No Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Eye: Transgression and Masculinity in Bataille

and Foucault
Author(s): Judith Surkis
Source: Diacritics, Vol. 26, No. 2, Georges Bataille: An Occasion for Misunderstanding
(Summer, 1996), pp. 18-30
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1566294
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 NO FUN AND GAMES UNTIL
SOMEONE LOSES AN EYE
TRANSGRESSION AND MASCULINITY IN
BATAILLE AND FOUCAULT

JUDITH SURKIS

In August 1963 Critique published an "Hommage ' Georges Bataille," a special is

commemorating the death of its founder. How did the volume's contributors go abo
seemingly tricky business of pledging fealty to the philosopher of sovereignty? How
they profess loyalty to, in effect recognize, the sovereign subject known to insis
refuse masterful identity?
Apparently undisturbed by this difficulty, the articles written by Bataille's acqu
tances-Alfred Metraux, Michel Leiris, Raymond Queneau, Andr6 Masson, and J
Piel amongst them-establish an explicitly fraternal relation to their contemporar
begins his homage with an account of their initial encounter chez Queneau in 1927, n
his "impression of extraordinary fraternity, an impression which, through our last m
days before his death, never diminished" [721]. Intermingling intellectual and pe
history, these occasional pieces remember Bataille in a variety of contexts: the awak
of his interest in ethnology and work on Documents in the 1920s, his early "conf
tions" with Hegel and work on Critique sociale and Contre-attaque in the 1930s
sensitivity to events and developments in post-World-War-II Europe. While signif
diverse in focus, these articles manifest a similar approach, at once biographic
autobiographical, detailing the unfolding of shared intellectual amitil in favorite
apartments, and studios. Bataille emerges here as a historical subject whose intere
investments, while multiple and, to use Leiris's metonym, even "impossibl
repeatedly linked to a variety of intellectual and political milieux.
Michel Foucault's "Preface to Transgression" assumes a more reverential tone
the pieces written by members of Bataille's own generation. While framed as an e
"homage" in its recognition of a certain debt to Bataille, Foucault's essay also play
the contradiction of pledging loyalty to a "sovereign" who repeatedly renounces h
claim to mastery. Bataille's death becomes an occasion on which to herald the "
down" and "shattering" of the masterful philosophical subject conventionally assu
be in control of the "natural" language of dialectics [42-43]. For Foucault,
possibility for philosophy is seen to arise in "the non-dialectical language of the
which arises only in transgressing the one who speaks" [44], a transgression rep
performed, according to Foucault, in Bataille's own writing and metaphorically
in and by his death. Bataille had, after all, proclaimed in the conclusion to Erotis
give transgression to philosophy as a foundation (it is the approach of my though
Bataille's theory of transgression aims to evoke a "world of play" in which "philo
disintegrates" [275]. Yet, if the disintegration of philosophy in and through transgr
is already Bataille's "project," we might inquire into why Foucault frames his ar
a preface.

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 In introducing this presumably already achieved transgression, the "Preface" affects
a curious, alternating temporality, a certain confusion of anteriority and posteriority.1 At
once following and preceding Bataille, Foucault remains out of sync and hence unable to
coincide with Bataille in the shared amitie inscribed by the author's contemporaries; it
would appear that this generational gap introduces a certain shift in the recollection of
Bataille's legacy. Following in his footsteps, Foucault appropriates one ofBataille's own
disorienting gestures-the tactical use of prefaces, itself mentioned in the "Preface"
[43]-in order to dislodge Bataille from his anterior position; instead, Bataille comes to
epitomize the transgression predicted by Foucault's "philosophical" preface. Bataille's
(and, by implication, Foucault's own) "location" becomes confused and obscured; as I
hope to show, Foucault is invested in achieving this state of indeterminacy for both
himself and Bataille.

To honor Bataille in death assumes a double significance for Foucault: it represents

a "transgression of the philosopher's being" which "has sent us to the pure transgression
of his texts" [40] and simultaneously allows Foucault to sacralize Bataille. "Pure
transgression" becomes liberated from the historically located being of the philosopher.
And further, since the language of transgression is linked by Foucault to the "death of
God," Bataille becomes, in a sense, "deified" in the announcement and celebration of his
death. In introducing us to the "image" of the now passed, absented Bataille, the "Preface"
offers up a void into which Foucault (as well as the reader) may proceed to fall, thus
facilitating a self-shattering. The question is whether Bataille is as lost in the "pure
transgression of his texts" as Foucault makes him out to be.

In his attempt to lose himself (rupture his own philosophical and discursive limits) in
Bataille, Foucault both appropriates and repositions Bataille's theory of transgression,
effacing the gendered dynamic that I think structures Bataille's concept, an exclusion
upon which, I will argue, Foucault's own project of self-loss relies. Moreover, an
examination of the gendering of transgression might throw its very viability into question.
In order to sketch this complex play of positions, I will begin with Bataille's own model
of eroticism.

