Notes on Bataille

(2023)

3

Notes on Bataille

I
The Anus and The Sacred

a. Sacred Power as the Parody of Anus

In Larry Miller's 1974 artwork, the Orifice Flux Plug, a diagram depicting a forefinger entering an anus adorns the box's label, implying instructions on how to utilize the box. Individuals can insert one or two fingers into any compartment of the box, as if each compartment were its anus, and then discover a tool for play therein (Miller). Various bodily orifices are comprehended as anatomical structures of circulation, with no plug necessarily limited to fitting into a single orifice. In the term "flux holes," "flux" being equivalent to "holes," and "holes" being equivalent to "flux," indicate an inseparable relationship between the anus, flux, and even Fluxus. The fluidity and instability of the anus, including its deviation from both source and site, thus assert sovereignty in Fluxus. The sovereignty of the anus in Fluxus supports its object-disregarding nature; much like Freud implicitly suggests, anal erotism remains indifferent to objects and the activities satisfying it, without resulting in aesthetic or libidinal dissatisfaction (Freud et al. 100).
The anus, as an object-indefinite, non-straight, no-destination opening, serves as a passage interlinking with the intestines, horizontally unfurling into a winding, directionally ambiguous labyrinth. By its unbounded nature akin to the Ouroboros posited by Nietzsche, the anus is susceptible to oral connections and allows the ingress, metaphorical association, or copulation of all entities, including life itself. Simultaneously, the anus sovereigns over Fluxus, whereby any secular entity or thoughts entering it folds into the inner labyrinth, unfolding a mythopoetic or topo-cosmic Jaunt (King, The Jaunt) of metaphysical exploration. Georges Bataille situates organs and secular objects around the anus within the mythopoetic and cosmological thought, thereby visually concretizing the jaunt between flesh and the cosmos. In the depiction of the invertedly bound female gibbon's body, the reversibility or invertibility of the talking, thinking, expanding mouth -"her bestially howling mouth swallows dirt" - and the dilating anus -"her huge screaming pink anal protrusion stares at the sky like a flower (Bataille et al. 85)"- serves as a profane counterpart to the mythological Ouroboros—a self-devouring, rebirth, and destruction in an eternal cycle of time. Similarly, sections of "The Solar Anus" and "The Pineal Eye" once again copulate the primal cosmological view of the solar with the hole of the profane flesh, as described by Bataille, "the little copulation of the stinking hole with the sun.(Bataille et al. 86)"
Thus, all profane entities entering the anus flow within the labyrinth of the intestines, undergoing inversion, unwinding, refolding, and repeating on uncertain levels. Rather than being "reversed," they are "unfolded" in their infinite interiority as a form, ambiguated in their materiality and conceptuality, profane and sacred. In the copulation, inversion, and flux of infinite and indefinite objects, concepts materialize into mythic figures, materials sanctify into holy relics, and homogeneity transforms into heterogeneity. Sacred power is a more prevalent emulation or amplification of anal power among the masses. As Mircea Eliade summarizes in The Sacred and The Profane, "The sacred is saturated with being...Sacred power means reality…(Eliade 12)" Sacred power transforms concepts into being and reality, utilizing profane world objects to manifest orders and realities beyond this world. Base stones and trees, when inwardly unfolded and copulated with the sacred, are reborn as objects of worship. The sacralization of stones and trees can be construed as a parody of the Jaunt from anus to solar.

