sujor source ofnspizaton for Keser. Batlle aff che sexual exces rdve maternal desire and names his mother “loser to God” than anything te hod sen “through che window ofthe church.” The fourth section makes me cesa sessment ofthe extent to which Batail’ thoughts eleva for isto afer the 1990s, Kristeva reads Baal, fst, 25 offering the pos- Alig fo: a revolution in poetic language, then, a a thinker of revel, but F Ae aly inher Ie works, asa thinker of transgression, which leads her to Bataille and Kristeva on Religion pea There hom hin, The conspicuous impovedshment in Krisevds smelecl relation to Bataille deserves avtension and needs explanation, ih Sara eardsworth points out, Kestsreflcions are marked by her Sony about the modern values of her own society, and, afer the 1990s, those wories seem ¢o increase even more and lead her to concentrate on tray of diminishing psychical suffering? This when Kaistrareaens to The rligious and Gnde in it che possibly of reconciling ones with the tain ofmans but the reason fr sis chat hey sgn hc condone law of the father The Christian religion becomes the flillment ofthis rec- posi ofall nowedge about man onlin par excellence because it epresents God asa good, loving and Michel Foucanlt, The Onder of Things forgiving futher: Her late rlecons on religion make one think Kristeva as moved a great intellectual disance fiom Bataille: she now sees him as a ranagessor a psychotic, a victim ofan excesive mother, and 2 soul who ZEYNEP DIREK I is indeed crue that chis Death, and this Desire, and this Law can never ‘meet within the knowledge tha traverses in is positivity the empirical do- Introduction sulfers from the weakness (or absence) of the paternal function. In the . . final anabjsis, Bauallesatheological reflections on religion cannot redeem “This essay concentrates on Bataillés and Kristeva readings of religion in us through reconciliation with a symbolic father, For Bataille, Madame order to discuss what religion signifies for them. Both Balle and Kristeva Fedwarda, an old and mad prosttue, is God. In contrast, Kristeva curns inerpee teligeas sgiificaton In tesuss of desis, law, wud dent, They to a clasical and conservative wouut of religious experience: religion a2 ide as heverogencous experiences a relation with the father, who helps reinsticute stability in the subject's of life. "The role that abjeccion plays in their conception of religion will personal and socal life. . : bbe my focus, and Iwill point to che respects in which their reflections on abjection differ. While Bataille sees, in religious expression, the ambiguity of the erotic objece that is desired in its very horror, Kristeva interprets the ‘The Significance of Bataille for Kristeva in the 1970s same ambiguity in terms ofthe abjetion of the mother, in terms of which Boualle, 2s an inttiguing figure of poetic language, pervades evo of Keis- she offers a critique ofthe Freudian and Lacanian accounts ofthe psycho- thal ey works numly,Realeronn Poe Langage and Publi. Aa analytic development of subjectivity. is well known, he was a source of inspiration for members of the Tel Quel ‘Theft section considers the significance of Batallés thought in Kris- group (19 which Kristeva belonged), in their projects to zethink subjec- tevals early carcer. The second section explains how Bataille's conception of tivity as excess and to explore the political implications of chis new no- religion in The Acrsed Share and Broom differs from his early reading of tion of sbjeciviy In her 1973 essay “Bataille, Experience and Practice.” religion in Theory of Religion. The thitd section concentrates on the essence Kristeva relates the main preoccupation of Bataille’ thought to Hegel's of religious experience for Keisteva and areempts to show how her reflee- Phenomenology of Spirit. She argues that Bataille challenges the notion of atone fie om, Bails While they haven the subject in Hegel’ idealism with a different experience of nogatvity. In tersecting accounts of religion with common elements, Kristeva strives 0 att A of Phenomenology of Spiri, “Consciousness,” Hegel presents three distance herself from Bataille in. Powers of Horror In “Batailleand the Sun, Sifcrent shapes of — each relating to thet on comeatve cor the Gully Test” (in Tlerof Love), we see why Barllecan no longsr be abject, which are presumed to exist separately From consciousness. The 182 Bataille and Kristeva on Religion = 183intentional relation berween these shapes of subjectivties and objects. {ec fom one another. I do not claim to exhaust all the interesting aspects ties are mediated by spiritual essences that deploy themselves in « negative sof heirincellecral relationship. Nonetheles, iti to be kept in mind chat ‘movement. In this movement, Hegel’ task is to show that the individeal {eisera relation to Bataille has 2 history and chac chs history has its own subjects particularity is overcome and that subjectivity reveals isl 1 by fexraordinary moments. Inthe firs phase of Krisrea’s relation to Batalles the very movement in which the sptit, che universal subject, knows ile svotks, he appeats to her as belonging to the group of writers, including In Kristeva reading of Bataille, he interrogates what Hegel fails to think ‘Aniaud and Mallarmé, who were thinkers of “limit experiences” for her. In ina radical way, that is the individual subjects relation ro negativity. He such experiences, madness could say itself at che level of consciousness and, gel thought through subjectivity as knowing, but he filed ro account foe jnso doing, pur the values of modern society into question. Kristeva does the relation to negativity of the subject as “aot knowing” (non-savoi) Ip ‘pot want to celebrate psychosis—as, for example, Deleuze and Guattari “Bataille, Experience, and Practice,” Kristeva claims that Bataille’ new re. did in Capitaliom andl Schizophrenia—because psychosis implies suffering lation to negativity—understood as an experience and a practice—can, at and death by suicide.