bataille freud

How to Look Death in the Eyes: Freud and Bataille1

Liran Razinsky

SubStance, Issue 119 (Volume 38, Number 2), 2009, pp. 63-88 (Article)

Published by University of Wisconsin PressDOI: 10.1353/sub.0.0046

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SubStance #119, Vol. 38, no. 2, 2009

63Looking Death in the Eyes: Freud and Bataille

How to Look Death in the Eyes:Freud and Bataille1

Liran Razinsky

Death’s place in psychoanalysis is very problematic. Beginning withFreud, death can be variously said to have been repressed, reduced,

pathologized, or forgotten altogether.2 Within Freud’s writings, however,one article stands in contradistinction to this trend, by making a claimfor death’s centrality. Although it has received relatively little attention,“Thoughts for the times on war and death,” published in 1915, is afascinating discussion about our attitudes towards death, whichcomprise both a “cultural-conventional attitude” that Freud so

pertinently, almost wickedly, criticizes, and the attitude common to theunconscious and to primeval man. The cultural conventional attitude ischaracterized by continual rejection of death: we put it away, refuse totalk about it, attribute it to chance events (“Thoughts” 291-92). Forprimeval man, and in the unconscious, death is wished for when it is thedeath of an other but is denied as regards oneself.

However, while it is exceptional in bringing the problem of death tothe fore, “Thoughts for the Times” does not constitute a clear-cutalternative to the psychoanalytic sidestepping of death. It is, rather, fullof sharp tensions and contradictions. Upon close reading, the text revealsitself to be the compromise formation of two different approaches. Freud’scall, in the final paragraph, “to give death the place which is its due” in

psychic life, and his contention that life is impoverished when we fail todo so, simply cannot be reconciled with his stubborn insistence, in thevery same paper, that no place within the mind can be allotted to death.Freud insists upon this because death cannot be represented, and becausefear of death is always secondary to other psychic factors. His call toabandon the “cultural-conventional” treatment of death in favor of thatof primeval man or of the unconscious is found to be devoid of any sense,the latter being no less repressive of death or ignoring it than the former(Razinsky, “A struggle”).

“Thoughts for the times” then, is a major exception, but an insufficientone. One gets the feeling that there is unfulfilled potential for a change

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here, not theoretically developed, and completely abandoned in laterwritings. Freud seems to be hampered by certain psychoanalyticpresuppositions, reiterating old positions. What seems useful is to divertfrom the psychoanalytic line of thought, and address the text “sideways”with another line of thought, which will offer a new reading. This is myaim in what follows. This other line of thought will be that of Georges

Bataille.Freud with Bataille? An odd couple. Such a coupling is far from

intuitive, juxtaposing as it does two thinkers from separate intellectualspheres, and all the more so with regard to the issue of death: Bataille, sofocused on death, and Freud, so reluctant to admit of its psychic influence.In bringing them together we can give a twist to Freud by reintroducing

death into his system.My starting point here is the issue of death’s representability. That

death defies representation is the basic tenet underlying Freud’s approach.Yet he seems to accept this without further investigation, and his entireanalysis is biased as a result. Although he has strong tendencies in more“existential” directions, it is this proposition—that death cannot be

represented—that holds him back time and again. But should it really beso?

In the following pages I will focus on Freud’s paradox of theirrepresentability of death and its consequences, and on our attitudetoward it, as depicted in his text. Through a reading of Freud’s text—again, probably the most important psychoanalytic paper on death—I

will attempt to demonstrate that it does, in fact, provide us with someclues to a possible way out of the paradox, a praxis with specificstructuring elements, but these indications are only dispersed in thetext, and have to be put together and interpreted in order for the way outto be clear.

Bataille struggles with similar contradictions, yet recognizes them

as crucial and problematic and therefore attempts to overcome them.Interestingly enough, and without any direct link between the twoauthors, serious resemblances can be found between their texts on death.This paper aims to display these resemblances and to offer, in addition toa Bataillean interpretation of Freud’s text, an exploration of basic psychicaldynamics regarding death. The three questions that it attempts to answerare: Can we or can we not grasp death? If we cannot, how can theknowledge of our future death gain access to our life? And, concerningthe implications this impossibility or possibility may have on life itself,is there a moral to handling death or integrating it in our life?

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The ProblemThe argument I wish to focus on here is the one Freud brings forth in

the opening lines of his paper:

It is indeed impossible to imagine our own death (der eigene Tod istja auch unvorstellbar); and whenever we attempt to do so we canperceive that we are in fact still present as spectators (daß wir eigentlichals Zuschauer weiter dabei bleiben). Hence the psycho-analytic schoolcould venture on the assertion that at bottom no one believes in hisown death, or, to put the same thing in another way, that in theunconscious every one of us is convinced of his own immortality.(“Thoughts” 291)

This basic claim—that death, our death, is ungraspable—has been maderepeatedly in philosophy. Let us examine Freud’s variation of theargument for this claim: that whenever we attempt to imagine our owndeath, we fail, for we are still present as spectators. The argument is built

like the Cartesian cogito. One can try as much as one likes to disposeoneself of oneself; he or she will not be able to get rid of his or her presenceas the person who carries this mental act.

The argument creates a split within the personality. One attempts toimagine oneself as dead, but is very alive while doing that. One cannotbe both the object and the subject of a thought at the same time, when

being an object means being a dead one. The self is presented as a spectator,with all the distance this position entails between the one that sees andthe objects of his or her perception.

The citation directly continues: “When it comes to someone else’sdeath, the civilized man will carefully avoid speaking of such a possibilityin the hearing of the person under sentence” (Freud, “Thoughts 291). We

try to avoid death in any way, in behavior and in thought.Thus Freud moves directly from the impossibility of representing

our own death, to a consideration of our response to the possible death ofthe other. True, he says we do not think either of our own or of the other’sdeath, but with a fundamental difference: Whereas in the first case wedo so because it is impossible, in the second case we do so out of moral

consideration or natural reluctance.This latter attitude of avoiding even the thought, not to say the

mention of another’s death, differs radically, says Freud, from that ofprimeval man and that of the unconscious. Although primeval manresembled us in that he did not grasp death as annihilation in his owncase, he recognized it in the case of another much more willfully than we

do—indeed he wished for the other ’s death. This attitude stillcharacterizes our unconscious today (“Thoughts” 296-297).

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It is as though Freud recognized in this rich text at once both thenecessity of integrating death into life, of giving it “the place […] whichis its due,” and our reluctance and inability to do so. It might seem as ifthese three propositions all belong to an existential frame of mind: Life ismore meaningful when the thought of death is present in it; people tendto flee the issue of death and evade the thought of it; and the idea of death

is so difficult to bear that we can hardly think of it. But the ideas thatFreud concludes from this third tenet are that death is never a primaryoccupation in the mind: whenever we see fear of death or the thought ofdeath in a person, we should always look for something else. We thushave a clash between the more existentially-oriented first two ideas andthe reductionistic implications of the third one.

The problem that Freud puts forth in his third proposition is thatdeath is inaccessible to the mind. It slides on it like oil on water andcannot penetrate the deeper levels of the mind. This idea of course negatesthe former two. First, how can we conform to the obligation to takedeath into account if it is in our nature and in the nature of death that wecannot do so? Second, why do we fear death and push it aside, if it cannot

reach us? Why push it away if it cannot influence our deeper levels ofthought and feeling?

What Freud struggles with without recognizing is explicit in Bataille.It seems, though, that Freud does give us some guidelines as to whatdirection to follow if we want to settle the contradictions. We can usethese hints as elements in an interpretation that will render them

valuable. But in order to do so, we need Bataille to guide us. With Bataille,we can draw the lines between the dots. Bataille sees a dialectic whereFreud only recognizes isolated, contradictory elements.