b. Sacred as the Substitute of Anus
With Bataille's elucidation, the anus emerges as a locus for erotic expenditure and fervent discharge of the ego. Anality, in its combination of unrestrained sexuality and its brutal and sensual repression, operates as the sublimation of a fantasy of massive destruction in the form of radical reparation. This metamorphosis and perversion, as Leo Bersani concludes, "The anal character trait is anal sexuality negativized, a negativizing that—as in the case of individual and social compulsions of order—can present itself as a reparation, indeed almost as an atonement for defiling explosiveness. (Bersani 46)" Freud posits that during the anal phase, typically occurring between eighteen months and three years of age, children derive pleasure from the vigorous contraction of muscles restraining defecation, an experience influencing subsequent personality development marked by traits such as orderliness, control, and stubbornness (Freud et al. 101). The anal character trait fundamentally represents the suppression or negation of anal sexual behavior, a repression that manifests as compulsive demands for order and control. Such demands for order and control can be viewed as a suppression, compensation, or atonement for Bataille's notion of "defiling explosiveness" associated with anality. This atonement stems from a psychological obsession with the celestial. Human beings, from their initial upright stance, inherently possess a striving for spiritual elevation, a drive that can only be satisfied through irrational and aggressive elevation, characterized by disdain and mockery towards the vulgar, base, and primal physiological aspects. When these profane, including childhood leg-rubbing syndromes and the hacking of dinosaurs and Loch Ness monsters, are perceived as taboos and self-degrading acts, they breed a loathing and conquest-driven repression of the self and the world, which seemingly upright, is akin to a "discharge of his sad rifles like a salvo fired in salute,(Eliade 43)" The origins of this psychological perversion traces back to the evolution of the human anal region. From its outward exposure in primate epochs to its concealment within flesh filled with individuality and vulnerability in upright humans, what is lost is the "potential for brilliance and dazzle proper (Bataille et al. 75)" of the anal orifice, serving as a passage for self-release amidst collective revelry.
However, concurrently, humanity's upward vision inadvertently forms a volcanic-like upward vent. The loss of the anal orifice as a release point at the lower end is replaced by the buccal orifice at the upper end, including the region of the pineal eye. According to Bataille's interpretation, "human beings would have an eye just for the sun (whereas the two eyes in their sockets turn away from it with a kind of stupid obstinacy), (Bataille et al. 74)" This upward-facing eye symbolizes the highest point attainable by the human spirit, epitomized by acts of sanctification and religious rituals. Human beings dissolve then explode the individual ego into one sacred figure, for the ego to be in the profane, to be present in tangible religious rituals, amid the collective effervescence and intoxication, akin to the primate's anal exposure and the childhood repression of defecation, thus achieving the infinite given and discharge of the ego.
In the evolution of human physiology and psychology, the loss of the anal orifice as a release point at the lower end is replaced by the buccal orifice at the upper end. Consequently, the sacred becomes a substitute for the dereliction of the anus.

Bataille, Georges, et al. Visions of Excess.
Bersani, Leo. The Culture of Redemption.
Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion.
Freud, Sigmund. New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis.
Miller, Larry. Orifice Flux Plugs. 1974. The Museum of Modern Art.
“The Jaunt.” Stephen King

II
“The universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit.” ¹

This formulaic, binary opposition-like statement renders Bataille seemingly formalistic. However, this assertion is a curse, for Bataille himself is in fact Acéphale. From his other writings in Visions of Excess, it can be discerned that he is not formalistic but dissolves himself into transgressing rationality and plunges his erupting thoughts downwards into the profane, ground, and mud, releasing them outward in a non-linear, discontinuous manner akin to the chaos of intestines.
Therefore, Bataille's informe, as articulated by Yve Alain Bois, is neither a subject nor a substance, much less a concept, but rather an anti-concept, a mode of operation. In the extract above, Bataille initially utilizes it to incite the opposition in form and content. Opposition implies binary logic, which is itself a form. Subsequently, he employs the counter-operation of informe—by disregarding the opposition in the sentence—to deprive the boundaries between opposites and demonstrate the inefficacy of binary forms. Hence, one can argue that the operation of informe is destructive, cunning, and infused with Bataille's sacrilegious and provocative attitude towards form, to the extent that one might speculate he is ironically stating: "What it designates has no rights in any sense and gets itself squashed everywhere, like a spider or an earthworm."² "...giving a frock coat to what is, a mathematical frock coat."³

The irony lies in the fact that "operation" aligns with formal and structuralist paradigms; regardless of the terms employed to define Bataille's informe, it inherently remains an endless play of conceptualization and formal constraints. Hence, rather than further attempts at definition, attention should be redirected toward Artaud's concept of theater reshaping. Artaud emphasizes that the prerequisite for reshaping theater lies in the brutalization of formed language and sentences; similarly, the precondition for self-rebirth is the brutalization of formalized life. Whether it's Artaud's physical brutalization or Freud's psychological traumatization, both entail breaking the self-contained self, allowing the inner self to flow out of its vessel, achieving a state of "water in water", characterized by the intimacy between individuals, fluid performance, and a detachment of concepts from objects. This may indeed be the spectacle of informe.

1.
2.
3.

Bataille, Visions of Excess, 31
Bois & Krauss, Formless: A User’s Guide, 15
Bataille, Theory of Religion, 23

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