FREUD AFTER BATAILLE: DEATH, DISSOLUTION, AND THE ‘OCEANIC’ FEELING Rebecca Reynolds A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies University of Essex October 2019 2 For a bird and a sea star, CONTENTS Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………………………………… ii Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… iv Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 1 1. In Defense of the Death Drive ………………………………………………………………… 17 Fort/Da 22 The Old State of Things 27 Critiques and Contradictions 31 A Necessary Link 35 One vs. Oneness 44 2. Narcissism in Crisis ………………………………………………………………………………. 50 Ego without Origin 52 Ego-as-Object 57 The Castrated Subject 63 Je Me Tue 71 The One in Need of a Second 81 3. Wave Upon Waves ………………………………………………………………………………… 86 From Athesis to Atheology 95 Anti-philosophy 108 Towards a General Economy of the Drives 118 Death and Dialectics 127 Libidinal Materialism 135 Like Water in Water 141 4. Desiring Dissolution/Dissolving Desire …………………………………………………... 150 Locations and Dislocations 158 The Economic Problem 170 The Erotics of Erosion 180 Inner Experience 189 5. Violent Representation and the Erotic Imaginary …………………………………….. 203 Pain and Dis/continuity 206 Aesthetics of Uncertainty 212 Arrows of Desire 222 The Ephemeral Skin 241 Formlessness and ‘Other’ Blinding Visions 252 Postscript ………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 278 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 286 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project would not have been possible without Matt Ffytche and the care and clarity of his supervision. I am deeply grateful to him for discerning in my writing arguments I was not even aware I was making and encouraging both reason and rhapsody in suitable measure – in sum, for the giving me both the freedom to roam in the darkness and the certainty that he was always nearby to shine a light. I also wish to express my gratitude to those far away who, nevertheless, have been consistently present for me in the writing of this dissertation: Emma Bracy, for so many soul-baring days and nights and the mutual fondness for air quotes in which this project germinated; Courtney Hamilton, whose dedication – to everything and especially to our friendship – has left a lasting impression on me; Sam Marshall, whose irreproachable character is a vital force; Loren Prendiville, for sharing with me her deep and open- hearted sensitivity to the world; and, most of all, my sister, Amanda Reynolds, whose daily doses of laughter and encouragement have been my water and sunshine, and whose life- long love and genuine understanding consistently lift my spirits to unexpected heights, both metaphorically and literally. My most heartfelt thanks to my parents, Joseph and Teresa Reynolds, for the mixture of sage advice and unique humor that keeps me moving forward. Without their boundless love and generous support this project – and most of my endeavors – would not have taken shape. And to the many others who have nurtured me and my curiosities, among whom John D’Arienzo, Maria D’Onofrio, Ines Gomes, and Eloy Prieto hold a special place. I am also indebted to Shaul Bar-Haim, Camilla Giambonini, Max Maher, and Julie Walsh for lending their sympathetic ears and sharp insights; to Tom Wolff Kugler, for the thoughtfulness and candor of his friendship and the countless hours of stimulating conversation; and to Manuel Batsch, Jens Bjering, Gabriella Daris, Igor Rodin, and David Thompson for introducing new colors, languages, and forms to my perception. ii Words cannot express my appreciation for Katie Goss, Elizabeth Hughes, and the thoughtful, tender, and transformative magick they have brought into my life. Our meeting was a spark of serendipity for which I am ever grateful and each day since has been a blessing as joyful as the Three of Cups. Without their rare intellect and abundant compassion this project and the past four years would have been but a shadow. And last, but certainly not least, I wish to thank Isaias Prieto, who has been by my side since this project was a raw thought and who consistently encourages me to grow with his rebellious spirit. I have been truly fortunate to wander with him in worlds both real and imagined. iii ABSTRACT This investigation examines how the uneasy relationship between death and representation plays out across three overlaping modalities – text, body, and image. Drawing from Freud’s formulations, I trace out the paroxysmal movements of the death drive in concurrence with narcissism, masochism, and the uncanny, arguing that the theoretical indeterminacy of these concepts might be ascribed to the manner in which they interrogate, exceed, and destabilize the prevailing perception of the self as an integrated whole. As a situation of subjective/symbolic rupture, perhaps it is not “possible” to think beyond the limit that death poses for psychoanalytic theory. However, I propose that reconsidering Freudian metapsychology in light of Georges