The vision of erotic transgression set forth in Erotism concentrates on the experience
of the "discontinuous subject" in his attempt to transgress the limits of individual
existence by leaping or falling into the realm of continuity or limitless being in order to
access the zone of death.2 For Bataille this experience of continuity should not be confused
with absolute and final death; he stresses that "continuity is what we are after, but
generally only if that continuity which the death of discontinuous beings can alone
establish is not the victor in the long run" [18-19]. The experience of death in eroticism
is, by definition, always only proximate- simultaneously rupturing and maintaining the
limits of individual existence. Bataille insists: "At all costs we need to transcend [limits],
but we should like to transcend them and maintain them simultaneously" [141]. The
transgressive experience is thus organized and produced by the imposition of a limit
always existing in relation to it, even and especially at the moment of its rupture. The
sensation of transgression is conditioned by a cognizance of the taboo and is, as a result,
fundamentally "duplicitous," performing "a reconciliation of what seems impossible to
reconcile, respect for the law and violation of the law... " [36].

1. On the complexities of such prefaces in philosophical writing, see Jacques Derrida,

"Outwork, Prefacing."
2. I use the masculine pronoun here quite deliberately, for, as I will hope to show, there is a
fundamentally gendered structure operative in Bataille's theorization of the experience of eroti-
cism.

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 Transgression thus heightens or creates an awareness of the law. As Bataille writes:
"If we observe the taboo, if we submit to it, we are no longer conscious of it. But in the
act of violating it we feel the anguish of mind without which the taboo could not exist.

. . That experience leads to the completed transgression which, in maintaining the

prohibition, maintains it in order to benefit by it [pour enjouir]" [38; OC 42]. Since the
pleasures orjouissance of eroticism are intimately related to the injunctions that prohibit
them, the subject must always be aware of the existence of the law in order to experience
limitless being in the moment of transgression; he must be sensitive "to the anguish at the
heart of the taboo no less great than the desire which leads him to infringe it" [38-39]. This
is the fundamental structure of Bataille's transgression, and, as Carolyn Dean has argued,
this paradoxical dynamic is integral to his understanding of the subject. Because his self-
loss actually makes him aware of the law, it is "lived as the constituent moment of self-
hood" [242; see also Hollier]. However, Dean questions the universal applicability of a
subjectivity founded by its own dissolution. She argues that it presumes a "masculine"
subject who initially possesses a position or self to transgress or lose. Dean suggests that,
for Bataille, the reconciliation of "manhood" and castration are constitutive of his notion
of the "virile" rather than incompatible with it. In effect, the "wholeness" of Bataille's
virile man is, as she writes, "paradoxically linked to an experience of transgressing limits
rather than of containment within boundaries that would demarcate his being." If this
virility is repeatedly produced in and by self-dissolution of a masculine subject, Dean
wonders where "women figure in this scheme of things" [244-45].3 Upon reading
Erotism, we find that images of women's self-loss are prominent in Bataille's theory of
erotic transgression; they are instrumental to the enactment of masculine self-loss.
Bataille's introductory discussion of the process by which individual discontinuity
is ruptured-the mise en oeuvre of eroticism-relies on an initial, gendered difference
between erotic partners. Bataille writes:

The transitionfrom the normal state to that of erotic desire presupposes a partial

dissolution of the person as he exists in the realm of discontinuity . ... In the

process of dissolution, the masculine partner [partenaire masculin] has gener-
ally an active role, while the feminine part [partie f6minine] is passive. The
passive, female side is essentially the one that is dissolved as a separate entity
[en tant qu'&tre continu6]. Butfor the male partner the dissolution ofthe passive
partner means one thing only: it is paving the way for a fusion where both are
mingled, attaining at length the same degree of dissolution. [17; OC 23]

A fundamental division is enacted here between the "masculine partner" and the
"feminine part"; the feminine side is already lost as a subject, a partial object from the
beginning. In order for the masculine side to lose himself, the passive, feminine side must
be always already dissolved as a continuous being: her loss initiates his fall into
continuity. In the meantime, the masculine partner is only "relatively dissolved,"
remaining "discontinuous" enough to derive meaning and sense from her imaged
annihilation. The feminine dissolution is thus necessarily prior to the masculine, with his
experience of continuity predicated on her prior and total self-loss.
Bataille elaborates on what is "seen" by the masculine partner in this scenario,
outlining how an "aura of death" is necessary in order to "denote" erotic passion. To whom
is this passion denoted? The beloved is repeatedly inscribed as significant for the lover;
the scenario functions within a specular economy in which her image of dissolution

3. Dean interrogates women's ability to participate in Bataille 's scheme oftransgression. For,
if "woman" is defined as that which is not "one," is not "whole, "as in effect already at a loss for
a self then how can she participate in a model of transgression which is founded on self-loss?

