Abstract

This paper examines the theme of transgression as it is developed in Bataille’s text L’érotisme of 1957. It is critical of Foucault’s 1963 essay on Bataille Préface á la transgression and it then considers the linked yet distinct processes of transgression, profanation and degradation in contemporary culture. Far from inaugurating a new era of transgression, the last sixty years have seen the dissolution of ‘sexuality’ from supposed limit experience to one of limitless confinement within commodified identity positions. What might a future of transgression, in Bataille’s rather that Foucault’s sense, have looked like and why did it not take place?