The issues of religion are intimately intertwined with human nature. Examining religion is in fact opening the “can of worms” that is human nature. In his Theory of Religion Georges Bataille provides us with a performative examination of this slippery issue. From the very beginning Bataille addresses the embedded impossible in his pursuit:

“The inevitable incompletion does not in any way delay the response, which is a movement – were it in a sense the lack of a response. On the contrary, it gives it the truth of the impossible, the truth of a scream. The basic paradox of this ‘theory of religion,’ which posits the individual as a ‘thing,’ and a negation of intimacy, brings a powerlessness to light, no doubt, but the cry of this powerlessness is a prelude to the deepest silence.”[1]

     This “truth of the impossible” seems to be of great interest to Bataille. I’m interested to unpack this. First of all, the prospect of impossibility adds a tragic and perhaps absurd tint to a pursuit. This tainting from the start is curious to me. Perhaps it provides a function in the effort of inquiry. In an earlier text Bataille stated, “Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit, to become delightful happiness must be tainted with poison."[2] This tainting adds an element of the sublime to the inquiry.

     Bataille compares the truth of the impossible to the truth of a scream, which is again a curious method. A scream implies struggle, perhaps vain struggle. It is a sign of tension. It is a proof of existence. There is a truth there. This draws my attention to a statement of the choreographer Merce Cunningham, “It's when movement starts to become awkward that it becomes interesting."[3] It’s in this awkward movement, this struggle with the impossible, that the truth of our nature can be found.

     A large part of the tension in Bataille’s Theory of Religion can be sourced in the positing of the individual as a “thing.” This process of “thing-making” is a human trait of pulling aspects of phenomena out of the dynamic flow of existence in an effort to understand and make sense of the world. These things then become tools used for particular human purposes. When an individual analyses an individual, be it themselves or another, the dynamic individual becomes a thing – static and with tool function. As Bataille states, “man … refuses to be viewed as a thing.”[4] When our “thing-making” is turned on ourselves there is a great tension. The static nature of being a thing is strongly opposed to the open nature of immanence that we crave.

     Bataille describes the intimacy of immanence to be a “world like water in water.” It is a space of flow without boundaries, “from outside to inside, from inside to outside.” Bataille attributes this quality to animality. There is a craving for this intimacy, this union with the other, yet it’s an impossible. As he says, “Nothing, as a matter of fact, is more closed to us that this animal life from which we are descended.”

     There is a very interesting tension in the fact that the very nature of our manner of perception and “thing-making” forms a solid obstacle in attaining what we yearn for – “to be lost in the world, like water is lost in water.” Confronted by the “truth of the impossible” the powerlessness of the “scream” is faced with the “deepest silence.”

     In the words of Octavio Paz:

“Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone, and the only one who seeks out another. His nature - if that word can be used in reference to man, who has ‘invented’ himself by saying ‘no’ to nature - consists in his longing to realize himself in another. Man is nostalgia and a search for communion. Therefore, when he is aware of himself he is aware of his lack of another, that is, of his solitude.”[5]

     There is an encounter of the impossible. The term the “deepest silence” implies much. It is here that there seems to be rest after the tension of the impossible, the “truth of the scream.” There is a tragic nature to this acceptance of the impossible. Silence also implies a cessation of the “scream.” The existence that produced the scream shifts. Perhaps there is acceptance. Whatever the case may be, in the absence of the scream there is silence, deepest silence.

     “But this poetry is only a way by which a man goes from a world full of meaning to the final dislocation of meanings, of all meaning, which soon proves to be unavoidable.” Here Bataille again gestures to the “deepest silence.” Through collision with the impossible the worm enters the apple, so to say. When confronted with the impossible meaning dislocates. In the absence of meaning there is “deepest silence.”

     Bataille doesn’t seem to mention it, but there seems to be a certain kind of intimacy in the “deepest silence.” All meaning is dislocated. The scream has been silenced. Perhaps one may slip into silence as water slips into water. This may also shed light on the function of tainting the fruit with the worm of the impossible from the start.

Bibliography

Bataille, Georges, Yukio Mishima, and Ken Hollings. My Mother, Madame

     Edwarda, and The Dead Man. New York: Marion Boyars, 1989

Bataille, Georges. Theory of Religion. trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Zone

     Books, 1989.

Bel, Jérôme. Cédric Andrieux. Joyce Theatre, New York, 18 September 2010.

Paz, Octavio. The Labyrinth of Solitude. trans. Lysander Kemp. New York: Grove

     Weidenfeld, 1985.