Rene Margritte.
BEYOND THE LIMIT
A PREFACE TO TRANSGRESSION | FOUCAULT
A limit could not exist if it were absolutely uncrossable and reciprocally, transgression would be pointless if it merely crossed a limit composed of illusion and shadows. 1
The Twenty-first centuries excess and exhaustion belies the result of transgression and the limits replacement of the sacred and profane. Transgression instigates ideas of boundary crossing or a crossing over. George Batille argues that Eroticism performs the function of dissolving boundaries. So is Eroticism one of the many faces of transgression? Lets begin by defining what the Erotic is. Maurice a cinema owner who exclusively shows x-rated films in Paris, believes it to be something that excites, a moment where everything is suggested and nothing is imposed. In cinema the erotic relies heavily on imagination and what is implied. Today sex is no longer seen as taboo, but is still very private. We are in a time where appearing sexual has become the substitute for being sexual. There is and will always be trespass issues surrounding the body and I personally still regard the body as sacred. So if eroticism as transgression is an act that violates and goes beyond generally accepted boundaries, Eroticism may continue to push back ‘the line’ and cross it but I am not sure it dissolves ‘the line’ entirely. I don’t believe Eroticism can exist without having something to push back against. Once a limit is reached and surpassed is a new limit simply installed or does a replacement just exist, suspended in the distance of the glittering expanse.
Endnotes.
Foucault, Michel. Aesthetics, Method, and Espistemology. Ed. James Faubion. London: Penguin, 1994. p73.
References.
Acne Paper. ‘Eroticism’. Pairs: Conde Nast, 2009.
Georges Batille, ‘Eroticism’. London:Penguin.
The first line is very evocative. I agree, our baby century, at least in the western world, bears an exhaustion, but I think it is of the excess of the previous generation. The problem with the idea we mentioned in our discussion, which you have chosen to focus on here (about the notion of transgression and limit replacing that of sacred and profane), is fundamentally at odds with what Foucault says: that transgression is not related to the limit as black is to white - but this seems to be our very figuring of the sacred and profane. Whilst I agree that that eroticism requires something to push against, I don't know if that is necessarily 'the line' or 'the limit' as regards transgression, at least in the prosaic sense. It could be about jumping deeper, deeper into a commitment that you have been afraid to go to - isn't that transgressive, too?
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