* * *

Bataille wrote a number of texts that dealt with themes of death andsacrifice. I will focus here on three of them. The first is “Hegel, Death andSacrifice” (1955). In this text, Bataille tries to solve a contradiction he seesin Hegel, a thinker whom he always read through Alexandre Kojève. Thesecond text is “Sacrifice, the Festival and the Principles of the SacredWorld,” which forms part of his “Theory of Religion” (1974 [1948]); and

the third is the section on sacrifice from “Literature and Evil” (1973 [1957]).It is noteworthy that Bataille’s papers on the subject neither mentionnor refer to Freud.3

Let us then follow Bataille and see both the problem that troubleshim and his solution. Bataille’s interest revolves around the following

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famous paragraph in Hegel’s Phenomenology which concerns the spirit’sattitude to death:

to uphold the work of death is the task which demands the greateststrength. […] Now, the life of Spirit is not that life which is frightenedof death, and spares itself destruction, but that life which assumesdeath and lives with it. Spirit attains its truth only by finding itself inabsolute dismemberment. It is not that (prodigious) power by beingthe Positive that turns away from the Negative, as when we say ofsomething: this is nothing or (this is) false and, having (thus) disposedof it, pass from there to something else; no, Spirit is that power onlyto the degree in which it contemplates the Negative face to face(and) dwells with it. This prolonged sojourn is the magical forcewhich transposes the negative into given-Being. (Hegel 19,translation modified. Cited by Bataille, “Hegel” 331; 282-83)4

There is no need to dwell here at length on Hegel’s terminology. For thepurposes of the current inquiry, the meaning of “Spirit”, according toBataille’s reading of Hegel, resembles the human being in its higherabilities, and is opposed to nature.

Hegel praises the Spirit’s ability to maintain itself in the presence ofdeath, to be near death. In fact, when contemplating the Negative ordeath, the Spirit reaches its fullest realization. On the one hand, Batailleshares this worldview: Man fights against nature to establish himself asMan, and he can do so through his willingness to renounce his ownanimal existence. By accepting death, man turns himself from animal to

human (“Hegel” 338; 288-89). Bataille carries this even further: Thewillingness to approach death is essential. Survival, for Bataille, is ananimal quality. Every animal is concerned with its survival. Man is willingto approach death and is thereby human. He is not a slave to his survivalinstinct. He gains sovereignty through his willingness to risk his life.5

However, for Bataille Hegel’s description entails an inherent

contradiction: the condition for the Spirit’s realization is its “absolutedismemberment,” and thus, it is at the moment of its own demolitionthat it becomes itself. The moment of crystallization is the moment ofshattering. The animal within man—his natural nature—dies, and he isrevealed to himself as man, and self-consciousness is established. Butwith the death of the animal that supports him, man dies as well (Bataille,

“Hegel” 336; 286).6 Thus, if facing the negative is a necessity, and yet weperish in its presence, how can we fulfill our being? That life’s ultimateaccomplishment will be its suicide seems to Bataille an unjustifiabledead-end. What he attempts is to find a way out.

The contradiction Bataille is attempting to solve is very close to theone we met in Freud. Freud’s claim is that we cannot think of ourselves

as dead, because in doing so we still have some cognizance of ourselves

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as alive. This description stresses the contrast between the “aliveness”of the psyche and the “deadness” of its object. The representation isimpossible because we remain alive. In Hegel we see the other side of thesame problem. Maintaining the thinking mind in the presence of death isimpossible. “Aliveness” and death cannot co-exist. The spirit must eitherrenounce its attempt to contemplate death, or it will have to give up life

and die in the very attempt. For both authors, then, the thinking of deathis impossible. Either we survive as a thinker or we perish in death. ForBataille this impasse (in Hegel, as he understands him) is misleading andcan be avoided in the phenomenon of sacrifice, and to a lesser degree, intheatre and art.7

Bataille’s focus on this paradox is not unique. It is in fact representative

of a whole group of French authors, who, influenced by Hegel as mediatedthrough Kojève’s reading, were at a certain period haunted by theproblem of witnessing one’s own death (John Gregg explores theproblematics in detail in his Maurice Blanchot and the literature of transgression,especially in chapters one and three), although this problem has notbeen linked to Freud, as is my project here. For example, the paradox

finds expression in the work of Bataille’s friend Michel Leiris, in L’âged’homme. Leiris writes:

I cannot say, strictly speaking, that I die, since – dying a violentdeath or not – I am conscious of only part of the event. And a greatshare of the terror which I experience at the idea of death derivesperhaps from this: bewilderment at remaining suspended in the middleof a seizure whose outcome I can never know because of my ownunconsciousness. This kind of unreality, this absurdity of death, is[…] its radically terrible element, and not, as some may think […],what might make it acceptable. (Manhood 50)

Elsewhere, in his autobiography, in a chapter devoted to death, Leirisdevelops similar notions. He links death to the persistence of the worldafter an individual’s disappearance and—vice-versa—one’s own survivalto the disappearance of everything else (Fourbis 31, 39-40). He links it

directly to the theatrical experience, a link we shall see shared by Freudand Bataille, both as spectator as performer. The theater for Leiris is thearena in which we encounter death (45-47). As an autobiographicalwriter, he speaks of his quest to possess himself in totality—a wish thatinevitably will be frustrated by the fact that totality can only be achievedwhen the last gap in self knowledge—the fascinating and elusive gap ofdeath itself—is sealed, which of course can only happen when the subjectdies (22).

A similar problem is explored by Bataille’s friend Maurice Blanchot,in his writing about suicide (where he mentions, in passing, the same

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paragraph by Hegel). In suicide, one mistakes two kinds of death, thevoluntary and the involuntary. Blanchot explains that the expression “Ikill myself” (“Je me tue”) discloses the problem: I and myself are necessarilynot the same entity. The free, sovereign I is not the one who will be theobject of the suicide (L’Espace 117-34). For Blanchot, this is a problem ofwriting itself, especially autobiographical writing, where language is

used to establish a subject and to overcome death while at the same timemaking that subject dissolve (L’Écriture 105, cited in Gregg 44). “The bookis a monument,” writes Gregg, “but an empty one” (42).

In another passage by Bataille, this one from the introduction toGuilty, he insists that full consciousness is the condition of achieved death,yet such consciousness is abolished by death (241; 7).

Thus we see that the stakes are high. What is at stake is the attemptof the subject to grasp itself in totality. This attempt necessitates bringingdeath into the account, but death itself hampers this very attempt. Onenever dies in the first person.

Returning to Bataille, why does he believe sacrifice to be a solution

to Hegel’s fundamental paradox? For him, it answers the requirements ofthe human, for Man meets death face to face in the sacrifice, he sojournswith it, and yet, at the same time, he preserves his life. In sacrifice, saysBataille, man destroys the animal within him and establishes his humantruth as a “being unto death” (he uses Heidegger’s term). Sacrifice providesa clear manifestation of man’s fundamental negativity, in the form of

death (Bataille, “Hegel” 335-36; 286). The sacrificer both destroys andsurvives. Moreover, in the sacrifice, death is approached voluntarily byMan.

In this way the paradox is overcome, and yet remains open. We canapproach death and yet remain alive, but, one might ask, is it reallydeath that we encountered, or did we merely fabricate a simulacrum?Bataille insists elsewhere, however, that sacrifice is not a simulacrum,not a mere subterfuge. In the sacrificial ritual, a real impression of horroris cast upon the spectators. Sacrifice burns like a sun, spreading radiationour eyes can hardly bear, and calls for the negation of individuals assuch (“The Festival” 313; 215). We did not fool death; we are burned in itsfire.