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appears as ameaningful sign for him. Bataille writes: "Only in the violation, through death
if need be, of the individual's solitariness can there appear that image of the beloved object
which has for the lover the sense of all that is [qu'apparaft cette image de l'Vtre aime qui
a pour l'amant le sens de tout ce qui est]" [20-21; OC 26]. This image of the beloved is,
paradoxically, transparent, a window onto a world of limitless being: "The beloved is for
the lover the transparency of the world. Through the beloved appears... full and limitless
being, which does not limit, which no longer limits personal discontinuity [l'Vtre plein et
illimitd, que ne limite, que ne limite plus la discontinuit, personelle]" [21; OC 26]. Full
and limitless being "appears" to the lover through the beloved's transparency-her
present absence. This being is "glimpsed as a deliverance through the person of the
perceived being [l'&tre apergue]" [21; OC 26]. Continuous being arises as a possibility
only when seen through the transparency of the beloved; she renders limitlessness to the
lover. This limitlessness is then always perceived by the lover; he remains "discontinu-
ous" and distanced enough to sense her loss. It is unclear what the beloved ever "sees."
Or rather, the point is precisely that the beloved sees nothing.
The perception of transgression in eroticism (and hence, also its theorization) relies
upon an initial specular and speculative distance that allows one of the partners to witness
the other's image of loss. Bataille writes, "it can happen that without the evidence [of
transgression] we no longer have the feeling of freedom [il arrive que sans l'evidence,
nous ne dprouvons plus ce sentiment de liberte] that the full accomplishment of the sexual
act demands" [107; OC 107, altered translation].4 Erotic transgression relies upon a prior
trace or evidence of transgression. We have seen that the interaction between taboo and
transgression in physical eroticism rests upon the fundamentally paradoxical play of
appearances in which "the taboo never makes an appearance without suggesting sexual
pleasure, nor does pleasure without evoking the taboo" [108]. In effect, "the remarkable
thing about the sex taboo is that it is fully seen in transgression" [107]. But how is the law
seen? What form does its appearance take? In Bataille's model, the taboo is seen in the
image of a feminine other's transgression.
For Bataille, the woman, as the marker of difference, becomes the site upon which
transgression appears. This is where the gendered erotic object comes into play. Bataille' s
eroticism posits a distance and difference between partners in order to permit the
presentation of an image or "evidence" of transgression. The masculine partner in
physical eroticism has difficulty sensing transgression within himself. Bataille posits that
"a man cannot usually feel that the law is violated in his own person and that is why he
expects a woman to feel confused, even if she only pretends to do so" [134]. Without the
woman's confusion, the masculine partner "would not have the consciousness of a
violation" [OC 133, my translation]. The woman's equivocal "confusion" images both the
existence of the taboo and its transgression; her reconciliation of what seems impossible
to reconcile makes the transgression appear and "marks [marquer]" "that the taboo is not
forgotten, that the infringement takes place in spite of the taboo, in full consciousness of
the taboo."(134; OC 133]. Prior to his own, subsequent self-violation, the man must be
conscious of her violation.
The image of the woman's dissolution is "an announcing sign of crisis" [OC 130, my
translation]. For Bataille, "a pretty girl stripped naked is sometimes an image of
eroticism" [OC 130, his emphasis, my translation]. He points out, however, that the image
presented by the erotic object is not "eroticism itself; it is not eroticism in its completeness,
but eroticism working through it [en passe par lui]" [130; OC 130]. The erotic object,

4. In a footnote, Bataille illustrates his point by describing a voyeuristic scene from a novel
by Marcel Aymi. The scene involves a couple having sex while witnessing an execution. Bataille
writes, "The passage describes the execution of some militia men, preceded by other horrible and
bloody incidents, observed by a couple who sympathized with the victims" [107].

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lacking in itself, is the conduit for masculine self-loss. Bataille writes, "eroticism which
is fusion, which shifts interest away from and beyond the person and his limits, is
nevertheless expressed by an object" [130; my emphasis]. Thus the desired fusion and
self-loss rely upon the object's (prior) expression or "image" of transgression. This erotic
object is fundamentally paradoxical for Bataille. The woman becomes the condensed site
of an apparent contradiction; while she "symbolizes the contrary, the negation of the
object, she herself is still an object" [131]. The woman is thus always only a symbol that
expresses or denotes transgression to the masculine partner. As Suzanne Guerlac writes,
"The woman-the erotic object-is essential to eroticism in order to render it saisissable,
in order to figure it or present it to consciousness through the mediation of visual form"
[104].5
In her essay, Guerlac examines the images of women in Bataille's eroticism in order
to problematize its use as a model for the transgression of the limits of philosophy. In
particular, she questions Derrida's characterization of Bataille's transgressive sover-
eignty as "an expenditure without reserve" which takes no-thing as its object. She argues
that the erotic object does introduce a relationship of subordination, "of possession in a
nonreciprocal relation," into Bataille's erotic dynamic [102]. Her reading clarifies that,
although perhaps desiring an "expenditure without reserve" in the loss of discontinuous
self into continuity, sovereignty relies upon the image of another's loss in order to
envision the possibility of self-transgression.
In his conclusion to Erotism, Bataille proclaims: "I believe that the supreme
philosophical question coincides with the summits of eroticism" [273]. The inarticulable
moment that exists beyond the grasp of philosophical discourse is experienced in the
supreme moment of eroticism- in its silence. How close does Bataille get to this answer?
He remarks of his own project, "Talk about [eroticism] I shall, but as something beyond
our present set of experiences . . ." [252]. Language can only gesture or point to this
beyond. Yet it serves a crucial function. Bataille asks: "But would the summit be
accessible if discourse had not revealed the access?" [OC 269, my translation]. Bataille
constantly keeps his sights focused on a beyond he cannot see, on the moment when
transgression will disrupt the sense of his discursive language. The silence revealed by the
transgression thus exists beyond and subsequent to-but following on a route revealed
by-discursive language.
Bataille is not unaware of the difficulty this presents for his own project. Throughout
Erotism, he stresses that eroticism is defined by a partial and proximate gesture toward
continuous existence. And, in his conclusion, he cites Jean Wahl's critique of the dynamic
between erotic partners:

