- Georges Bataille / Eroticism (Introduction)
Added 2025-05-25 15:32:49 +0000 UTC"Eroticism, it may be said, is assenting to life up to the point of death. Strictly speaking, this is not a definition, but I think the formula gives the meaning of eroticism better than any other. If a precise definition were called for, the starting point would certainly have to be sexual reproductive activity, of which eroticism is a special form. Sexual reproductive activity is common to sexual animals and men, but only men appear to have turned their sexual activity into erotic activity. Eroticism, unlike simple sexual activity, is a psychological quest independent of the natural goal: reproduction and the desire for children. From this elementary definition let us now return to the formula I proposed in the first place: eroticism is assenting to life even in death. Indeed, although erotic activity is in the first place an exuberance of life, the object of this psychological quest, independent as I say of any concern to reproduce life, is not alien to death. Herein lies so great a paradox, that without further ado I shall try to give some semblance of justification to my affirmation with the following two quotations:
"Secrecy is, alas, only too easy," remarks de Sade, "and there is not a libertine some little way gone in vice, who does not know what a hold murder has on the senses ..."
And it was the same writer who made the following statement, which is even more remarkable: "There is no better way to know death than to link with some licentious image."
