Bringing together Bataille with Lacan and Nietzsche, Tim Themi examines the role of aesthetics implicit in each and how this invokes an erotic process celebrating the real of what is usually excluded from articulation. Bataille came to deem eroticism as the standpoint from which to grasp humanity as a whole, based on his understanding of our transition to humanity being founded on a series of taboos placed on inner animality. An erotic outlet for the latter was historically the aesthetic dimensions of our religions, but Bataille's view of how this was gradually diminished has much in keeping with Nietzsche's critique of Christian-Platonic dualism and Lacan's of the desexualised Good of Western metaphysics. Building from these often surprising proximities, Themi closely examines Bataille's many interventions into the history of aesthetics -- from his confrontations with Breton's surrealism to his own novels and encounter with the animal cave paintings of Lascaux -- radically re-illuminating the corollary phenomena of Dionysos in Nietzsche's philosophy and the "jouissance [enjoyment] of transgression" in the psychoanalysis of Lacan. A new ethical criterion for aesthetic works and creations on this basis becomes possible.
Tim Themi teaches in the School of Culture and Communication at The University of Melbourne and is the author of Lacan's Ethics and Nietzsche's Critique of Platonism.
A philosophical aesthetics of erotics located at the intersection of Bataille and Lacan - this is a book that had to be written! It will change our perception of Bataille. Tim Themi has written the perfect sequel to his Lacan's Ethics and Nietzsche's Critique of Platonism.--Russell Grigg, translator of Lacan, 'Seminar V, Unconscious Formations', and author of 'Lacan, Language, and Philosophy' A detailed study of the jouissance of transgression, vis-a-vis Bataille and Lacan with Nietzsche and Freud, which would have application to the study of aesthetics across a number of disciplines. A well-timed intervention by a very well qualified author.--Alison Horbury, author of 'The Persephone Complex: Post-feminist Impasses in Popular Heroine Television' A valuable contribution to the understanding of Bataille's work in relation to psychoanalysis and Lacan, one that is particularly significant for the light it sheds on the taboo/transgression relation.--Michael Richardson, translator of Bataille, 'The Absence of Myth: Writings on Surrealism', and author of 'Georges Bataille' Eroticizing Aesthetics is extraordinarily ambitious. Tim Themi extracts and entwines essential themes from the major works of three crucial modern thinkers, Nietzsche, Bataille, and Lacan. Cave painting, Greek tragedy, Surrealism, the journal Documents, Roland Barthes, the Marquis de Sade, and more besides, figure in the margins of the text, as Themi follows the legacies of Nietzsche and Freud through Bataille and Lacan, folding each into the other, in a mutually informative, revealing, and resonant manner.--Stuart Kendall, translator of Bataille, 'On Nietzsche', and author of 'Georges Bataille' A highly original project investigating the centrality of Bataille's thinking which will open up conversations with readers already well versed in Lacan and be conducive to greater clinical/philosophical dialogue. The book's strength lies in the breadth of its originality and creativity, and in the author's rigorous approach to reading key texts carefully in ways that open up connections previously unexplored. Building on his previous book on Nietzche and Lacan, which is superb, this is a very timely volume with a likelihood to endure.--Jared Russell, author of 'Nietzsche and the Clinic' and 'Psychoanalysis and Deconstruction'