‘ Her attraction co discourses lke Bataille isin the once, escape the nism of modernist literature and ketch a new Manis. way a force or desire pushes language, which is dominated by logic and and dialectical attitude toward subjectviy. Hee frst interest in Bacall grammar, (0 its own critique. This criique amounts to questioning the determined by the fundamental question of seructuralist linguistics: How prevalence of subjectivity as the sold ground of all significations. And, in is signification possible? She rethinks the play of signifiers—their dynamic this period, Kristeva is concerned with describing subjectivity as something movement in which infinite subsicution is possible, their nasion supple. that comes into being, and dissolve, in the movement of negativity ‘meniaire forthe absent center (the absence ofa teanscendental signified). as negativity. This negativity would not lend ise to a conceptual determi nation in terms of an arche(otigin) ora tela (end). For Kristeva, meaning Bataille on Religion is produced and destroyed by a negativity undeslying the signifying of For Bataille, religion has a history and is part of the secret of human exis: speaking subject. As Lacan says, it speaks” (ca parl) through the speaking tence. In monotheisms—in which God becomes unique, exchisively good, subject. According to Kristeva, “it” noc only refers to a movement of the and trarscendent—and in onto-theologies that follow from them this se play of signifiers, to their substicution and combination, but the negativity crce increasingly fades into oblivion. I begin by giving Bataille’ overall of the movement of signification smust also be conceived as a fundamental anguuient in Theory of Religion before discussing how religion comes to ‘opening to the nondiscursive real, an economy of life as a heterogeneous the foreground as a phenomenon of economy and abjection in The Ac- movement, This is to say, the carly Kristeva turns to Bataille for her at- cured Shave, Ltake Erotim o be further developing this idea of the sacred tempt to rethink Lacan's structuralst interpretation of the unconscious. as taboc ot abjet, by describing the relation between the erotic and the Structuralism deprives itself of access to the nondliscursve real; Baalle’s religious in terms of teansgession and inner experience. In other words, rereading of Hegel can provide us with the needed opening, Thus, from nots explores a perspective already opened up in The Accursed Share. Kristeva’ point of view, Bataille isthe firs ehinker of this very negativity ‘Theory of Religion lays out the genesis and development of religion by in which the semiotic elements of meaning make theit appearance at the asking anchropology’s fundamental question, which concems the transi- symbolic level. Clearly, Kristeva reads Bataille for her own philosophical tion from nature to cultute. The humanity of the human originates in project. She believes he is an intellectual resource to whom she can ap- this transition, which Bataille locates in the opposition between imma- peal to reincerpre the negativity of the movement of signification while rence and transcendence. ‘The world of things, individuals, work, util- avoiding idealism and teleology. Bataille helps Kristeva move beyond both ity, and action transcends the “life of immanence.”* Originally, humans structuralist and phenomenological accounts of meaning. ‘were animals—living as immanent to nature, sill lacking the dimension kis necessary to start with this background on the intellectual eation- ‘of trans:endence. ‘They became properly human, as distinct from the rest ship between Bataille and Kristeva because it shows his initial importance of animal life, by eranscending that immanence, thereby constituting the to Kristeva, Nevertheless, my focus her s nor the question ofthe speaking human world. The rem “human world” as Tse it, noc only encompasses, subject in relation to the negative movement of signification: instead, I the profane world of work and utility but also the sacred world. In Theory take up the question of how their reflections on religion relate to, and dif- of Religion, the sacred and the profane realms come into being at once and 184 = Zeynep Disk Betailleand Keston Religion = 185participate in one and the sume dialectical proces. Baile seems to gh gros, Batale realizes that eroicism i the tied most important facro, Uliferene accounts of what constiutes transcendence at diferent momen syhich tase be included in his account of human transcendence.” of his iinerary T contend thatthe account in The Accursed Share and Fg Tn The Accursed Share, Bataille takes history to be the history of man's tim goes beyond the account in Theory af Religion. nation from his own being. Although he borrows terms from