One ofthe partners must be conscious ofcontinuity. Bataille talks to us, Bataille
writes, he is aware of what he is doing, and the moment that he is, the continuity
can be broken. I don't know what Bataille will have to say about this, but I think
there is a real problem here. Consciousness ofcontinuity is no longer continuity,
but there is no more speech for all that. [276]

Bataille responds: "Jean Wahl had taken my meaning exactly." But he adds, "I answered
him straight off and told him he was right, but that sometimes on the borderline continuity
and consciousness draw very close together" [276]. Bataille highlights the "possibility"

5. Guerlac's article complicates Derrida's reading ofBataille's sovereignty as "subordinated

to nothing" by examining the role played by an erotic object-the prostitute-in his theorization
of physical eroticism [104]. While my reading follows aspects of her argument, our emphases are
different. She is more interested in investigating Bataille's relationship to Hegel. I will later discuss
the implications of her reading in the context of my own project. See also Chantal Thomas's
discussion of the necessary femininity of nudity in Bataille in "Contre le sexe fade" [28].

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of this limit situation as the focus of his interest. It represents "an essential project, a kind
of fundamental goal" [OC 693, my translation]. However, the achievement of this
borderline position remains reliant on the "image" of the other partner as lost to continuity.
The lost partner is a figure for that which lies beyond the limits of language, maintaining
an image of this beyond within the parameters of Bataille's discourse. His textual and
experiential access to the limit situation is conditioned by the woman's imaging of his
desired self-absention. We will find, however, that descriptions of the woman-subject are
remarkably missing from Foucault' s discussion. How does Foucault appropriate Bataille's
model while at the same time excluding the pivotal figure of woman's self-loss described
above?

In my reading of "Preface to Transgression," I argue that Foucault (in order to enable

his own transgression of philosophical limits) performs this elision by positioning
Bataille (rather than a woman) as a placeholder for self-loss. In this textually "erotic"
relationship, Bataille no longer exists in the limit position; he is beyond the pale, already
continuous or "dead." In order to affirm his own future self-loss, Foucault obscures
Bataille's reliance on the image of a feminine other's self-loss. I hope to show that if
Foucault examined the gendering that inheres in Bataille's transgression, the model
would be much more difficult if not impossible to assimilate. He would have to address
how the speaking/writing subjects in Bataille (both Bataille himself and his fictional
narrators) are never fully dissipated. Foucault would thus be forced to question whether
his own self-dissolution is ever fully possible.
Foucault explicitly takes up Bataille's project of giving transgression to philosophy
as a foundation. As emphasized by Bataille, the relation between transgression and the
limit is not one of simple opposition. Due to his interest in finding and founding a
"nondialectical" mode of thought, Foucault highlights this non-negating operation of
transgression, stressing how its "nonpositive affirmation" is incomprehensible in tradi-
tional modes of philosophical analysis.6 He writes: "No form of dialectical movement, no
analysis of constitutions and their transcendental ground can serve as support for thinking
about such an experience.. ." [37]. This experience-as inconceivable in conventional
forms-thus challenges the limits of philosophical thought. In a sense, there are two
transgressions going on here: the unthinkability of transgression, in turn, challenges the
limits of philosophy. In "Preface," Bataille is posited as figure for the first of these
transgressions in order for Foucault to theorize the second. Analogous to the lost partner
in Erotism, Bataille maintains an image of the beyond, the un- or not-yet-thinkable, within
Foucault's theoretical essay.
Foucault upholds Bataille as an always already "sovereign" figure who marks the
limits of (Foucault's) philosophical language. He urges that "the sovereignty of these
experiences must surely be recognized some day, and we must try to assimilate them: not
to reveal their truth-a ridiculous pretension with respect to words that form our limits-
but to serve as a basis for finally liberating our language" [38-39]. In representing and
forming the limits of Foucault's discourse, Bataille offers a glimpse of a future "libera-
tion" to Foucault. He insistently positions Bataille beyond himself, figuring him as a
horizon to reach toward. In effect, Foucault ignores how, as we have seen in the conclusion
to Erotism, Bataille remains on the near rather than the far side of the limit. In "Preface,"
Bataille takes on the character of the convulsed or lost woman's body which appears so
frequently in his own writings: "Bataille's language.., continually breaks down at the
center of its space, exposing in his nakedness, a visible and insistent subject who had tried
to keep language at arms length, but who now finds himself thrown by it, exhausted upon

6. Here Foucault's argument differsfrom Derrida's later discussion. For Foucault, transgres-
sion is beyond and in excess of dialectical thought rather than a displacement of it. For Derrida's
different reading, see "From Restricted to General Economy: A Hegelianism Without Reserve."

