Hellraiser, Bataille and Limit Experiences
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 29 сен 2024
- Patreon: / cuck
Twitter: / philosophycuck
Recommended reading:
On Bataille:
Georges Bataille - "Erotism: Death and Sensuality" - monoskop.org/i...
Benjamin Noys - "Georges Bataille: A Critical Introduction" - monoskop.org/i...
Georges Bataille - "The Accursed Share" - topologicalmedi...
On Hellraiser:
Colin Arason - "Revealing the Hellbound Heart of Clive Barker's Hellraiser" - offscreen.com/...
Levi Ghyselinck - "Clive Barker's Hellraiser Mythology: A Critical Analysis" - lib.ugent.be/f...
The quotes from Clive Barker and Henry Jenkins are found in offscreen.com/....
Quotes from Bataille come from "Jacques Lacan" by Elisabeth Roudinesco, page 122 - rosswolfe.file... and "The Accursed Share Volume II & III" by Georges Bataille, p. 177
I truly admire how you use pop culture to explain the ideas of philosophers. It makes the ideas so clear and accessible. As a teacher for (edit) 34 years (recently retired) I am jealous of your skill.
Retired at 34? What a dream came true.
@@gutemberg7946 teacher of 34 years means I taught for 34 years... I'm 61. No dream, just life. Lol
@@rugbyguy59 I'm sure it was just a little wordplay on your amphiboly.
@@rugbyguy59 Hope your doing good man
@@gutemberg7946 first thing I thought
A while ago, I read Bataille and looked at these images to see what he was talking about. I regret seeing them. His attraction to them horrifies me, there's no milk of human kindness or pity in his description. I have seizures where I feel like I'm being electrocuted. I have visions at the same time, I feel as if I'm dying, no longer a being even an animal sense. This may be a limit experience. This is not ecstatic but devastating. It's not comparable to a mystic experience but I imagine Bataille would enjoy seeing it and speculating about it.
"We should note and even emphasize what's different about the other while neither neutralizing it nor rejecting it and being open to the ways in which it might change the status quo".
Why would we do that?
Why wouldn't we?
Congrats on 50k dude!
Thank you! Love your channel!
Continue to yeet on the elites, the both of you
Well deserved!
Montare satelit digi cu Motor
@@patriciusvunkempen102 no u ;)
When Renaissance painters started to depict emotion in paintings (before that most poses and expressions were highly codified in mostly religious contexts) they also noticed how difficult it is to discern between ecstasy and horror.
It is not that difficult. You can easily spot happy face or face that experiencing joy or satisfaction or happiness. And you can easily spot face strained by horror or fear. You can do it in real life and you can do it on paintings.
@@robertwill23 Interpretation is different..
@@FrozenRat161 interpretation of what? of happy face? happy face is happy face. horrified face is horrified face.
@@robertwill23 I don't think you are aware that human emotional expression is socialized.
@@FrozenRat161 But at this point, similarities between how one socialisation expresses ecstasy and how another expresses horror are meaningless.
It's relative, just like similar (but etymologically unrelated) words can have different meanings in different languages.
The psychedelic experiences also exist at once between ecstasy and horror.
yes. it says so in the video: "substance use"
Dick Mëister psychedelics however are not like the little death of narcotic use. Theres something to be said about the specific connection between psychedelics and religion
@@FeedOnTheWeak If anything they provide a more dramatic feeling of death. DMT trips specifically are often described as feeling as if you died and were resurrected.
gymnopedie i dont see in what death is any less dramatic, but i agree about the power of DMT
Ah, yes. I do not recall any psychedelic experience as being particularly pleasant.
Just ... enriching.
"Indeed, horror operates with complete autonomy. Generating ontological havoc, it is mephitic foam upon which our lives merely float. And, ultimately, we must face up to it: Horror is more real than we are.