Bataille’s idea of the sacrifice also addresses Freud’s paradox. It mightbe impossible to imagine our own death directly, but it is possible toimagine it with the aid of some mediator, to meet death through an other’sdeath. Yet on some level this other’s death must be our own as well for itto be effective, and indeed this is the case, says Bataille. He stresses the

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element of identification: “In the sacrifice, the sacrificer identifies himselfwith the animal that is struck down dead. And so he dies in seeing himselfdie” (“Hegel” 336; 287). “There is no sacrifice,” writes Denis Hollier, “unlessthe one performing it identifies, in the end, with the victim” (166). Thus itis through identification, through otherness that is partly sameness, thata solution is achieved. If it were us, we would die in the act. If it were a

complete other, it would not, in any way, be our death.Also noteworthy is Bataille’s stress on the involvement of sight: “and

so he dies in seeing himself die” (“Hegel” 336; 287), which brings himclose to Freud’s view of the nature of the problem, for Freud insists on thevisual, recasting the problem as one of spectatorship, imagining,perceiving. Bataille’s description recapitulates that of Freud, but renders

it positive. Yes, we remain as a spectator, but it is essential that we do so.Without it, we cannot be said to have met death. Significantly, meetingdeath is a need, not uncalled-for. We must meet death, and we mustremain as spectators. Thus it is through identification and through visualparticipation in the dying that a solution is achieved, accompanied bythe critical revaluation of values, which renders the meeting with death

crucial for “humanness.”Note that both possibilities of meeting death—in the sacrificial-ritual

we have just explored, and in theatre or art, to which we now turn—aresocial. In Hegel and in Freud the problem was stated as relevant to theindividual alone, whether facing reality or within the cosmos of histhought. Bataille’s solution is achieved through an expansion of the

horizons into social existence. The two modes through which thecontradiction can be avoided involve the presence of other people.8

A Visit to the TheaterWe have seen that Freud argues that death is ungraspable, and that

in his struggle with a related paradox, Bataille offers a solution applicableto Freud’s argument. We shall now see ambiguous hints in Freud’s owntext toward a similar solution, and examine the issue of the possibleencounter with death in a more modern context than that of sacrifice,perhaps one that is closer to us.

Let us first return to Freud’s argument of the impossibility of therepresentation of death. The point in the argument is that we remainspectators. Not specters, as one could imagine one should be, havingsurvived one’s own death, but spectators. Speculation or thought aboutdeath fails because of the position of the spectator. Having tried to mirrorourselves in a specular way and failed, we note that we are still in there,watching.

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But more than the visual, the use of the term of spectators (Zuschauer)carries us swiftly into the domain of the theater. Less than two pageslater, Freud stumbles on the idea of theater more directly. Havingdescribed our tendency to push death away from life and thus to live animpoverished life, Freud continues:

It is an inevitable result of all this that we should seek in the world offiction, in literature and in the theatre compensation for what hasbeen lost in life. There we still find people who know how to die—who, indeed, even manage to kill someone else. There alone toothe condition can be fulfilled which makes it possible for us toreconcile ourselves with death: namely that behind all the vicissitudesof life we should still be able to preserve a life intact. For it is reallytoo sad that in life it should be like it is in chess, where one falsemove may force us to resign the game, but with the difference thatwe can start no second game, no return-match. In the realm of fictionwe find the plurality of lives which we need. We die with the herowith whom we have identified ourselves; yet we survive him, andare ready to die again just as safely with another hero. (“Thoughts”291)

Although the passage is compelling, one should note that it is marginal

in Freud’s text, with much poetic force yet of little relevance to the entirearticle. Freud does not return to it, does not treat it in depth; neither dothose who have studied the question of death in Freud (Rank, Schur,Becker, Lifton, Hoffman, Yalom and Piven, among others). In any event, itis not in relation to the problem of the representation of death that hepens this passage that looks, at least at first, like a burst of literary

imagination rather than a serious discussion.More important than the question of its marginality, attention should

be given to what Freud does in this passage. For Freud, as can be seenfrom the context of this passage, what takes places in the theater belongsto the cultural-conventional attitude to death, which tries hard to ignoreit. In his description theater is a sort of bourgeois solution, superficial

and limited, that replaces meeting death in person. More lip-service todeath than a true encounter, it is, again as the context shows, the solutionof the coward. He who is unwilling to risk his life, being controlled byfear (Freud’s point in the passage that precedes the one on the theater)finds some surrogate satisfaction, a mild compensation, by proxy, inseeing others pretend to die.

Freud’s description stresses another point: the survival of thespectator and the necessary detachment implied by the possibility ofreplacing one hero for another. Theater does not reveal anything to usabout death, for “behind all the vicissitudes of life we should still be ableto preserve a life intact.” Thus not only do we survive the hero, we evenbenefit from his death: this is what we seek, our own survival. In that

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description, we come to the theater in order to make sure that we keepdeath away. We come to meet our “aliveness” again, once again to confirmourselves in our complete rejection of death. Night after night in thetheater, we convince ourselves of our immunity and invulnerability.

The entire artistic setting helps us: we can always step out of theenchanted dream, out of the willing suspension of disbelief, and tell

ourselves: “After all, it is only a show, only a story.”9 Thus there is no realdanger, no real undermining of our security. Theater, Freud seems tosuggest, is just a play.

But is theater really that meaningless? Is the encounter with deaththere really a missed encounter? We shall now turn to Bataille, whooffers an alternative view, where theater is regarded as much more

serious.Theatrical art, Bataille reminds, is the heir to religion. Theatrical

representation evolved from the sacrificial rite and still maintains itsessence, which is, as we have seen, to enable us to come close to death (LaLittérature 214; 69). Theater, literature in general, and the sacrificial ritualsare essential to us: through them we become human, for we can

familiarize ourselves with death and distance ourselves from our animalnature. Theater, according to Bataille’s description, overcomes Hegel’sparadox: “In tragedy, at least, it is a question of our identifying withsome character who dies, and of believing that we die, although we arealive (Bataille, “Hegel” 337; 287).

Bataille’s phrasing is almost identical to that of Freud. But the

perspective differs. It is a delicate yet crucial nuance. Bataille, in contrastwith Freud (under the above reading), stresses that we really do get aglimpse of dying there, that it is not merely a game. He also views theencounter with death as an existential necessity, crucial for Man to behuman, not as some entertainment. And third, there is a twist of value:for Bataille we actively try to bring death closer, trying to force ourselvesto represent it, in various cultural ways (sacrifice, art).

Theater, be it tragedy or comedy, is very serious for Bataille, and heattempts to explain why: if, he says, the goal of all life is to push deathaside, to head away from it, theater offers an element in life that goes inthe opposite direction. Instead of moving us away from death, it bringsus nearer. It serves a deep need in us. “…Just as certain insects, in givenconditions, flock towards a ray of light,” Bataille writes, “so we all flockto an area at the opposite end of the scale from death. The mainspring ofhuman activity is generally the desire to reach the point farthest fromthe funeral domain.” Yet it is sometimes necessary for life not to “fleefrom the shades of death,” but to “allow…them to grow within it” (La

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Littérature 212-13; 66-67). Moreover, this should not be done passively, inspite of ourselves: “we must,” Bataille insists, “revive [the shades ofdeath] voluntarily.” One of our ways to do so is art. “The arts […]incessantly evoke these derangements, these lacerations, this declinewhich our entire activity endeavors to avoid,” and it is done in order toarouse anxiety in us. Sacrifice is of the same nature (213-14; 67-68).

