of
>  the unconscious occurs when a feeling or a thought is repressed by the
>  conscious mind. A person who puts off a task due to pressures or doubts or
>  other opportunities will feel differently than if that they carry out the
>  task. Just try repressing the thought of a nice weekend at a wonderful 
place
>  in the mountains on a weekend and try working instead. If one is really
>  interested in the recreation rather than working on the weekend to catch up
>  on contract work, that person may feel depression, sadness, or worry. If
>  they choose to say no to catch up work, they will feel relieved . 
>  The choice of lifestyle will also effect a persons sense of well being.
>  
>  "The heart has reasons the mind knows nothing about" Pascal
>  
>  
>  >What is depth of feeling, John?  Is such depth mere emotion or is it 
>  >something a bit more focused than emotion?
>  
>  Faizi, I dont know what depth of emotion is. I am supposed to be a man, not
>  a woman. But I'll grant you an answer based on my unconscious feminine 
self.
>  It may not be what you are looking for. 
>  
>  First of all emotion always is associated with a sensory image of one sort
>  or another. It is said that even concepts have some image attached to them,
>  therefore emotions are feelings derived from a sensible image, either in
>  nature or in art and language. The depth of emotion is a function of the
>  intensity of the sensation, or the sensible in the image which may be
>  auditory, visual, tactile, taste, or smell. Those sensible images which are
>  the most intense, are often the most pleasureable, due to contrast, or
>  variation in the course of ones' life. For instance a beautiful sunset is
>  not going to as intense if each day of the year there is a similarily
>  intense sunset, would agree? 
>  
>  Depth does not imply breadth of emotion. This is important because depth as
>  a dimension relates only to the intensity of the emotion, not the duration.
>  Emotions are critical to the survival of the organism since any positive
>  emotion that results from a pleasant sensation improves the survival of the
>  animal. This is why sexual pleasure is very strong in mammals. There is a
>  long gestation period as well as a long nurturing period for mammals
>  relative to say reptiles where there is virtually no gestation period or
>  nurturing period. One would expect therefore that the human species obtains
>  the greatest pleasure of any animal in procreation, and in terms of raising
>  young. In fact the nearest primate relatives of ours the bonobo monkey's
>  have families that function similarly to our own in that they share food 
and
>  to sympathic. The chimpanzee infant may stay with its parent mother for 
over
>  twenty years. There are no apparent reasons other than fact that the mother
>  was solitary and therefore the offspring did not learn to socialize with 
the
>  other monkeys. When the mother died of old age, the offspring remained with
>  the dead mother for two weeks and apparently died of grief. 
>  
>  The presence of grief is the absence of any feeling. In love therefore the
>  greatest happiness is associated with reconciliation. In fact there are
>  three requirements for  love between two people - if love is going to last.
>  Love requires passion, intimacy and trust/commitment. These three types of
>  love are interdependent. Now you replied with your unconscious mind in your
>  reply that commitment is what women what, right? They want commitment from
>  their partners so as to remain in love. However there are two other
>  important features that provide love with some of the greatest emotions and
>  feelings of affection and devotion, namely passion and intimacy. Passion is
>  the desire to unite with the beloved. It is the basis of all romantic love,
>  and some say within the experience of romantic love is found the greastest
>  intensity [depth of emotion]. It in the fullness of passionate love that 
one
>  loses a sense of personal identity. The story of abelardo and heloise is a
>  story of great passion. When two persons meet for the first time and
>  discover they are in love totally with the each other there is no power on
>  earth that is strong enough to prevent them from being in love. Since the
>  power of love is enabled solely in the enactment of love which has its
>  result in making the beloved feel pleasure, love cannot simply be 
passionate
>  all the time. While passion in love is desireable to over come the
>  resistance of the self to withdraw and to doubt, intimacy is critical to
>  love. Intimacy is the ability of lovers to gain understanding of the other
>  using sympathy and care. Some people maintain that intimacy is 'true love'
>  in that it is based on a most self-less desire to reach out to another
>  person in understanding. Intimacy requires an open or quiet  heart. With 
the
>  three types of love there is a triangle completed that takes on a flexible
>  shape since each person has different needs and expectations of love. The
>  level of commitment and trust for instance that one requires in love with
>  another may be difficult to achieve early in the partnership. For instance
>  the level of commitment in love may depend a lot on what a person is 
willing
>  to do to stay. That is to say that the person may break with the commitment
>  to respect the other as a result of anger over something relatively 
trivial.