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24

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the sands of that which he can no longer say" [39]. Foucault's description of the exposed,
"naked," and "visible" subject is significant in light of Bataille's own discussions of the
role of naked figures in the dynamic of erotic transgression. Bataille' s language provides
the necessary, visible figure in and through whom Foucault can "witness" the possibility
of his own transgression. Bataille's convulsed (figurative) body marks the limit and
makes the possibility of its transgression visible to Foucault. David Carroll, in his
discussion of "Preface," comments that "there is no doubt in Foucault's mind that the
philosophers of transgression have achieved this [sovereign thought], that the liberation
of thought and discourse has already occurred" [188]. Carroll argues that, "through this
mimetic identification with Bataille and others, Foucault guarantees in advance his own
critical power and gathers the spoils of victory from a battle fought by others" [188]. Thus,
in Carroll's interpretation, as in my own, Foucault must figure Bataille's transgression as
an event that has already occurred. I would argue that beyond simply supporting
Foucault's discourse, Bataille, as a figure who marks both the limit and its rupture,
actually allows Foucault to envision his own (future) transgression. However, although
Bataille furnishes the necessary "image" of transgression, he does not complete the
project Foucault has in mind; Bataille's transgression-like that of the erotic object-
remains incomplete. The form of "the philosophy of eroticism" lies in the future-
Bataille's own project notwithstanding. Foucault asserts that "no form of reflection yet
developed, no established discourse, can supply its model, its foundation, or even the
riches of its vocabulary" [40]. He reiterates Bataille's own hope that the theorization of
the subjective experience of eroticism, exemplified by "the language of sexuality," will
mark a path toward the transgression of conventional philosophical discourse. Bataille is
here positioned as already beyond language and, as a result, in need of Foucault's
theoretical elucidation:

Our efforts are undoubtedly better spent in trying to speak of this experience and
in making it speak from the depths where its language fails, from precisely the
place where words escape it, where the subject who speaks has just vanished,
where the spectacle topples over before an upturned eye-from where Bataille's
death has recently placed his language. [40]

Foucault hopes to attain, through a reading of the "pure transgression" of Bataille's texts,
a shattering of his own philosophical subjectivity. Foucault proposes an observation of
Bataille's "exemplary" self-torture. In Bataille, he witnesses the "first reflected torture of
that which speaks in philosophical language [Vcartelement premier et rflechi de ce qui
parle dans le langage philosophique.]" [42; 761]. Bataille provides an initial (therefore
prior) "image" or reflection of the philosophical subject's torture. Foucault observes
Bataille's own dismemberment, a disintegration that "makes us aware [rendue sensible]
of the shattering of the philosophical subject" [43]. How, we might ask, does Bataille do
this?

Foucault turns to the eye of Bataille's writing as a figure of "inner experience" and
its implicit disruption of philosophical being7 and concentrates on the significance of the

7. Martin Jay has argued that this discussion of Bataille may be placed in the context of
Foucault's wider antiocular discourse. See "In the Empire of the Gaze: Foucault and the
Denigration of Vision in Twentieth Century Thought" [186].
Like Roland Barthes, Foucault reads the eye as a representative figure for Bataille's own
transgressive language which, in "describ[ing] a circle," "refers to itself and is folded back on a
questioning of its limits" [44]. Roland Barthes's "Mitaphore de l'oeil" was originally published
in the same volume of Critique as Foucault's own essay. Barthes concentrates on the linguistic or
formal aspects of Bataille's transgression rather than on the significance of the eye for the
philosophical subject. The transgression ofBataille's text is imaged, for Barthes, by the rupturing

