05/07/2021
I have just finished Peter Tracey Connor’s book Georges Bataille and the Mysticism of Sin. The book comes to the conclusion that ‘Ethics’ and ‘morality’ are indescribable and it is this indescribability that requires us to go beyond the limits of discursive communication in order to describe it, in order to communicate it. Though this book sets up the problem of creating an ethics from Bataille, the ground it sets out is also the ground which we slip on, making it seem impossible to set out a Bataillean ethics. I must note that his book and its analysis of morality in relation to Bataille really only precludes normative ethics for Bataille and not meta-ethics. So, maybe there is a Bataillean meta-ethic out there!
Connor does provide ample explanation of the idea that morality is structured like a mystical experience in that both are indescribable.
In the very last paragraph of the book, Connor says that Bataille basically questions the presupposition that truth is based on logic. This has radical implications, and it seems that contestation has reached its highest point, its highest transgression, in this questioning (contestation). But this is not its highest point. We can always go further and further past the limits. Beyond! Beyond!