>  To be committed then is something more than simply staying and living
>  together in the same house, it means to be committed in love to each other
>  in terms of the basic needs such as love. Anger and abusive conduct
>  indicates a serious lack of commitment to the terms of the loving
>  friendship. Strife can soon end love in the fullest sense. Only fools will
>  remain in love where there is no commitment to the terms of love: that is
>  respect, honor, and trust. Neither passion nor intimacy can be enforced,
>  therefore love is an act.
>  
>  >>  The capability of good art whether literature, painting or music is the
>  >>  power of the genre to evoke a feeling-tone to an object or subject 
area. 
> Is
>  >>  this capability also a characteristic of the feminine in both men and 
>  >women?
>  >>  Or is this capability [sensibility] only in the feminine of the 
female? 
>  >
>  >Deep feeling is certainly not the exclusive domain of the female.  Quite 
> the 
>  >contrary. A man is more capable of deep feeling or sensitivity than are 
>  >women.  A woman is shallow.  
>  
>  Faizi, you may be right. I cannot argue with your point. I will never
>  experience being a woman. You will never experience being a man. As Meister
>  Eckhart said: "Love makes one become what the love." Your mission as I see
>  it is to love men so that you become like one of them. Perhaps that is the
>  same for some men as well. 
>  
>  
>  >There is no mystery, John.  The mystery is only a mask; a hook.
>  
>  Well I am sure you just said that are masks. How do we tell when the other
>  is wearing a mask? What is war paint on a womans face look like? What is a
>  death mask look like? Why do women and men do anything with their faces? 
>  
>  >>  >>The aesthetic for the male writer is often about obtaining power. 
>  
>  >What other aesthetic is there?  
>  
>  Obtaining pleasure. Is that what George Bataille is talking about in his
>  writings, in the Story of the Eye for instance. 
>  
>  The following are some quotes from George Bataille;
>  
>  "Man goes constantly in fear of himself. His erotic urges terrify him."
>  [Death and Sensuality]
>  
>  "Eroticism is different from animal sexuality in that for a man aroused
>  clear images surge up with the distinctness of objects; eroticism is the
>  activity of a conscious being." 
>  
>  'I believe that eroticism has a significance for mankind that the 
scientific
>  attitude cannot reach. Eroticism cannot be discussed unless man too is
>  discussed in the process. In particular, it cannot be discussed
>  independently of the history of religions....
>  
>  Let me stress that in this work flights of Christian religious experience
>  and bursts of erotic impulses are seen to be part and parcel of the same
>  movement. 
>  
>  Eroticism, unlike simple sexual activity, is a pyschological quest
>  independent of the natural goal: reproduction and the desire for children.
>  From this elementary definition let us now return to the formula I proposed
>  in the first place: eroticism is assenting to life even in death. 
>  
>  And then, beyond the intoxication of youth, we achieve the power to look
>  death in the face and to perceive in death the pathway into the unknowable
>  and incomprehensible continuity - that path is the secret of eroticism and
>  eroticism alone can reveal it....
>  
>  What I have been saying enables us to grasp in those words the unity of the
>  domain of eroticism  open to us through a conscious refusal to limit
>  ourselves within our individual personalities. Eroticism opens the way to
>  death. Death opens the way to the denial of our individual lives. 
>  
>  Michael Perkins [The Secret Record] comments that Bataille means by evil 
the
>  idea of taboo because it makes the sinner feel anquish through 
transgression
>  against a taboo. There is 'terror' at the heart of sensuality because with
>  sensuality there is associated the ultimate depth of pleasure with another
>  which is immediate, not mediated. Eroticism is" wedded to life itself; not
>  as an object of scientific study, but more deeply, as an object of passion
>  and poetic contemplation." Erotic love is love in the deepest sense. It
>  includes passion and intimacy, as well as commitment since it is found in
>  the death of the self, which is momentary, according to Bataille. 
Forgetting
>  ones self in the transgression of the taboo is the 'death' of the self. 
Only
>  the center is left alive, the heart. 
>  
>  "Poetry leads to the same place as all forms of eroticism - to the blending
>  and fusion of seperate objects." George Bataille. 