"
- Ligotti, Conspiracy Against the Human Race
ok brayden
1. I somehow missed this, until now. 2. I had no idea Clive Barker was a gay man, but this makes the Hell Raiser movies make so much more sense to me. 3. I had no idea Clive Barker was such a stud.. 4. I had never heard of Bataille, but I can say without hesitation that this video has made me more interested in reading a personally newly discovered philosopher’s work in quite some time. What bits of his philosophy that you discussed here are things I’ve had deep discussions about with close friends and lovers, especially my ex, often in states of losing ourselves in the sacred (be they post bdsm/aggressive sexual experiences, experiences of hard drugs, experiences of psychedelic drugs, or combinations of these).
I don’t mean to TMI, but your description of this philosophy brought me back to what was possibly the most terrifying, beautiful, and pleasurable experience of my life: having pure animalistic, viscous sex, very deeply in love, and under the influence of both LSD and amphetamines... After the “little death”, which seemed like a little eternity given the conditions, we talked at length about what the fuck just happened. There were points when I wasn’t sure if I was alive anymore, when I thought I had slipped into a “spirit realm” (I say this as an atheist), when I was literally terrified at what was happening, when I thought we were a single organism, when I wasn’t sure if what I was doing was life affirming or life ending, and these were sentiments he shared, and the way I thought about reality, about the line between ecstasy and agony, really was pushed passed the breaking point.
Anyway, I’ll leave it there. Again, sorry if that’s TMI, but it’s basically what you talked about in this video, and I actually got goosebumps as you described Bataille’s views, and how close they related to my own. This was fantastic. Cheers ❤️🏴
that sounds like a wild time! Lol
what is it with humans and enjoying violent and/or so-called "degrading" sexual activity? the philosophical implications for bdsm/drugs/horror/sex are supremely fascinating.
@@transsexual_computer_faerydegrading someone in a sexual context is an act of love, seeing as you both know it’s “a game” in a sense. It’s a form of bonding
beautifully written. Ahhhh.. Just brought me back some memories!
virgin apollo vs chad dionysus
Both of them were idiots that destroyed positive things in their own lives, so it's really just dumb ass vs stupid fool.
@@atlaspressed not to mention the whole 'oh you won't sleep with me let's just curse you with foresight' move Apollo pulled on Cassandra...
Shut the Fuckup
@@aaa_aa7607 Jesus Christ, chill
"muh dick"
t. dionysus
Please do a essay about the late capitalism of anime, particularly the exploitation of kawaii and the terrible working conditions of the animators.
Never stop till he does it
I now support MLM: Marxism-Leninism-Moeism
Not to mention how kawaii started as an active effort to make Japan look weak and innocent in the face of war crimes during WWII further helped along by the US desperate to forgive them for the sake of having a stable Asian ally
You think Im making this stuff up? Its pretty well-documented dude, even Lindsay Ellis has mentioned it before. I can recommend the video by Vox "How a melancholy egg yolk conquered Japan" , the video by Knowing Better "Playing the Victim | Historical Revisionism and Japan"
@@boiwaif but also the opposite, the way the oppression of sex causes extreme fetishism and taboo. I would like to see a case made in favor of this because any way I look at it says its clearly messed up. The male as dominator and female as innocent victim to the mans desire seems in no way good for anything to me so I feel my view is polarized.
"Different but valid" is a foreign concept to many.
Sounds like you're normalising paraphilia.
@@evan2173 It seems like that's the first thing that came to your mind. Hmm...
@@idratherstayanonimous7020 Ya cause the video is on Bataille and limit experiences, everyone knows how much the BDSM/kink/fetishist community adores Bataille.
@@evan2173 is that you evan jack?
Something I noticed that probably just got cut for time - When you mention expenditure as being a waste of time and energy and also in the realm of the sacred (I'm not sure what Bataille's reasoning for this is but my gut feeling is that without ulterior motive it's purer) is doubled down on with the way that the Cenobites are summoned. They're summoned with puzzles, which are huge expenditures of energy and time and brainpower for no utility besides having solved them. Without necessarily being a limit experience, a puzzle would count as an expenditure, wouldn't it? And if we expand the sacred metaphor to include the cenobites as being allegories to priests or sacred figures, then preparing oneself with the lament configuration could be similar to preparing oneself for a religious ritual?
