What is religion for Bataille? Most fundamental to his thought is his theory of world economics, of the play and movement of energy in its excesses and productions. What is most valuable or might be said to be his morality? I have been exploring a few of his writings for these answers, particularly wanting to understand how Bataille’s thought may fit or not fit with Christianity. After all, he uses a very religious vocabulary.

In Bataille’s thought, man wishes to return to intimacy with the world, which means that man is no longer transcendent to the order of things and capable making things. A thing is that which is defined by its usefulness, for all objects we interact with are defined by their function to or for something else. The order or world of immanence lacks things as they are distinct and defined by any use. After all, for there to be a thing or an object, there must be a transcendent subject, and a transcendent subject is contradictory to immanence.

In interacting with objects for their usefulness, man continues to accumulate energy to the point that the energy in him will destroy him—a stomach ache from eating too much may reflect this, and the subsequent gaining of weight to the point of, well, nearly bursting or at least dying from its complications. Hence, man wishes to return to immanence; that is, to expend his excess energy rather than continue to produce. Expending useless energy is where the experience of pleasure comes from.

When objects become things, we can only act with the intent of production or effecting something else, which can only build or produce more energy in the long run (even though it might also require a small expenditure of energy). The greatest expenditure of energy comes in sacrifice because self-sacrifice involves an expenditure which is utterly useless and can have no return. This is why it is necessary to sacrifice that which is most valuable—that is, what increases production (such as a cow, one’s house, or one’s life). As Bataille says, “This is so clearly the precise meaning of sacrifice, that one sacrifices what is useful; one does not sacrifice luxurious objects. There could be no sacrifice if the offering were destroyed beforehand” (49).

Bataille is aware of a contradiction in the economic goal of immanence. He says,

But if man surrendered unreservedly to immanence, he would fall short of humanity; he would achieve it only to lose it and eventually life would return to the unconscious intimacy of animals. The constant problem posed by the impossibility of being human without being a thing and of escaping the limits of things without returning to animal slumber receives the limited solution of the festival. (53)

Let me try to explain: To be human is to be conscious, to be aware of one’s self, which can only happen in recognizing and juxtaposing with the world of things; that is, man finds his consciousness in his perception of the order of things. Without the order of things to perceive, man loses himself in immanence with the world. Thus, man cannot achieve the immanence he desires through the expenditure of energy without losing himself—reducing to the level of an animal consciousness which lacks the ability to be a self-consciousness. Man’s individuality, the possibility of speaking of a person or anything is distinct, is maintained only by anxiety, or the wish to remain alive in the world of things. Thus, Bataille says, “

Religion, whose essence is the search for lost intimacy, comes down to the effort of clear consciousness which wants to be a complete self-consciousness: but this effort is futile, since consciousness of intimacy is possible only at a level where consciousness is no longer an operation whose outcome implies duration, that is, at the level where clarity, which is the effect of the operation, is no longer given. (56)

Thus, religion is a perpetual search for immanence, stimulated by its bursts of energy release, epitomized by sacrifice and orgy, but enacted through any waste or use of energy with no aim. The

Although Bataille is well aware of the contradictions that the economy of immanence poses, I think that the contradiction is seen even before one begins to move toward immanence. Moving toward immanence, if it can be given a principle or direction, requires expending energy. However, once this understanding becomes an understanding, that is, it is consciously recognized, it becomes a moral principle or morality. A morality, as Bataille realizes, is by nature self-defeating because, by nature, it assumes a purpose, and purpose contradicts immanence. Hence, Bataille’s religion, when it becomes a religion with a morality of expending energy, is self-defeating because even this useless expenditure can be said to have a use, the purpose of preventing the buildup and destruction caused by the buildup of energy.

If you’re interested in reading the book for yourself, it’s available on AAAARG [which all TVA readers should be involved in, of course].

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Summary: Bataille begins his theory of religion, surprisingly enough, with the question of how we humans can conceive of the “immanence” of the animal. These are the distinctions Bataille makes between this immanence and the perceiving of a human: the animal does not subordinate its objects to itself, the animal does not experience the duration of its object, and the animal cannot regard itself as an object. All of these restrictions have to do with the animal’s inability to transcend its object — hence, immanence. Bataille equates transcendence with self-consciousness; so another way to describe the immanence of animals is to say that they perceive without consciousness.

The consequence of this immanence, he imagines, is something half-way between our human consciousness and a world without consciousness. The latter can be glimpsed in the “meaningless” layers of nature uncovered by the hard sciences, in the bounding of atoms and gurgling of chemical processes; but animal immanence dazzles and eludes the eye of the mind. The mystery of it prompts what Bataille calls The Poetic Fallacy of Animality — because we simply cannot imagine perception without consciousness, so “the correct way to speak of it can overtly only be poetic, in that poetry describes nothing that does not slip toward the unknowable.” But because such poetry does not penetrate what it addresses but simply puts a vague “fulguration” of words, a halo around the emptiness of incomprehension, Bataille finally insists that the only clear (ie., non-poetic) description he can offer of animal immanence is that animals are like “water in water.” This is an important and recurring phrase.

(Incidentally, he does offer us, by way of disavowing its use, the following poetic description of animal perception: “There was no vision, there was nothing — nothing but an empty intoxication limited by terror, suffering, and death, which gave it a kind of thickness…”)

Commentary: There isn’t much here, yet, that seems to point toward religion or a theory of religion, except the poetic intensity of Bataille’s language. On that note, I admire his characterization of poetry as that which slips “toward the unknowable.” It is this aspect of his style — that it slipped toward the unknowable — that repelled his contemporaries like Sartre, who avoided him because of his “mysticism,” and it is also (I’ll bet) what attracted posterity, like Lacan, Foucault, Derrida.

Regarding his description of animal immanence, an obvious question is this: why does he distinguish the animal from the human? Aren’t humans in fact animals?

I think this question — though it is in some ways a wrong one — gets at the path that will eventually lead Bataille from animal immanence to religion: humans are animals, yet the definition of animality must be a definition in contrast to human consciousness. In some ways, the performance of this definition is a kind objectifying and sacrificing of the animality in humans — though for the purpose, as will become clear in later posts, of regaining intimacy — which ceremonially displays the anguish of the tension in us which he will argue leads us to religion. He concludes the introduction to the book with these words: “The basic paradox of this ‘theory of religion,’ [...] brings a powerlessness to light, no doubt, but the cry of this powerlessness is a prelude to deepest silence.”

At any rate, I think it is important to the argument of the rest of the book for the reader to perform his thought experiment with him, to attempt to conceive of perception without consciousness, to fail but feel the “sticky” temptation of poetry.