>  
>  In the discussion of the fragment by Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe
>  Lacoue-LaBarthe there is an interesting paragraph on what art consists in.
>  In the discussion the point is made that "romanticism aims  at the heart 
and
>  inmost depths - that 'most profound intimacy' scattered throughout
>  texts....in this same inmost depth, the dialectical unit[y] of artificial
>  production (of art) and of natural production: of procreation, germination,
>  and birth. One should never forget the term naive appears in these texts
>  (especially in connection with the naive poetry of the ancients), that 
after
>  Schiller this word refers to both naivete (innocence) and nativity. The
>  motif of the unification of the Ancient and the Modern, as it appears so
>  often in the fragments, always refers to the necessity of bringing about a
>  rebirth of ancient naivete according to modern poetry."
>  
>  The abysmally romantic conception then is too remain in fear of sin [to
>  remain naive], but to yield to life in spite of the anguish that the taboo
>  arouses. For Man then the greatest fear is the fear of involvement in the
>  erotic since it is a powerful urge to forget taboos.  The erotic is the
>  impulse for life in death. It is the ancient love of friendship and 
passion. 
> 
>  
>  john
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  >
>  >>  >The aesthetic for the female writer is about power over the sensation 
> of
>  >>  >lack of identity, which (identity) is given concretion in emotional
>  >>  >experience.
>  >>  >
>  >>  >>There are the writings of Ralph Ellison, and  Hawthorne
>  >>  >>that are really good in that they can express more nuances in 
feeling. 
> 
>  >
>  >> Women
>  >>  >>write about people they know and love. 
>  >
>  >If one is a lover of philosophy, then, how can one condone the writers of 
>  >relationships?
>  >
>  >
>  >>  >Yes, and that's about the only thing they write about.  Relationship 
is
>  >>  >everything to a woman; relationship grounded in emotional experience. 
 
>  >What
>  >>  >woman ever seriously had a relationship to her ideas?
>  >
>  >>  >>Of course I am generalizing. But
>  >>  >>there is a difference and women make good company. 
>  >
>  >Do they make good company when they become demanding?
>  >
>  >>  >Personally, I find women (of either gender) largely intolerable 
company[
>  
>  >]..
>  >> .
>  >>  >They appear to seriously believe that what they
>  >>  >"feel" is of equal significance to what they "think".  This is
>  >>  >understandable, and to some degree, probably true, given that, in the 
>  >main,
>  >>  >their thought is hopelessly superficial.  
>  >>  
>  >>  Is this not a favourable recipe for the creative process that makes 
for 
>  >good
>  >>  art? 
>  >
>  >Most artists are male.
>  >
>  >>  Does not the rational side of existence need to collaborate with the
>  >>  creative side of existence to perfect art? and to develop a 
sensibility 
> for
>  >>  art.  In the following paragraph you refer to myth as concealment. Can 
> you
>  >>  elaborate a little more on this in general use of the term myth? 
>  >
>  >What is art besides decoration?  How is art important?  Is it important 
to 
>  >the development of the individual or is it a frivolous pursuit in light 
of 
>  >pure thought?
>  >
>  >>  >It is largely true that the sexes do not understand each other very 
> well.
>  >>  >But for the man, his ignorance is borne of egotistical weakness, not 
> some
>  >>  >inherent incapacity or limit of cognitive experience.  He *chooses* to
>  >>  >remain ignorant to the nature of Woman; he chooses to create the myth 
> of
>  >>  >Woman as Goddess because it is not in his nature to be submissive, 
and 
> if
>  >>  >submit he must, in order to achieve his comforts, then what he 
submits 
> to
>  >>  >must be a thing of relative greatness, a thing worthy of his 
submission 
> 
>  >
>  >If a man submits in order to achieve comfort from a woman, then, how is 
he 
> a 
>  >man?
>  >If woman is a Goddess, then, what of him?  Does he agree to slavery?
>  >
>  >Man is a pathetic creature indeed.
>  >
>  >Faizi
>  >  
>  >>  >Dan Rowden
>  >>  >
>  >>  >
>  >>  >
>  >>  >
>  >>  >
>  >>  
>  >>  
>  >>  
>  >
>  >
>  
>  
>  
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>  Subject: Re: dis und dat
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