MSL- The-Limit-Experience in world Literature

2. Concepts: The-Limit-Experience

The Limit experience in Literature

Limit, as it is traditionally understood, alludes to the boundary, limitation or extreme that disables subjects regarding a particular achievement, setting particular features of correctness and incorrectness. The limit-experience tackled from literature leads to a reflection from a philosophical perspective, in which experiences have conferred the task of tearing the subject from itself. Limit experience is then an experience of the extreme, a project of de-subjectivation aligned to prevent the subject from the sameness.

It is at this point where the limit and transgression are due to each other. As explained, it is when the subject transgresses the limits and experiences that can be considered socially incorrect, and this one is ripped away from himself. Lived experiences become then the contestation of the limits itself. This analysis from the authors’ perspectives and connections reflects the importance of language as a means of transgression.

Literature & Evil

“Boredom seeps from the monstrosity of Sade’s work, but it is this very boredom which constitutes its significance. As the Christian Klossowski says, his endless novels are more like prayer books than books of entertainment. The accomplished technique behind them is that of the ‘monk … who sets his soul in prayer before the divine mystery’. One must read them as they were written, with the intention of fathoming a mystery which is no less profound, nor perhaps less ‘divine’, than that of theology.”

George's Bataille. Literature and Evil

Evil and literature are two concepts attained. Evil and its exploration of what is forbidden, inappropriate, or wrong guides readers to experiment with different emotions and transgress their own limits. It is through the challenge of what correctness and social boundaries represent, that literature enhances human beings to face unpleasant situations in the discovery of one’s essence and nature.

The disconnectedness of evil from literature represents boredom. Despite having some language limitations to express what is inside each person, this exposure to evil’s representations not only sets humans on the edge of the worst but also enables dealing and confronting something that will end up turning evil. Bataille, claims literature as danger and this danger is essentially confrontable for seen the entire human perspective.

Disembodiment, Strangeness, and Mutability in world literature

Disembodiment

The human being is in constant search of who we are. This need to pursue our self-consciousness and awareness is limited when it is attached to our corporal structures, which not only generates the demarcation of some physical limits but also restricts our minds from going beyond.

Disembodiment is a concept based on how this disruption of bodily self-awareness transgresses the limits of identity. We, as human beings, are in a constant self-discovery search that requires us to detach from what the body represents and the limits it attains. The concept of disembodiment is evidence of the need for subjectivation and depersonalization. It is then, as the disruption of body self-awareness and the transgression of our corporal limitations, guide us to transgress our mental, imaginative and philosophical limits, a product of some corporal boundaries’ demarcations, proposing a radical comprehension of the self.

Strangeness

Strangeness conveys seeing things from a distance and from a different perspective. Strangeness in literature exemplification reflects the power language has on transgressing limits, having imaginative experiences, analyzing deeply, and discovering more metaphorical and unrealistic facts. When referring to unrealistic, it is taken as what goes beyond our physical and daily situations.

When seeing the world from another standpoint, literature encourages us to exceed our limitations of what is real, obvious, or possible. Furthermore, language is used in the narrative as the means to merge the conventional and unconventional, the universal and the particular, having a mix of the strange situation in a real setting. It is at this point where language possesses meaning and reflects the power to take us to feel emotions and create new life perspectives from living extraordinarily unconventional experiences attained at some point in our reality.

Strangeness reflects being defamiliarized in an open-eyed experience to language and limit-experiences.

Mutability

Discovering one-self and our identities is an exhaustive and constant human search. In this process of self-discovery, the presence of others is vital and undeniable when getting to know who we are, the impact we have on others, and the role we play in the world. Mutability in literature, taken as the need of distortion of others, portrays the monstrosity as the edge of humanity, to the presence of the monster as part of who we are and as a representation of one's limits. This mutability not only enables us to compare ourselves to others but to have a reflection on the monster as part of the extreme and dark version of ourselves.

This metaphor about the distortion of others for self-discovery evidences the need for strangeness when others interact with us and reinvention when transgressing our limits.

After exploring these concepts and researching deeper what each of them encompasses, Strangeness is the one selected to continue the path. In the following section further information and analysis is provided through some readings proposed in the course.

FURTHER INFO...

REFERENCES:

Dumayet, Pierre. "Georges Bataille à propos de son livre La littérature et le mal. Office national de radiodiffusion télévision française. [YouTube video]
Bataille, Georges. Inner experience. SUNY Press, 1988.
Bataille, Georges. Erotism: death and sensuality. First City Lights edition, 1986.
Gregg, John. Maurice Blanchot and the Literature of Transgression. Princeton university press, 2014.
Foucault, Michel. “A Preface to Transgression”. Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Ed. Donald Bouchard. Cornell University Press, 1977, pp. 29-52.

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