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eye as a "figure of being in the act of transgressing its own limit" [45]. At this point, critical
slippages occur in Foucault's argument, for he insistently reads the eye as an image of
Bataille's own disruptive inner experiences rather than examining how, in Bataille's
writings, the eye's transgressions are persistently witnessed by a narrating writer. In
Foucault's readings, Bataille himself (as the tortured subject of philosophy) seems to
experience the transgression of this eye. In effect, Bataille becomes a "figure of being in
the act of transgressing its own limit."
Foucault contrasts Bataille's images of the exorbitated and upturned eye to the
traditional eye of philosophical reflection. The conventional eye of reflection withdraws
into the interior of the self and is, in the process, granted an ever greater "transparency of
vision." Diametrically opposed to this figure, the exorbitated eye is thrown outward rather
than drawn inward; its sight is denied rather than accorded an increased transparency. The
subject of this ocular transgression is simultaneously deprived of vision and offered "the
spectacle of that indestructible core which now imprisons the dead glance" [45-46]. But
who witnesses this spectacle? Foucault writes that, "in the distance created by this
violence and uprooting, the eye is seen absolutely, but denied any possibility of sight."
Seen absolutely by whom? For Foucault, the "spectacle" is offered to the subject who
loses the eye. In the process of exorbitation, "the philosophizing subject has been
dispossessed and pursued to his limit." The "sovereignty of philosophical language" is
seen to emerge from "the measureless void left behind by the exorbitated subject" [46].
No longer simply a figure for transgression, exorbitation is framed as an experience in
which the philosophizing subject loses himself and accedes to a liberated language.
Foucault paradoxically animates Bataille' s rhetorical figure for the sovereign philosopher's
self-loss, bringing this figurative death to life. However, if we examine the context of
exorbitated eyes in the narrative of Bataille's Story of the Eye, it appears that the
exorbitated subject does not coincide with the subject who speaks. Exorbitation is rather
consistently offered as a spectacle to be witnessed by the narrating subject.
One of two exorbitations in Bataille's Story, the spectacle of the death of Granero the
toreador-the scene cited in Foucault's conclusion-presents the image of, in Foucault's
words, an eye "seen absolutely, but denied the possibility of sight." The denial of sight
presented to the exorbitated eye itself is invisible to the spectators. The eye presents an
absence: the "image" of the witnesses' blindness to blindness, that is, a visible absence.
Such "obscene" paradoxical present absences, like those figured in the erotic dynamic by
the feminine other who offers a spectacle of her absence to an onlooking partner, are
repeatedly presented to the narrator of Story of the Eye.
The exorbitated eye's loss of vision-its transgression-is explicitly connected with
the image of a lost feminine other. Within Bataille's narrative, Marcelle, who "loses
herself" by committing suicide, is the privileged figure of/for absence; in the end, she is
invoked as a representation of the exorbitated eye's loss of vision. Marcelle is, however,
notably absented from Foucault's analysis. Foucault instead traces connections between
the exorbitated eye, Bataille's experience as a witness, and Bataille's writing. He links
Bataille's "being brought back to the reality of his own death" to his experience as a
spectator at Granero's death. At the corrida, Bataille saw that "the uprooted eye could give
substance to this absence[rendre prdsente cette absence] of which sexuality has never
stopped speaking ..." Both the spectacle and Bataille's "language of sexuality" render
absence present-a connection which Foucault understands as "crucial for his thought

ofthe spherical, ocular metaphor by another metaphorical chain- that offluidity. The transgression
is produced by "undoing the usual contiguities of objects." Susan Rubin Suleiman has critiqued
Barthes's essay for its near-exclusive concentration on the linguistic elements of transgression in
Story of the Eye [see herSubversive Intent: Gender, Politics, and the Avant-Garde]. MichaelHalley
argues that in his concentration on the linguistic transgressions, Barthes excludes the violence, in
particular the violent death of the priest Don Aminando, of Bataille's text [113].

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and characteristic of all his language" [51-52; 768]. Foucault can identify with Bataille's
spectatorial experience by reading Bataille. The significance of this identification
between Foucault as reader and Bataille as witness becomes clear when we consider how
Foucault analyzes the spectator's experience. In Foucault's reading, the narrator is
conflated with the transgressive act itself. After sketching the scene in which the
toreador's eye is exorbitated and Simone "swallows" the bull's testicle, Foucault cites
Bataille:

Two globes of the same color and consistency were simultaneously activated in
opposite directions. A bull's white testicle had penetrated Simone's pink and
black flesh; an eye had emerged from the head of the young man. This
coincidence, linked until death to a sort of urinary liquification of the sky, gave
me [me rendit] Marcelle for a moment. I seemed, in this ungraspable instant, to
touch her. [52; 769]

In this instant, opposites coincide in their simultaneous transgression; the analogous