Not that we die in the theater. Bataille is aware, as is Freud, that bysurviving the protagonists we only affirm life once again. Our laughteror our tears signify that for a moment, “death appears light to us” (LaLittérature 214; 68). Yet if it appears light, it is because for a moment it is asthough we have risen beyond the horror, for a moment we are not busyfearing death: at that moment we come to understand something about

the presence of death. It teaches us that “when we flee wisely from theelements of death, we merely want to preserve life,” whereas, by enteringthose “regions that wisdom tells us to avoid, we really live it.” By comingclose to death, to the symbols of its emptiness, we get “a heightenedconsciousness of being.” When we laugh in the theater, such laughter“brings us out […] from the impasse in which life is enclosed by those

whose only concern is to preserve life” (214; 68, italics in original).Theater thus has a liberating power. It frees us from the concern of

pushing death aside, it brings us into contact with it and thus illuminatesthe rest of our life, constantly busy with fleeing death, in a peculiar light.For a moment we are, as it were, free from that compulsive need, and canhave a different perspective on life.

Returning to Freud, we can try to read his passage through Bataille’slens and ask whether the theatrical-artistic possibility is really sosuperficial. Reading against the grain, we can see that Freud does actuallyoffer something there.

Even if what we wish in theater is to “be able to preserve a lifeintact,” it is noteworthy that we seek it. Although the result is similar to

that described in the paradox of the impossibility of the representationof death, namely our survival after the representation, there is adifference. There, it was a limitation we encountered, that we remainedalive (or was it? We shall see later), whereas here, concerning the theater,it is something we seek: to meet death and yet “preserve a life intact.”Even if only to reaffirm our “aliveness,” we do display a certain magneticattraction towards death. We might have remained alive, but with someintegration of death into this “aliveness.”

Theatrical representation, according to Freud’s text, also providesus with a model for another approach to death, one that does not shun it.“There we still find people who know how to die – who, indeed, even

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manage to kill someone else.” Those people do not embrace our owncowardly evasive attitude to death, they are not obsessed with keepingthemselves at a distance from death. They approach it. Theater may notrepresent death, but it does manage to present us with a model of how toapproach it.

The crucial element here is that death, in the theater, is the death of

an other. Blind as we are to our own death, and in other circumstancesblind to the death of the other, in theater we manage in some way, albeitlimited, to experience death. For if we identify, as Freud says, with thehero, it means that there is a certain link between him and us. It meansthat although the overall outcome is that we are only reassured duringthe spectacle itself, we might still be temporarily seized with

apprehension of death.Although turning to the other looks protective at first, it might still

shake our affirmation of ourselves to a certain degree. In part this seemsdue to the hybrid status—split between otherness and sameness—of thehero in the theatrical representation or the literary work: on the onehand, different, estranged from ourselves; on the other hand, close to us

through our identification with him. In a sense, we are the same. Thishybrid position seems to be the opening through which recognition ofdeath might enter our sheltered, protective person.10

Thus Freud’s text, although it insists on the irrepresentability of death,actually offers, unintentionally perhaps, a possible way out of theparadox through turning to the other. Death perhaps cannot be looked at

directly, but it can be grasped sideways, indirectly, vicariously througha mirror, to use Perseus’s ancient trick against Medusa. The introductionof the other, both similar to and different from oneself, into the equationof death helps break out of the Cartesian circle with both its incontestabletruth and its solipsism and affirmation of oneself.

The safety that theater provides, of essentially knowing that we will

remain alive, emerges as a kind of requirement for our ability to reallyidentify with the other. In that, it paradoxically enables us to really get ataste of death. Bataille radicalizes that possibility.

Although Freud deems the estrangement of death from psychic life aproblem, as we have seen and shall see, theater is not a solution for him.With Bataille however, theater emerges as a much more compellingalternative. Again, it is a matter of a delicate nuance, but a nuance thatmakes all the difference. The idea common to both authors—that we canmeet death through the other and yet remain alive—is ambiguous. Onecan lay stress on that encounter or on the fact of remaining alive.11 Freud

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tends to opt for the second possibility, but his text can also be read assupporting the first. The benefit in bringing Freud and Bataille togetheris that it invites us to that second reading.

An Encounter with DeathDeath in Freud is often the death of the other. Both the fear of death

and the death wish are often focused on the other as their object. But

almost always it is as though through the discussion of the other Freudwere trying to keep death at bay. But along with Bataille, we can takethis other more seriously. Imagining our own death might be impossible,yet we can still get a glimpse of death when it is an other that dies.

In one passage in his text, the death of the other seems more explicitlya crucial point for Freud as well—one passage where death does not

seem so distant. Freud comments on the attitude of primeval Man todeath, as described above—namely that he wishes it in others but ignoresit in himself. “But there was for him one case in which the two oppositeattitudes towards death collided,” he continues.

It occurred when primeval man saw someone who belonged to himdie—his wife, his child, his friend […]. Then, in his pain, he wasforced to learn that one can die, too, oneself, and his whole beingrevolted against the admission. (“Thoughts” 293)

Freud goes on to explain that the loved one was at once part of himself,and a stranger whose death pleased primeval man.

It is from this point, Freud continues, that philosophy, psychologyand religion sprang.12 I have described elsewhere (Razinsky, “A Struggle”)how Freud’s reluctance to admit the importance of death quicklyundermines this juncture of the existential encounter with death byfocusing on the emotional ambivalence of primeval man rather than ondeath itself. However, the description is there and is very telling. Primevalman witnessed death, and “his whole being revolted against theadmission.” ”Man could no longer keep death at a distance, for he hadtasted it in his pain about the dead” (Freud, “Thoughts” 294).

Once again, it is through the death of the other that man comes tograsp death. Once again, we have that special admixture of the otherbeing both an other and oneself that facilitates the encounter with death.

Something of myself must be in the other in order for me to see his deathas relevant to myself. Yet his or her otherness, which means myreassurance of my survival, is no less crucial, for if it were not present,there would be no acknowledgement of death, one’s own death alwaysbeing, says Freud, one’s blind spot.13

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I mentioned before Heidegger’s grappling with a problem similar toBataille’s paradox. It is part of Heidegger’s claim, which he shares withFreud, that one’s death is unimaginable. In a famous section Heideggermentions the possibility of coming to grasp death through the death ofthe other but dismisses it, essentially since the other in that case wouldretain its otherness: the other’s death is necessarily the other’s and not

mine (47:221-24). Thus we return to the problem we started with—thatof the necessary subject-object duality in the process of the representationof death. Watching the dead object will no more satisfy me than imaginingmyself as an object, for the radical difference of both from me as a subjectwill remain intact. But the possibility that seems to emerge from thediscussion of Freud and Bataille is that in-between position of the person

both close and distant, both self and other, which renders trueapprehension of death possible, through real identification.14 As Bataillesays, regarding the Irish Wake custom where the relatives drink anddance before the body of the deceased: “It is the death of an other, but insuch instances, the death of the other is always the image of one’s owndeath” (“Hegel” 341; 291).

