Bataille and Paz: Conscious Origin of the Erotic

The intrigue of the Erotic, with its very nature of inaccessibility and mystery, makes divulgation and translation of it into comprehensible language exceedingly complex. But, as with every enormous labyrinth, we must start somewhere. In defining the Erotic, it is necessary to understand the singular nature of its division from sexuality. While sex in its very nature belongs to all animal life, the Erotic is a solely human phenomenon, for it is distinguished as being intertwined with consciousness. In Larmes d’Eros, Georges Bataille specifically defines humanity by its consciousness: "nous ne pouvons faire de difference entre l’humain et la conscience...Ce qui n’est pas conscient n’est pas humain."(188, 90) If there is an origin of what human is, then it must therefore correlate with its separation from the rest of the non-conscious world. This origin of human consciousness creates the delineation in which humans are separated from the rest of primal, instinctually-driven nature. With human knowledge of lack and this division, the conscious separation is fundamentally tied with the development of language possession.

Because in the face of desire and language, mental reflection becomes part of the human sexual act, the Erotic far surpasses the simple biologic function of copulation for the goal of reproduction. Bursting beyond mechanical copulation, human sexuality within consciousness, with its desire, its intrigue, its frenzied intensity and its multitude of diverse psychical combinations, is Erotic. Bataille clarifies how this departure from the purely essential procreation figures into the development of eroticism’s specific construction. He notes that "Seule la naissance de l’eroticisme, ý partir de la sexualitÈ animale, a mis l’essentiel en jeu." (28) As Bataille suggests, the birth of the Erotic must be highlighted since it is fundamental for elucidating the specific development of its complexity. In Bataille, the Erotic did not simply exist as a human trait, given to an already-developed human in a paradaisical garden. Its genesis correlated specifically with the origin of human consciousness, as it became aware of itself, and thus differentiated itself from the rest of the world. Bataille investigates the possible evolutionary causes for this break, and links the human development of tools and work, to their eventual awareness of the existence of cause and effect.

Although Bataille’s thorough investigation and development of these complex features leading up to the dawn of consciousness is too wide in scope to summarize here, it is important to note a basic aspect of it: this human revelation of causality led to their unique discovery of both work and play. For Bataille, the definitive characteristic of man as the "animal who works," is the foundation of his reason and knowledge. The knowledge of causality, and thus the end to an action separates humans from the immediate responses of instinct. Through this knowledge, humans have gained the ability to discern the meaning of how their actions correspond to the satisfactions of their desire. While such knowledge is non-existent in an animal which is based in a primary present, a human acts with anticipation of the future.

In The Double Flame: Love and Eroticism, Octavio Paz furthers Bataille's elucidation of the Erotic is a characteristic of a conscious being and how it goes beyond the functional goal of sex, to put the necessity of reproduction in brackets. The Erotic is not simply the result of increasing complexity in an evolutionary chain, but is an integral fact of being human:

What is true is that the transition from sexuality to love is characterized not so much by a growing complexity as by the intervention of an agent that bears the name of a beautiful Greek princess: Psyche. Sexuality is animal, eroticism is human.(128)

Uniquely, by bringing in the necessary concept of Psyche's relation to Eros and thus with the Erotic, Paz brings in love as a necessary part of the circle. For him, sex becomes a seed, eroticism a stem, and love a flower. The human psyche separates the Erotic from merely sex, for it becomes an end in itself or creates another end for its reason to exist. As a stem, it has an origin which compels it, but it grows uniquely above the soil in multifarious dimensions.

Along with the growing complexity of awarenesses, the essential, necessary part of life could as well be, as Bataille notes, mis en jeu. Humans have the ability to go beyond what they need to survive to change work into a game. For Bataille, le jeu is the transforming of work towards a voluptuous end. Even though a human retains their essential biological nature and instincts for reproduction, their knowledge that play can lead an erotic situation to voluptuous pleasure makes it a consciously-driven effort of the will towards pleasure.

Paz supports this framing of the definition of the Erotic and elaborates how, as it extends coital union far beyond the functional aims which are solely towards reproduction, is "like all metaphors, it points to something new and different from the terms that it comprises."(3) Like Bataille, Paz continues to add that the Erotic constantly recreates meanings from its instinctive origins in nature, but instead of creating le jeu, it changes "the reproductive sexual impulse into a representation."(128) The Erotic is in this way differentiated from animal sexuality as its metaphor which again brings in the subject of language and thus desire.

Link to Schiller: To understand what humans gained in consciousness, it is necessary to decipher the undivided side of nature and its naivetÈ.