Bataille and Deleuze's Peculiar Askesis: Techniques of Transgression, Meditation and Dramatisation
Deleuze and Guattari Studies April 24, 2020 Janae Sholtz
The article compares Georges Bataille and Gilles Deleuze, two radical twentieth-century philosophers, arguing that both advocate a peculiar form of askesis—training the self toward intensification of liminal and extreme experiences, understood as a dissolution or laceration of the self rather than ascetic self-denial. The author contends that both thinkers offer methods for engendering modalities of ecstatic being characterized by sensitivity to immanence, which have important ramifications for addressing ethical indifference and resisting social control mechanisms that constrict political imaginations. The final sections interrogate differences in their invocation of affect and art.