the Marx- Theory of Religion carries oue a reflection on transcendence in tems of jx tradition, sich as “alienation” and “reification,” he reinterpret them as the use of instruments and work, Work and the consciousness of death ae Gbjecticn,” “abhorrence,” “disgust” and so forth. According to this views considered as equiprimordial elements chat open up a realm of transoen. alienation starts with abjection and culminates in mans enslavement to the dence. In Theory of Religion, the secret of religions is the unconscious nos. ‘apitalisesystem—his subordination to work and utility and the enclosing. talgia we feel for immanence, our lost intimacy with nature Immaneneeiy of life wthin the sterile limits of bourgeois housekeeping, Life's abjection immediacy, sensibility, corporeal communication, and the absence oF ind manifest itself in the stringent requirement of sterility, excluding abject viduality, whereas transcendence is distinction, separation, individu things, predominantly human bodies. From a Bataillean perspective, ab- objectivity, subjective, and ineligibility. Bataille makes use ofthese pe jesion flys constitutive roe in the disciplining of bodies, the rgiifying positions in order to erase them: his discourse feeds on the awareness that oftheir hordes, their gendering and racialization, and the exclusions chat humans, in their very transcendence, are outside as wells inside animal, follow therefrom, Abjection serves co rif bodies in oder to subordinate ig, Therefore, chere is no nostalgia for whac we have lost; thet is instead hem co productive work. Disgust from che heterogeneity of life itself pre- an unconscious desire for communication with the rest of life. Religion ig cedes the abjection of bodies that do not conform to the world of work symbolic transposition ofa sentiment about the internal relations ofa ie and utili, and this also accords with the Foucauldian idea that capitalism ing beings. Thus, i gives, at the symbolic level, what we have broken with | and the modern power feed on che life energy of the living body. Abjec- in the profane world. The sacred world both negates and counterbalances tion cortributes to securing the limits of a world of work, which is also a the profane world in which life sufocates from subordination to utility ‘world of class difference and oppression; however, eis is nat the only level Broadly speaking, the sacred world has a double function in relation to ‘on which it functions. As the profane and the sacred worlds are co-original the profane; it secures the boundaties of the profane world, and it does so and belong together, abjection must also play a constitutive role on the precisely by overcoming the profane economy through sovereign mystical level which che sacred is constituted. ‘experiences. Religion sublates immanent communication to a trans Bataille analyzes history in evonomie terms, focusing on the necessary dent symbolic level, functioning to intereupt the world of uclity and work consumption of “the accursed share” in diverse historical worlds. Marx was and culminating in the dissolution of individuality. Thus, it overcomes sight to claim that economic laws govern history; however, he did not have the separation of beings from one another. Religion is a mediated experi- the insight chat sovereign consumption, not production, is the value ofall ‘ence of primary intimacy with animality, which is the greatest value that values. As is well known, Bataille inverts Marx, turning to a study of the ‘man lost in subordinating his life to work and utility. ‘This value is about means aad relations of consumption rather than those of production. His sovereignty, which gives the possibility of a relation beyond utility—with political economy presents history as a domain in which the boundaries ‘oneself and with others—char Bataille names “communication.” of immenence and transeendence change unceasingly and are constantly ‘The second important moment in Bataile’s reflection on religion ap- redrawn, In this very shifting of boundaries, che history of the profane pats in the second volume of The Accured Share. This rext can be read world intersects with the history of the sacred and cannot be separated a8 a new artempr to answer the fundamental question asked in TBeory of | fom it. Bataille’ anthropology pays special attention to the intervals in Religion, Theory of Religion conceived religion as an institution with a tem- which consumption takes an excessive form of destruction and. wasting poral origin that is undergoing a development whose diferent forms can away, thus suspending the orderliness of the profane world of work. Al- be seem as more or less continuous. In this work, Bataille accepts the equip- though influenced by Marcel Mauss's reflections on potlatch, his task is rimordial consciousness of death and of work as the double source of the not limited ro reflecting on the structures or relations of exchange that sacred and the profane worlds. The novelty of The ccursed Share lies in the uunderliesociety ln his attempe to rethink the economy of consumption as influence Claude Lévi-Strauss’s anthropology has on Bataille’s reflection an economy of life, he goes beyond the limits of anthropology toward an ‘on religion. This perspective is fully developed in Brotiom. Through Lévi- ontological analysis. 186 = Zeynep Dire Bataille and Kristeva on Religion = 187