Bataille speaks of the dissolution of the subject-object boundaries insacrifice, of the “fusion of beings” in these moments of intensity (“TheFestival” 307-11; 210-13; La Littérature 215; 70). Possibly, that is whathappens to primeval man when the loved one dies and why his “wholebeing” is affected. He himself is no longer sure of his identity. Before, itwas clear—there is the other, the object, whom one wants dead, and

there is oneself, a subject. The show and the spectators. Possibly whatman realized before the cadaver of his loved one was that he himself isalso an object, taking part in the world of objects, and not only a subject.When he understood this, it seems to me, he understood death. For in asense a subject subjectively never dies. Psychologically nothing limitshim,15 while an object implies limited existence: limited by other objects

that interact with it, limited in space, limited in being the thought-contentof someone else. Moreover, primeval man understood that he is the samefor other subjects as other subjects are for him—that is, they can wishhim dead or, which is pretty much the same, be indifferent to his existence.The encounter made primeval man step out of the psychological positionof a center, transparent to itself, and understand that he is not only aspirit but also a thing, an object, not only a spectator; this is what reallyshakes him.16

The Highest Stake in the Game of LivingThus far we have mainly discussed our first two questions: the

limitation in imagining death and the possible solution through a form

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of praxis, in either a channeled, ritualized or a spontaneous encounterwith the death of an other, overcoming the paradox of the impossibilityof representation by involving oneself through deep identification. Weshall now turn to our third question, of the value of integrating deathinto our thoughts. We have seen that Bataille’s perspective continuouslybrings up the issue of the value of approaching death. The questions of

whether we can grasp death and, if we can, how, are not merely abstractor neutral ones. The encounter with death, that we now see is possible,seems more and more to emerge as possessing a positive value, indeed asfundamental. What we shall now examine is Freud’s attempt to addressthat positive aspect directly, an attempt that betrays, however, a deepambivalence.

As mentioned, Freud’s text is very confused, due to true hesitationbetween worldviews (see Razinsky, “A Struggle”). One manifestation ofthis confusion is Freud’s position regarding this cultural-conventionalattitude: on the one hand he condemns it, yet on the other hand he acceptsit as natural and inevitable. For him, it results to some extent from death’sexclusion from unconscious thought (“Thoughts” 289, 296-97). Death

cannot be represented and is therefore destined to remain foreign to ourlife.17

But then Freud suddenly recognizes an opposite necessity: not toreject death but to insert it into life. Not to distance ourselves from it, butto familiarize ourselves with it:

But this attitude [the cultural-conventional one] of ours towards deathhas a powerful effect on our lives. Life is impoverished, it loses ininterest, when the highest stake in the game of living, life itself, maynot be risked. It becomes as shallow and empty as, let us say, anAmerican flirtation, in which it is understood from the first that nothingis to happen, as contrasted with a Continental love-affair in whichboth partners must constantly bear its serious consequences in mind.Our emotional ties, the unbearable intensity of our grief, make usdisinclined to court danger for ourselves and for those who belongto us. We dare not contemplate a great many undertakings which aredangerous but in fact indispensable, such as attempts at artificial flight,expeditions to distant countries or experiments with explosivesubstances. We are paralyzed by the thought of who is to take theson’s place with his mother, the husband’s with his wife, the father’swith his children, if a disaster should occur. Thus the tendency toexclude death from our calculations in life brings in its train manyother renunciations and exclusions. Yet the motto of the HanseaticLeague ran: ‘Navigare necesse est, vivere non necesse.’ (“It is necessaryto sail the seas, it is not necessary to live.”) (“Thoughts” 290-91)

Readers unfamiliar with Freud’s paper are probably shaking theirheads in disbelief. Is it Freud who utters these words? Indeed, the oddityof this citation cannot be over-estimated. It seems not to belong to Freud’s

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thought. One can hardly find any other places where he speaks of suchan intensification of life and fascination with death, and praisesuncompromising risk-taking and the neglect of realistic considerations.In addition to being unusual, the passage itself is somewhat unclear.18

The examples—not experimenting with explosive substances—seemirrelevant and unconvincing. The meaning seems to slide. It is not quite

clear if the problem is that we do not bring death into our calculations,as the beginning seems to imply, or that, rather, we actually bring it intoour calculations too much, as is suggested at the end

But what I wish to stress here is that the passage actually opposeswhat Freud says in the preceding passages, where he describes thecultural-conventional attitude and speaks of our inability to make death

part of our thoughts. In both the current passage and later passages headvocates including death in life, but insists, elsewhere in the text, thatembracing death is impossible. In a way, he is telling us that we cannotaccept the situation where death is constantly evaded. Here again Bataillecan be useful in rendering Freud’s position more intelligible. He seems toarticulate better than Freud the delicate balance, concerning the place of

death in psychic life, between the need to walk on the edge, and the flightinto normalcy and safety. As I asserted above, where in Freud there arecontradictory elements, in Bataille there is a dialectic.

Bataille, as we have seen, presents the following picture: It might bethat, guided by our instincts, we tend to avoid death. But we also seem tohave a need to intersperse this flight with occasional peeps into the

domain of death. When we invest all of our effort in surviving, somethingof the true nature of life evades us. It is only when the finite human beinggoes beyond the limitations “necessary for his preservation,” that he“asserts the nature of his being” (La Littérature 214; 68).

The approaches of both Bataille and Freud are descriptive as well asnormative. Bataille describes a tendency to distance ourselves from death

and a tendency to get close to it. But he also describes Man’s need toapproach death from a normative point of view, in order to establish hishumanity: a life that is only fleeing death has less value. Freud carefullydescribes our tendency to evade death and, in the paragraph underdiscussion, calls for the contrary approach. This is stressed at the end ofthe article, where he encourages us to “give death the place in reality andin our thoughts which is its due” (“Thoughts” 299). Paradoxically, itmight be what will make life “more tolerable for us once again” (299).But since Freud also insists not only on a tendency within us to evadedeath, but also on the impossibility of doing otherwise, and on how

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death simply cannot be the content of our thought, his sayings in favorof bringing death close are confusing and confused.

Freud does not give us a reason for the need to approach death. Hesays that life loses in interest, but surely this cannot be the result ofabstaining from carrying out “experiments with explosive substances.”In addition, his ideas on the shallowness of a life without death do not

seem to evolve from anything in his approach. It is along the lines offeredby Bataille’s worldview that I wish to interpret them here.

Sacrifice, Bataille says, brings together life in its fullness and theannihilation of life. We are not mere spectators in the sacrificial ritual.Our participation is much more involved. Sacrificial ritual creates atemporary, exceptionally heightened state of living. “The sacred horror,”

he calls the emotion experienced in sacrifice: “the richest and mostagonizing experience.” It “opens itself, like a theater curtain, on to a realmbeyond this world” and every limited meaning is transfigured in it(“Hegel” 338; 288).

Bataille lays stress on vitality. Death is not humanizing only on thephilosophical level, as it is for Hegel or Kojève. Bataille gives it an

emotional twist. The presence of death, which he interprets in a moreearthly manner, is stimulating, vivifying, intense. Death and other relatedelements (violence) bring life closer to a state where individuality melts,the mediation of the intellect between us and the world lessens, and lifeis felt at its fullest. Bataille calls this state, or aspect of the world,immanence or intimacy: “immanence between man and the world,

between the subject and the object” (“The Festival” 307-311; 210-213).Moments of intensity are moments of excess and of fusion of beings (LaLittérature 215; 70). They are a demand of life itself, even though theysometimes seem to contradict it. Death is problematic for us, but it opensup for us something in life.

This line of thought seems to accord very well with the passage in

Freud’s text with which we are dealing here, and to extend it. Life withoutdeath is life lacking in intensity, an impoverished, shallow and emptylife. Moreover, the repression of death is generalized and extended: “thetendency to exclude death from our calculations in life brings in its trainmany other renunciations and exclusions.” Freud simply does not seemto have the conceptual tools to discuss these ideas. The intuition is evenstronger in the passage that follows, where Freud discusses war (notethat the paper is written in 1915): When war breaks out, he says, thiscowardly, conservative, risk-rejecting attitude is broken at once. Wareliminates this conventional attitude to death. “Death could no longer be

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denied. We are forced to believe in it. People really die. . . . Life has, indeed,become interesting again; it has recovered its full content” (“Thoughts”291). Thus what is needed is more than the mere accounting ofconsequences, taking death into consideration as a future possibility.What is needed is exposure to death, a sanguineous imprinting of deathdirectly on our minds, through the “accumulation of deaths” of others.