spheres cross the limits of their "normal" positions: the testicle is intruded, the eye
extruded. Boundaries between inside and outside are visibly disrupted, imaged before the
narrator's eyes. The coincidence "renders" or re-presents the absent Marcelle, offering an
image of her absence. But the narrator's access to her is at best approximate. He only seems
to reach her in an ungraspable instant. Foucault's reading ignores the asymptotic element
here, effacing the final dis-junction between the narrator and Marcelle. He writes: "it is
the moment when being necessarily appears in its immediacy and where the act which
crosses the limit touches absence itself" [52]. Foucault conflates the narrator's experience
as a witness with the images of transgression presented before him. All trace of the
narrating subject has disappeared; the narrator's "act" of touching the absent Marcelle is
collapsed into the eye/testicle's transgressions, into the crossing of limits performed by
the spheres' simultaneous introjection and exorbitation; Foucault elides the requisite
specular distance between the narrator and the act, a distance the narrator almost but never
fully loses when he attempts to cross the limit in order to reach Marcelle.
In Foucault's discussion of Bataille's other ocular figure, the upturned eye, similar
slippages appear; the optic transgression is yet again attributed to the philosophical/
speaking subject. Like the exorbitated eye, the upturned eye is opposed to the eye of
reflection. Its movement toward the interior does not reveal a transparency of vision, an
"interior secret." Instead, "made to turn inward in its orbit, the eye now only pours its light
into a bony cavern" [46]. In these instances Foucault yet again invokes the subject who
possesses the transgressing eye. However, in crossing the limit of its normal position,
reversing night and day (the white of the eye signifies a darkness of vision), the eye both
performs and images a transgression. Foucault writes, "The upturned eye discovers the
bond that links language and death at the moment that it figures [ilfigure] this relationship
of the limit and being" [47; 764]. The eye simultaneously experiences and figures: it
"shuts out the day in a movement that manifests its own whiteness" [46]. There are two
eyes here, one that shuts out the day and another to whom the whiteness is manifested.
In Bataille's fiction, both perspectives are represented. Like the spectacle of
exorbitation, the upturning of the eye is a horizon for rather than an experience of the
narrator. In Madame Edwarda, the prostitute presents the ocular figure of transgression.
The writer witnesses death in her eyes: "Supporting her nape, I looked into her eyes: they
gleamed white .... Love was dead in those eyes, they contained a daybreak aureate chill,
a transparence wherein I read death's letters [une transparence oit je lisais la mort]."
[157-58; 51]. The description evokes the moment in Erotism when the lover "glimpses"
limitless being through the transparency of the beloved. The narrator reads the death and
absence written in the prostitute' s eyes. Transgression is marked in and by Edwarda as she
presents absence to the narrator.

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 Foucault's reading consistently obscures this dynamic, collapsing the experience of
the upturned eye itself into its significance for an onlooking witness. For Foucault, "the
eye of Bataille [l'oeil de Bataille] delineates the zone shared by language and death, the
place where language discovers its being in the crossing of its limits: the non-dialectical
form of philosophical language" [48]. The discovery that is made by the eye is always also
a representation that "delineates." However, the reference here to "the eye of Bataille"
maintains the confusion: is this the eye of Bataille as philosophical subject or the eye as
a figure in Bataille's writing? Foucault stresses the experience of Bataille as philosophical
subject: "Revealed to this eye, which in its pivoting conceals itself for all time, is the being
of the limit" [49]. He, in turn, reads transgression and death in Bataille's eye. Foucault
consistently effaces Bataille's representation of transgression as a gendered dynamic in
order to position Bataille as a figure of/for transgression. He can only repeat Bataille's
transgression by obscuring how it is enacted in Bataille's writing. If Foucault were to
examine the consistent gendering of transgression, he would have to account for the
persistence of the narrator who never completely disappears-who is only proximately
rather than totally lost.
Foucault turns to "the spectacle of erotic deaths" in Bataille's stories as exemplars of
the upturned eye's transgression, metaphorizing Bataille's metaphor by substituting the
erotic scene for the ocular figure. This substitution makes explicit what is implicit in the
spectacle of the upturned eye-namely, two "perspectives," one gendered as "feminine"
and the other as "masculine." However, in his citation of the climactic cemetery scene in
Blue of Noon, Foucault yet again effaces the woman and concentrates instead on the
revolution in Troppmann the narrator's sight, as the ground of the cemetery, twinkling
with candles marking each grave, takes on the appearance of the sky, and "the sky above
forms a hollow orbit, a death mask in which he recognizes his inevitable end" [47]. He
elides how Dorothea's body becomes an initial "image" of absence and death-as she
takes on the aspect of a grave-into which the narrator can proceed to fall. As Foucault
cites: "The earth under Dorothea's body was open like a tomb, her belly opened itself to
me like a fresh grave [comme une tombe fraiche]. We were struck with stupor, making
love on a starred cemetery. Each light marked a skeleton in a grave and formed a wavering
sky as perturbed as our mingled bodies" [47]. The "revolution in sight," the appearance
of the "starred cemetery," follows Dorothea's "opening" and self-loss; it is subsequent to
her imaging of a tomb/fall (tombe/tombe), her representation of the narrator's potential
loss. However, Troppmann, as the masculine partner, never entirely dissolves; like
Bataille in the introduction to Erotism, he remains conscious enough to write. The
proximity (rather than completion) of his fall is enacted at the end of the scene. He writes,
"... we began sliding down the sloping ground.... If I hadn't stopped our slide with my
foot, we would have fallen into the night, and I might have wondered with amazement if
we weren't falling into the void of the sky" [145]. The narrator stops the slide, remaining
in a limit position in the face of Dorothea's total loss. As Bataille writes: "We approach
the void.., but not to fall into it. We want to become intoxicated with dizziness and the
image of the fall is sufficient" [qtd. in Guerlac 105]. In the scene, Dorothea's body
provides an image of a tomb/fall into which Troppmann almost but never completely gets
lost. By concentrating exclusively on the narrator's revolution in sight, Foucault excludes
the process by which the narrator's loss is (almost) enacted. He ignores both the role
played by the feminine "image" of the abyss as well as the explicitly partial character of
the narrator's loss.8

