Bataille’s Notion of Eroticism as Illustrated in Story of the Eye

• Main Authors: Chen, Hui-zhen, 陳慧真
• Other Authors: Lai, Shou-Cheng
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/tg56n7

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語學系 === 104 === This thesis intends to interpret Bataille’s novella Story of the Eye with his notion of eroticism: “the disequilibrium in which a being consciously calls his own existence in question” (Eroticism 31). This questioning involves a general sense of loss, including the loss of the sense of ego, the sense of propriety, and that of reality. These losses endanger a being’s existence, but they also promise a sacred state which Bataille terms as la continuité de l'être (“continuity of being”). In this continuity a being is emerged in “the universal flow of all that is” like water in water. This thesis is divided into three chapters. In Chapter One, I explain how Story of the Eye manifests the loosening of the sense of ego, propriety, and reality, with Bataille’s notion of heterology. In Chapter Two, I introduce the dualistic facets of la continuité de l'être — the elevated and the defiled. Both facets bring forward sacred continuity. I will support Bataille’s assertion that “religious and erotic passions are of one origin” by enumerating evidences from religious documents and scenes of Story of the Eye. In Chapter Three, I explain the nullification of ego as the way toward la continuité de l’être which is immanent for a being.