Life can only become vivid, fresh, and interesting when death is witnesseddirectly.

Both authors speak of a valorization of death, and in both there is acertain snobbery around it. While the masses follow the natural humantendency to avoid death, like the American couple or those who are busywith the thought of “who is to take our place,” the individualists do not

go with the herd, and by allowing themselves to approach death, achievea fuller sense of life, neither shallow nor empty.19

Yet again, Freud’s claims hover in the air, lacking any theoreticalbackground. Bataille supplies us with such background. He contests, aswe have seen, the sole focus on survival. Survival, he tells us, has a price.It limits our life. As if there were an inherent tension between preserving

life and living it. Freud poses the same tension here. Either we are totallyabsorbed by the wish to survive, to keep life intact, and therefore limitour existence to the bare minimum, or else we are willing to risk it tosome extent in order to make it more interesting, more vital and valuable.

Our usual world, according to Bataille, is characterized by theduration of things, by the “future” function, rather than by the present.

Things are constituted as separate objects in view of future time. This isone reason for the threat of death: it ruins value where value is onlyassured through duration. It also exposes the intimate order of life that iscontinuously hidden from us in the order of things where life runs itsnormal course. Man “is afraid of death as soon as he enters the system ofprojects that is the order of things” (“The Festival” 312; 214). Sacrifice is

the opposite of production and accumulation. Death is not so much anegation of life, as it is an affirmation of the intimate order of life, whichis opposed to the normal order of things and is therefore rejected. “Thepower of death signifies that this real world can only have a neutralimage of life […]. Death reveals life in its plenitude” (309; 212).

Bataille’s “neutral image of life” is the equivalent of Freud’s “shallowand empty” life. What Freud denounces is a life trapped within thecowardly economical system of considerations. It is precisely theeconomy of value and future-oriented calculations that stand inopposition to the insertion of death into life. “Who is to take the son’splace with his mother, the husband’s with his wife, the father’s with his

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children.” Of course there is an emotional side to the story, but it is thisinsistence on replacement that leaves us on the side of survival and stopsus sometimes from living the present. “The need for duration,” in thewords of Bataille, “conceals life from us” (“The Festival” 309; 212). Forboth authors, when death is left out, life “as it is” is false and superficial.

Another Look at SpeculationBoth authors, then, maintain that if elements associated with death

invade our life anyway, we might as well succumb and give them anordered place in our thoughts. The necessity to meet death is not due tothe fact that we do not have a choice. Rather, familiarization with deathis necessary if life is to have its full value, and is part of what makes ushuman.

But the tension between the tendencies—to flee death or to embraceit—is not easily resolved, and the evasive tendency always tries to assertitself. As seen above, Bataille maintains that in sacrifice, we are exposedthrough death to other dimensions of life. But the exposure, he adds, islimited, for next comes another phase, performed post-hoc, after the event:the ensuing horror and the intensity are too high to maintain, and must

be countered. Bataille speaks of the justifications of the sacrifice given bycultures, which inscribe it in the general order of things. Thus, sacrificeis said to foster more rain, to appease the gods, or to help in war. Theseexplanations, he insists, are always secondary (“Hegel” 342-3; 291-2),contrary to the very essence of sacrifice, which entails a glimpse into theintimate order of the world, characterized by intensity, lack of distinctions

and “immanence between man and the world, between the subject andthe object” (“The Festival” 307; 210). And still, the explanations areessential and cannot be eliminated.20

Thus, crossing over into the realm where Man is revealed to himselfthrough getting a glimpse at nothingness, where life’s immanence isexposed in its totality, is possible, says Bataille, but only for a limited

time and to a limited degree. Sacrifice is a gesture that is not directedtowards an aim, thereby achieving a certain amount of autonomy orsovereignty. Yet discourse is immediately brought up to seal what hasbeen opened. The sacrifice is always subjugated to some discourse thatbinds it to the utilitarian system. Thus Bataille’s solution—or actuallythe solution of the cultures that sacrifice—is only limited, partial. (Thisseems to echo Derrida’s famous critique of Bataille in his analysis of thattext. According to Derrida, Bataille seems to want to step out of the systemof signification, but, ultimately, he remains within it. With relation tothe Hegelian system, one could say that transgression, as a form of

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sublation, remains essentially bound to what it transgresses [Trahair164, 167]).

But in fact, can it be otherwise? Is this partiality coincidental? If ourstarting point, in Freud and Hegel, was that death is either pushed awayor gains full control, we seem to be back to square one. Once again deathcannot be looked at, once again life has won over it, once again we remain

spectators. This failure seems more and more to be rooted in the natureof death, rather than in the clumsiness of our attempts.

Yet this failure does not mean the whole enterprise is valueless, forthree reasons. The first is that indeed there was a meeting with death, inthe sacrifice or theatrical act. We did approach it. The necessity to sealthe breach made in the fabric of reality is inevitable, but it only comes

into play after some encounter with death has already taken place, andtestifies to that encounter. We immediately try to tame death, but only atthe second stage. Moreover, this is not a one-time act, but an ongoingprocess. Bringing in discourse to push away death will not prevent manfrom engaging again in the act of sacrifice, or, more generally, from tryingto approach death again, and failing again.

Third, this time, we ourselves have made the effort to meet death. Ithas not infiltrated our lives in spite of ourselves. Rather, we approachedit ourselves. So, we might be back to square one, but in a different manner.We are human, Bataille would say, because we have that necessity tofamiliarize ourselves with death.

Both the limitations and the reservations are valid to Freud’s case as

well, and can be applied to his text. Death cannot be represented quadeath; yet this failure in representation is not an end point, but rather abeginning—a starting point for much psychic work, and a starting pointfor more attempts at representation. There is a process involved here. Ina way, one should only take Freud’s words literally. “It is indeedimpossible to imagine our own death; and whenever we attempt to do

so we can perceive that we are in fact still present as spectators.” Deathmight be irrepresentable. But why do we “attempt to do so”? Whatdisposes us to try to figure out death for ourselves? If Freud’s descriptionsof how we avoid death were the sole truth, how would he explain that?The idea that there is a necessity for human beings to try to integratedeath into their thoughts and into their lives seems more fitting here.The attempt might be unsuccessful, yet we keep repeating it: “whenever(so oft) we attempt to do so.” Why do we repeat the act if it is doomed tofailure? Why do we not understand that death simply cannot be grasped?It seems we are not satisfied with something. Possibly, we only try to doso because we know we will find ourselves as spectators, thereby abating

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the anxiety. The attempt at representation will therefore be similar tothe sacrificial act or the theatrical experience: it brings us close to deathand satisfies that need, yet assures us in advance that it is only “makebelieve,” that we will not be personally touched by it.

But it is also possible that the necessity to come close to death iswhat drives us to attempt representation. The attempt to understand

death, to imagine it to ourselves, to represent it, fails. We discover thatwe are still there. As a result of the impossibility of representation, Freudconcludes that in our unconscious we are immortal, that “no one believesin his own death.” There is a gap here, and the conclusion does not followlogically, as is already noted by Hoffman (236). But there is more thanflawed logic here. The nature of our attitude to death is at stake. The

failure to represent, to imagine, should not mean death is unavailable tous. It only means it is unreachable through understanding. We cannotgrasp it. But death is presented to us in the terror it inflicts on us incertain events; it can be very present to us when it breaks into our world,as seen above, through the mediation of an other. Trying to imagine death,to grasp it as it were consciously, is to try and clothe it with sense. This,

as Bataille explained, is doomed to failure. The attempt to impose senseon it will necessarily distort death. Binding what in its nature defiesrepresentation, the pure negative, into discursive thought must result infailure. That we remain spectators is only a manifestation of the problem.Grasping it would give us something else. It does not mean anythingabout the availability of death to us, only about its availability to

conscious, discursive thought, or as an object of thought or imagination.Therefore Freud’s jump is all the more unjustified. The problem is notthat the attempt to imagine fails. The problem is that we attempt.