8. Troppmann's dependence on feminine images of self-loss are a repeated theme throughout

the novel. As a necrophiliac, he relies on images of death in order to perform his own loss. He is
impotent unless faced with the image of a feminine other's fall. Up until the scene with Dorothea,
he is only able to overcome his impotence with prostitutes who are, for him, explicitly linked to
figures of death. At one point, Troppmann realizes that, "my attraction to prostitutes was like my

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Conclusion

In order for Foucault to envision the horizon of his own loss, he consistently position
Bataille (and his narrators) as already lost, as having always already transgressed. In
constructing this horizon, he effaces how Bataille remains "discontinuous" throughout
his gestures toward losing himself. Foucault's readings collapse the narrator's/Bataille'
attempts at loss with the self-annihilation repeatedly imaged by feminine others: a
collapse that is never fully possible. While Bataille might desire to lose himself in a
"expenditure without reserve," the persistent gendering of transgression belies a limitless
spending. The masculine partner always saves up some of himself at the expense of the
feminine partner. What, then, are the consequences of Foucault's reading?
Both David Carroll and Sherry Simon have critiqued Foucault's discussion of
transgression on the grounds that it refuses to articulate the position from which he speaks
a problem often raised by critical attempts to "place" Foucault [Carroll 197-98; Simo
180-81]. In "Preface," Foucault's explicit investment in "losing" or transgressing his ow
philosophical and discursive position raises this problem most acutely. Carroll writes that,
in identifying with and collapsing the distance between himself and his privileged
"disruptive discourses" (what I have outlined as Foucault's attempt to lose himself in
Bataille's loss), Foucault "lightens his load and frees himself of the more tedious but sti
necessary task of carrying his own critical weight and assuming the philosophical-
political consequences of his critical perspective" [197].91 I have seen Foucault's efface-
ment of the writing subject's position as particularly symptomatic of this difficulty. His
persistent conflation of narrating witnesses with what they see enacts exactly the total los
of position that he desires to achieve in his own reading of Bataille. I would suggest, lik
Carroll, that the desired "blindness" of this conflation, entailing as it does a loss of al
"critical distance," can have questionable political consequences. Although Foucault is
wary of reading all discourse as a direct expression of an (ideological) position, a close
examination of the dynamic of transgression reveals that a total loss of position is neve
fully possible for the subject who continues to write.10 In focusing upon a self-loss that i
perpetually deferred as long as he continues to theorize, Foucault finesses and obscure
the position he remains in while writing.
An analysis of the gendered positions inscribed in Bataille's theory of transgression
calls into question the possibility and even viability of the total self-loss that is upheld as
its goal." This, it appears to me, is exactly why Foucault consistently effaces the role o
gendered partners in eroticism. An account of the gendering of Bataille's transgression
demonstrates how it remains within a specular and speculative economy in which the
writing subject is always at a certain distance from what he "sees." While he might desire
to totally lose himself in the loss of another, the writing subject always remains consciou
enough of that loss to theorize. Bataille's transgression may thus be read against itself

attraction to corpses" [Blue of Noon 38]. For a more comprehensive discussion of Troppmann
relationship to death in the novel, see Hollier, "Bataille's Tomb."
9. See also Allan Stoekl's critique of Foucault's analysis of transgression for its lack of
attention to political problems in Writing, Politics, Mutilation: The Cases of Bataille, Blanchot,
Roussel, Leiris, and Ponge [118-23].
10. For example, in The Order of Things, Foucault argues against those "who, in their
profound stupidity, assert that there is no philosophy without political choice, that all thought
either 'progressive' or 'reactionary.'... Theirfoolishness is to believe that all thought expresse
the ideology ofa class" [328]. I am not here suggesting that all discourse is therefore a unitary an
seamless expression ofan ideological position. My point is that positions will be upheld even ifthe
inevitably contain tensions. In effect, their expression may precisely reveal their contradictions
11. Simon briefly mentions the problem presented by gender in her discussion of Foucault'
transgression [180-81].

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order to demonstrate that the "masculine" writing subject always maintains his position
vis-h-vis a witnessed "feminine" loss, which explains why Foucault shies away from the
consideration of gender. We therefore need to examine how transgression underwrites the
theoretical/philosophical subject in the process of purportedly undermining it and hence
to account for the writing subject's position rather than deny its continued existence.
An interrogation of the gendering operative in transgression then raises a number of
further questions concerning the radicality of gestures toward self-loss (a series of
questions that, in his attempt to proclaim the disruptiveness of transgression, Foucault
cannot afford to address). Does this desire for self-dissolution, which is founded on the
"image" of another's loss, in fact strengthen or reinscribe the position of the "masculine"
witness rather than radically disable it? An examination of the gendered dynamic of
transgression raises the problem of who is really lost. Who benefits from the enactment
of self-loss? Who witnesses and theorizes about the simultaneous appearance of the limit
and its transgression? Who loses an eye?

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