Bataille’s work on trangression and excess allows us to think across said limit. In deploying this highly dynamic approach, I elaborate on the role of death in the drive economy and, subsequently, its potential association with the ‘oceanic’ feeling that Freud acknowledges (but quickly dismisses) as a motivation for religious belief. Considering death and its corresponding drive through the ontological oscillations they provoke, I argue, expands the field that constitutes their manifestations and opens up new avenues of inquiry via potential applications in religion and aesthetics. iv INTRODUCTION Misery of living men, disputing to the death the possibilities of the world of etcetera. Joy of the dying man, wave among waves. — Georges Bataille, Inner Experience Georges Bataille’s corpus reflects an aesthetic of harrowing ecstasy and wounded subjectivity among which one image stands out among the rest, a source of tragic inspiration and self-confessed obsession. The image is one of a series of photographs depicting the public dismemberment of a young Chinese man in late-Imperial China, the progression of a form of capital punishment known as lingchi – the torture of a hundred pieces, death by a thousand cuts.1 If we follow the gaze of the spectators in the photograph, we see a body in pieces: chest flayed open, arms and legs cut off below the elbows and knees, a form only with great difficulty or discomfort recognizable. But the dying man looks elsewhere, and his is the gaze that Bataille follows. Indeed, much of Bataille's theoretical work comes down to the extrapolation of this gaze beyond the existing frame: 1 “The torture of a hundred pieces” is a translation of the French construction, le supplice de cent morceaux. See Georges Bataille, Tears of Eros, Trans. Peter Connor, (San Francisco: City Light Books, 1989). 1 the (im)possible extension of transgressive and excessive experience into the unchartable territory of the erotic and the mystical; a violent, paroxysmal speculation at the limit beyond which the self as perceived unity unravels into incoherence. Yet, when this image is revisited in the interest of contextualizing Bataille’s work, it is largely reduced to anecdote. In what we could interpret as display (or denial) of narcissistic vulnerability, we wish to know, name, and identify – to interpellate a subject in the most fragmented of bodies. Though persistently identified as Fou Tchou Li, a young Chinese man condemned to death by “slow slicing” for the murder of Mongolian prince Ao-Han-Ouan, historians Timothy Brook, Jérome Bourgon, and Gregory Blue argue that this is an error attributed in large part to Bataille himself, though possibly the work of his editor.2 Fou Tchou Li was sentenced to execution by lingchi, the authors explain, but his is not the image, all too important and intimate, that is always present for Bataille, referenced repeatedly yet reproduced only (and problematically so) in the final pages of Tears of Eros, the last of Bataille's works published in his lifetime.3 As for the man whose death played out for decades on Bataille's desk, his identity remains unknown. If we wish to know the circumstances of the photograph, to assign a name and a crime to the man in the image, then we might criticize this misidentification as an error of historical inaccuracy. 4 Considered in the context of Bataille’s philosophy, however, the 2 Timothy Brook, Jérome Bourgon, and Gregory Blue, Death by a Thousand Cuts, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 228-230. Brook, Bourgon, and Blue raise questions as to the authenticity of Tears of Eros, offering an analysis of the correspondence between Bataille and his editor Joseph Marie Lo Duca which suggests that Lo Duca significantly shaped Bataille’s final work, particularly through his selection and organization of the book’s many images and illustrations. 3 As Brook et al explain, upon discovering the image of the real Fou Tchou Li in Jean-Jaques Matignon’s Dix ans au pays du dragon (1910), Bataille wrote the following to Lo Duca: “I’ve found by accident – at Fontenay – another photo of the Chinese torture of a hundred pieces. Completely the same so far as torture, but it’s someone else.” The same image also appears in Louis Carpeaux’s Pékin qui s’en va (1910), where it is accompanied by the story of Fou Tchou Li that Lo Duca would adopt as the explanatory caption of the photograph of the torture of a man who, as Bataille had expressed, was someone other than Fou Tchou Li. Brook et al, Death by a Thousand Cuts, p. 227. 4 Bataille’s contemplation of this photograph is often discussed in the context of intellectual biography. See Denis Hollier, Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille, Trans. Betsy Wing, 2 error lies elsewhere or, rather, prior: in the frantic but futile attempt to recover a fading subject.5 Perhaps this effort is the symptomatic gesticulation of an underlying resistance or repudiation, one which suggests that there is more than one subjectivity at risk.