Thus the failure to grasp death is significant. There is an internalcontradiction in trying to do so, for it immediately seals any true

apprehension of it. Death’s presence is too unsettling anyway. In thesame manner that sacrifice enables a transgression of the common order,while reinstating that order through the meaning given to the sacrifice,we attempt to meet death, and miraculously the natural state of thingsis reinstated. We look around and make sure: yes, we are still here asspectators, everything is OK.

We try to avoid thinking of death, yet we are also attracted to it,sensing its importance; we try to grasp it in our thought, but fail, andthen avoid it again. There is this back-and-forth movement between usand the idea of death, not just rejection. Representation fails, but so doesrepression. Freud grapples with it in his paper, not always knowingly.

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Thus, when in the last paragraph he advocates taking death again intoconsideration, yet contends at the beginning of the text that it isimpossible, for there is no place for it, he is perhaps delineating thisback-and-forth movement.

Looking back at our three questions, what emerges is theirinterconnectedness. First we saw that the question of how we can grasp

death is intrinsically related to the question of whether we can do so atall, not for the obvious reason that the second answers the former, butsince part of the difficulty in grasping it is precisely the attempt to graspit in thought, while the encounter with it is done in praxis, taking placein life. We also see that the question of the possibility or impossibility ofgrasping death stands in a serious dialectic relationship with the question

of the value of integrating death in life; the latter both motivates the needfor grasping and is motivated by its failure. It is the integration ofBataille’s ideas with those of Freud that helps illuminate these connections,enriching the limited picture Freud presents of contradictory elementswhose contradiction, moreover, is not recognized.

The current paper, through reading Freud together with Bataille,

was concerned with exploring some of the complexity of the attitude todeath, with both its evasive pole and its attraction to it.21 I have examinedboth the elusive difficulty of grasping death itself, and the solution thatseems to emerge from the texts of both authors—namely that death couldbe grasped through some praxis that involves the concrete other as amediator, half-self, half-other. At a higher level, the difficulty of grasping

death was discussed as part of the attempt to get a hold on it, a hold thatnecessarily distorts its object. Above all, the attempt to represent,whether successful or failing, is important for what it is—an attempt toapproach death—for leaving death out requires too high a price. It isnow, having come this far, that Freud’s concluding words become moreloaded with meaning:

We recall the old saying Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you want topreserve peace, arm for war.It would be in keeping with the times to alter it: Si vis vitam, paramortem. If you want to endure life, prepare yourself for death.(“Thoughts” 299-300)

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

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Works CitedBataille, Georges. “Le Coupable.” 1961. Œuvres Complètes, Paris: Gallimard, 1988. Vol 5,

235-392.—. “Guilty.” Trans. Bruce Boone. Intro. Denis. Hollier. Venice, San Francisco: The Lapis

Press, 1988.—.“Hegel, Death and Sacrifice.” The Bataille Reader. Eds. Fred. Botting and Scott Wilson.

Oxford: Blackwell, 1997. 279-95.—. “Hegel, la Mort et le Sacrifice.” 1955. Œuvres Complètes. Paris: Gallimard, 1988.Vol.

12, 326-45—. “Le Sacrifice.” From La Littérature et le Mal. 1957. Œuvres Complètes. Paris: Gallimard,

1988. Vol. 9, 212-16.—. “The Sacrifice.” Literature and Evil. Trans Alastair Hamilton. New York and London:

Marion Boyars, 1973. 66-70.—. “Le Sacrifice, la Fête et les Principes du Monde Sacré.” From Théorie de la Religion.

1974 [1948]. Œuvres Complètes. Paris: Gallimard, 1988. Vol. 7, 281-361—. “Sacrifice, the Festival and the Principles of the Sacred World.” From Theory of

Religion. The Bataille Reader. Eds. Fred. Botting and Scott Wilson. Oxford: Blackwell,1997. 210-19.

Becker, Ernest. The Denial of Death. New York, NY: The Free Press, 1973.Blanchot, Maurice. L’espace Littéraire. Gallimard, 1955Derrida, Jacques. “From Restricted to General Economy: A Hegelianism without Re-

serve.” Bataille: A Critical Reader. Eds. Fred Botting and Scott Wilson. Trans. AlanBass. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. 102-138

Freud, Sigmund. Totem and Taboo. 1913. The Standard Edition of the Complete PsychologicalWorks of Sigmund Freud. Ed. James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press. Vol. 13, 1-161.

—. (1915). “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death.” Standard Edition. Vol. 14, 273-300.

Gregg, John. Maurice Blanchot and the Literature of Transgression, Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1994.

Hegel, G. W. F.. Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. A.V. Miller. Oxford: Clarendon Press,1977.

Heidegger, Martin. Being and time. 1927. Trans Joan Stambaugh. New York, NY: StateUniversity of New York Press, 1996.

Hollier, Denis. Against Architecture. The Writings of Georges Bataille. Trans. Betsy Wing.Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England: The MIT Press, 1989 [1974].

Hoffman, Irwin. Z. “Death Anxiety and Adaptation to Mortality in Psychoanalytic Theory.”The Annual of Psychoanalysis 7 (1979): 233-69.

Leiris, Michel., Fourbis (La règle du jeu II). NRF, Gallimard, 1955.—. Manhood. Trans Richard Howard. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago

Press, 1992.Lifton, Robert. J. The Broken Connection: On Death and the Continuity of life. New-York, NY:

Simon and Schuster, 1979.Piven, Jerry. Death and Delusion: A Freudian Analysis of mortal Terror. Greenwich, CT:

Information Age Publishing, 2004.Rank, Otto. Will Therapy and Truth and Reality. Trans. JessieTaft. New York, NY: Alfred A.

Knopf, 1950 [1945]..Razinsky, Liran. “Driving Death Away: Death and Freud’s Theory of the Death Drive.

2009, in review.—. “On the Strange Case of the Attitude of Psychoanalysis towards Death.” Contempo-

rary Psychoanalysis 43.1 (2007): 149-64.—. “A Psychoanalytic Struggle with the Concept of Death: A New Reading of Freud’s

‘Thoughts for the Times on War and Death’.” Psychoanalytic Review 94.3 (2007): 355-88.

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Roudinesco, Elisabeth. “Bataille entre Freud et Lacan: Une Expérience Cachée.” GeorgesBataille Après Tout. Ed. Denis Hollier. France: Éditions Belin, 1995. 191-212

Schur, Max. Freud, Living and Dying. New York, NY: International Universities Press,1972.

Trahair, Lisa. “The Comedy of Philosophy. Bataille, Hegel and Derrida.” Angelaki 6.3(2001): 155-69.

Yalom, Irvin. D. Existential Psychotherapy. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1980.

Notes1. I would like to thank Betty Rojtman for her illuminating comments on Bataille’s work,

to which the current paper owes much. I also wish to thank Denis Holier for hishelpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

2. See Rank, Becker, Lifton, Hoffman, Yalom, Piven, and Razinsky (“A Struggle”; “Onthe Strange Case”; “Driving Death Away”).

3. I will not deal here with other influences on Bataille relevant to the issues discussedhere, such as Artaud or Nietzsche. Heidegger is only briefly discussed. For thequestion of Bataille’s use of Freud see Roudinesco.

4. Here, as later, the first page number refers to the original French text of Bataille, thesecond to the English translation.