Angels are pretty abt as even in the bible angels, not the messenger but higher ones, ar horrifying and lovecraftian.
Helland real life priests and religions, did not only catholic but the self flagelating order, still exist, the crucifition is even enacted (if not that literal way)
This theme is also explored in the movie "Martyrs" (2008), actually the "Lingdchi" picture appears several times throughout the film.
Everyone interested in horror should absolutely watch this. But watch the 2008 French one, stay away from the 2015 remake.
That's exactly what I thought when I saw it. I didn't know it was the same picture though. The text of the video is pretty much Mademoiselle's speech when she first meets the eventual Martyr.
"Martyrs" is the only gore flick that's made me sympathetic to a character within it. Without spoilering too much, it wasn't the main character or the antagonist but the victim.
I was just coming to comment this
I was about to comment that that was exactly what Martyrs was about; glad I scrolled down first to see if anyone beat me to it
Outstanding summary and introduction to Bataille. If I were still teaching Philosophy, I'd be glad to use this as an intro, and I think it would be very useful, since Bataille is often hard for students to wrap their heads around.
I've given up on teaching. I'm glad you haven't.
Bastille that shitty millennial band yeah bro
Kit Thornton that’s unfortunate. Would love a reading list!
I loved the point about how utility is over valued. To give just a small example, whenever you tell someone what you study in school and they say "and what are you going to do with that?" I usually say hang it on my wall.
But to be honest most people who say what you said eventually hang themselves so it's not so edgy what you said. Actually it's kind of pathetic. student loan debt, humanities degrees and suicide go together like cherry pie.
@@bodbn most people who say what I said hang themselves? I'd like to see some scientific data on that.
@@bodbn Also, the point is that we ought to be able to study what we want without people criticizing us for not living up to an external standard of value. That would be a freer society.
@@heraclitusblacking1293 your massive student loan debt that you won't ever pay off and will ultimately be subsidized by tax payers suggest otherwise. Yes you live in a society and no you are not an island unto yourself. Stop listening to all the liberals telling you you are a special lilll snow globe. Precious in every way. You are just raw DNA here to play the propagation game my little misguided friend.
Are you really naive enough to believe that they collect data on dead white guys who killed themselves from student loan debt bro come on
5 minutes into it and I already know I'm gonna watch this 10 times
Yeah, there are so many implications to be drawn from this, I process it all so slow xD But it's so fascinating, so it's worth it
Same!!!
As a child I had a dream my house was surrounded by an army of countless werewolves, sieged with no hope. I had a sudden epiphany that rather than be torn to pieces, we could agree to become werewolves ourselves. I believe that’s why the Hellraiser series spoke to me. I found them by chance with no introduction. As a teen I organized parties in which a small television, rescued from the trash, played the entire series. This TV sat on milk crates, not in some prominent place but in a corner. I grew up very blue collar and dressed very plainly. I was not conscious of why this appealed to me and had no direct exposure to philosophy. Everyone loved these parties. I guess I just figured this is what the creatures themselves would have wanted. In retrospect, so much to unpack there. Thought provoking video!
this limit experience seems to be very closely connected to lacan's notion of jouissance
Correct! And for good reason. Lacan was a friend of Bataille, attended lectures with him, and was influenced by him (without acknowledging it as much as he should have, in my opinion)
This makes me want to see a video on Deleuze and Guattari's "Becoming-Animal", I've heard limit experiences discussed in light of witches' sabbaths, vampires, and werewolves, and I feel that D&G's take emphasizing contagion and symbiosis is fun food for thought.
there are a load of places where D&G discuss limit experience. in addition to those points, look for the section in ATP on "tonal" and "Nagual" zones of the BwO, as well as their comments on "black holes" in the BwO.
also, look into sections where they discuss Antonin Artaud and "the Judgement of God," since Bataille and Artaud have a similar project with respect to escaping/destroying the Judgement of God.
I also think there's some other parts in ATP where they hint towards Bataille, too.