5. In order to fully understand the necessity for the spirit to be in the vicinity of death andto have it as a content of thought one needs to examine both Hegel’s philosophy andKojève’s interpretation. While doing so in any depth would take us too far from theaim of this paper, I shall here give a brief explanation, based on the descriptions ofboth Bataille and Kojève. The spirit’s essential nature is nothingness, manifested inthe form of negation, transformation, destruction. It is negation that differentiates thehuman being from the animal (Bataille, “Hegel” 327, 332; 280, 283-84). This negativeaction, which is man’s most salient attribute, does not stop at man himself, before thenegating agency, but is rather applied to man’s own existence. For man is nature aswell, and if he negates nature, he also negates himself, or the animal within him (331-32; 283).

Another point that needs elaboration concerns the consciousness of death. Thediscourse of the speaking subject must encompass reality in its totality. The subjecthimself is part of reality and thus should also be an object of the discourse. From herethe idea develops that it does not suffice that man dies, he must also be conscious ofthat death. Self-consciousness must include consciousness of negativity and of thedeath that makes Man Man (Bataille, “Hegel” 336; 286-87). This is part of the paradox,since consciousness of death can only be of death in the future, and not of beingdead. The presence of death does not suffice; it must be accompanied by the con-sciousness of it. Mere dying will not do the job.

The paradox Bataille points to, and which one can already find in Kojève, isalready clear to Hegel, who therefore replaces the necessity of death itself with therevelation of Man to himself by the willingness to risk one’s life.

6. Heidegger grapples with a similar problem in Being and Time (46:219-21). Dasein’stotality, required for a full understanding of Being, is to be achieved only in its deathand never before, while in death, Dasein no longer exists, and can make no use of itstotality which, under that description, seems never accessible to it.

7. The impasse or difference between Hegel and Bataille can be described in terms ofdiscourse and conceptualization of death. As Denis Hollier succinctly notes (50-1),Hegel sees death as already involved in the work of the mind, which consists ofdividing and abstracting. Death is thus the essential element of discursive knowl-

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edge. Only later do the abstract concepts become a rigid system. For Bataille, incontrast, the systematic petrifaction is in a way part and parcel of thinking itself, anddeath—which works against rigidity—is necessarily missed by it rather than integralto it. “Death fluidifies, it liquefies.” Conceptualization necessarily eludes it. It doesnot remain preserved in death as Hegel would want it.

8. In Hegel’s master and slave dialectics, facing death can be seen as imbedded in aninterpersonal context, although we see this neither in the passage cited here, nor inBataille’s commentaries on Hegel. It is perhaps worth noting that while Freud himselfthoroughly analyzed sacrifice and other rituals in his Totem and Taboo, and linked itdirectly with death, his analysis does not resemble that of Bataille in that he does notsee sacrifice as a means to meet death, but rather as a means of pushing it away, ofdefending oneself against it. He makes an interesting point, however, noting that inthe invention of souls and in attributing so much power to them, primitive man mighthave tried to dismiss the importance of death and to defend himself against it, butactually yielded to its power by relinquishing some of his power in the world in favorof the world of spirits (93).

9. The artistic setting is limited in time and space, and even there, within the limits of thetheater hall, it is not real: the hero does not really die; moreover, he is not himself, butan actor playing him, and the death of the one is not the death of the other, and so weare as safe as can be.

10. In theater there is an other with whom we identify, and in that identification we areboth him and ourselves, we are both ourselves and different from ourselves. Thusnot only is there a difference, self-other, from the point of view of the situation, butthere is an internal difference due to identification. We ourselves are split.

11. The difference reflects a distinction between two conceptions of the theatrical im-pact: an Aristotelian conception that focuses on catharsis; and the conception, ofArtaud and others, which stresses the disturbance of normal life achieved in theatre.

12. It is noteworthy that the first result of this recognition of death is the invention of thesoul, “the division of the individual into a body and a soul” (Freud, “Thoughts” 294).Thus we have reestablished the first di-vision implied in ourselves having to bespectators.

13. Thus Freud’s stress on ambivalence is nevertheless interesting. It can be enriched ifwe combine it with Bataille’s own concept of an emotional ambivalence that is alsopart of the experience of facing death. There is more to facing death than sadness.Bataille describes customs in which the relatives of the deceased dance and drink infront of the body (“Hegel” 341; 290-91). The emotions aroused by sacrifice arecomplex: both horror and pleasure, anxiety and elation. Gaiety is no denial. It doesnot cancel death, says Bataille. It necessarily accompanies anxiety and exacerbates it;they reinforce one another (340-42; 289-91). This adds to the description in theabove paragraph, and to Freud’s insistence on ambivalence, which might indeedhave played a crucial role in forming primeval man’s attitude towards death, albeit ona different level than the one originally proposed by Freud. The mixture and ambiva-lence regarding the dear one are necessary. For if it were only his enemy he wouldreject it, and in rejecting, would remain defensive. If it were his own self that had diedhe would, of course, not be there to experience it, and if it was the danger alone forhimself and not the actual death, he would be anguished but not gay; he would notapproach death of his own volition. In the case of a loved one, he both willed it andwas afraid of it, and this is why his whole being revolted: death could really touchhim. His gaiety made him more open to the experience and therefore all the moreanxious.

14. Note that from a psychoanalytic point of view, in the case of real death, the abovequalification, being both close and distant, holds for any loved one who dies. Re-

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member that Freud characterizes the unconscious attitude as similar to that of prime-val man, which is what makes the discussion of it so relevant for us here.

15. This is of course true only from a certain point. Subject also implies being subject to,and from a sociological point of view appears as limited as can be. Yet from a certainphilosophical perspective, which overlaps the psychoanalytic idea of omnipotentnarcissism, the subjective point of view is indeed unlimited. In Totem and Taboo Freudcites, and does not dispute, the idea that “a sort of Solipsism, or Berkleianism . . .operates in the savage to make him refuse to recognize death as a fact” (90n).

16. Returning to Freud’s original paradox one may note that the failure to imagineoneself dead is only a partial failure. Although the paradox stresses the impossibilityof stepping out of the subject’s position, the spectator, it does present oneself asdivided, being at once in the position of a subject and that of an object.

17. Freud is caught here in confusion between the “can not” and “will not” regarding therepresentation of death, and treats them as one (Razinsky, “A Struggle”). As put byHoffman, regarding some of Freud’s formulations in that article: “the language ofcognitive limitation is hopelessly entangled with the language of defensive avoid-ance” (237). But it remains that Freud describes our tendency to reject death, to placeourselves, in thought and behavior, as far from it as possible.

18. This passage can be added to several others in Freud’s writings that demonstratehow his insistence on keeping death away from the psychoanalytic theory is op-posed to the overwhelming reality of death in human life, and biases him time andagain into somewhat strange statements that remain unique, estranged from the rest ofthe corpus of his writings. Here then is one such case.

19. Actually Freud is mocking two types here. First are those who ignore death, burytheir head in the sand and do not think of the consequences. On the other hand thereare those who are too preoccupied with it, who fear it too much. The tendency inboth is to move away from death. In the one, we avoid the thought; in the other, weavoid the thing (death).

20. As we have seen, it is also the case that Freud’s description of the encounter withphysical death does not end with the horror itself, but rather in a post-hoc stage,which is for him of the birth of culture. The soul, religion and philosophy are in-vented out of necessity to overcome the encounter with death.

21. Some readers might feel that Freud’s theory of the death drive is relevant to thecurrent paper. It is intentional that it was not linked to the ideas on attraction to deathpresented above, for it is my position that the death drive has nothing to do with thenecessity of approaching death for human life to be full, or with the role of death asconstitutive of humanity as presented here, a position whose justification wouldhowever be beyond the scope of the current paper. See Razinsky, “Driving DeathAway,” for a fuller discussion of this.

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