Also: James Brusseau's book Isolated Experiences: Gilles Deleuze and the Solitudes of Reversed Platonism, in chapter 3 he discusses the need to delineate a Deleuzean philosophy of limit, which he finds in Bataille's work. most of the chapter delineates a Deleuzean-Bataillean notion of limit experience according to a reading of Bataille's book Story of the Eye. Really cool chapter.
Thank you for the Brusseau recommendation, I'll look into him. What interests me are D&G's less "libido" oriented analysis on the classic Occult/Gothic figures. I like that they tried to resist the standard takes revolving around transgression and imitation, and I can't think of another source that explores the philosophical implications posed by horizontal gene transfer in a way that connects it to so many fun literary tropes.
Finally, more RUclips videos on Bataille! Thank you!
See also Franz Kafka's short story
"At the Penal Colony" in which a traveller encounters an execution machine that extends the period of limit experience for hours.
Great video man.
In tamilnadu there is a holiday called thaipusam where devotees stick tridents through their cheeks and carry heavy parade floats on hooks in their back to show devotion to god. Similar also is the sun dance in Lakota culture
He finds utility distasteful but offering himself as a sacrificial lamb is ok.
How progressive.
Interesting vid.
Progressive? Who knows.
Transgressive? Certainly.
I wonder is Bataille ever read Ernst Junger or Yukio Mishima very similar topics. I always find it strange he was a Marxist. If you look at certain non Christian forms of the Nietzschean right wing these topics are explored, the idea of passion, war, the sacred and profane. I mean Nick Land is a huge fan of Bataille.
What a pleasure to come across a comment mentioning Yukio Mishima in a video essay by a leftist. If you didn't know, Nietzsche was a huge influence on Mishima. According to his grand-mother he was always carrying a copy of Birth of Tragedy. In his writings he frequently mentioned the words "Apollonian" and "Dionysian" in a Nietzschian sense.
There's a great video about "death by a thousand cuts" by a very small history channel called Chinese History. I suggest you all check it out, it's very good.
Also could the argument be made that the concept of a limit experience is an inherently bourgeois delusion? It strikes me that a comfortable white Frenchman philosopher might be interested in the theoretical meeting of horror and extacy, but perhaps this is only a theoretical construct. I wish we could ask the poor sod in that picture whether he was having a limit experience. My personal intuition is that he would say "no, fuck off, I'm just in a lot of pain, and this is just bad."
Then again maybe I only feel that way because the idea of volunteering for pain, of degrading and disregarding a body, is very very scary to me personally.
Love your videos and hope you make more!
Greetings from Belgium.
For all we know that look of happiness was just him finally getting to die. Which.. Isn't what a limit experience describes. It wasn't like "Wow, its so painful it actually feels pleasurable!". More like "Finally, this is the end. No more pain."
That could definitely be argued. Interestingly, Bataille made the opposite argument - that it's the bourgeoisie who try to sterilize all experiences, viewing everything in terms of utility. And, denying the need to expend energies in this way, this comes back to bite us in violent outbursts and war.
And, although I think it's pointless to speculate whether the torture victim was experiencing a limit experience or not, I'd say the claim that limit experiences are inherently bourgeois is definitely false. The religious ascetic who purposefully tests their body to reach some religious state or experience is definitely not bourgeois, nor are working class people who find pleasure in alternative sexual practices.
I'm not sure which one would be best as the starting point. If you're interested in eroticism and mystic experiences, probably Erotism, Tears of Eros or Inner Experience. If you're interested specifically in the acquisition-expenditure distinction, The Accursed Share.
The guy in the picture is on a fuckload of opium. If he weren't he would be screaming. The screams are probably why they gave them the opium.
I used to cut myself with a very sharp knife i have almost like 50 scars on my arms. And somtimes i did it becuse it takes away stress and lets you calm down. The pain you fell internaly gets expressed externaly and goes away. But somtimes its was for pure pleasure. But i much prefear somone bitting me or shocking with electricity when its for pleasure, or burning me with hot metal but it leave such ugly scars
A lot of this surprisingly applies pretty well to Lovecraft, even though he could easily be considered one of the most reactionary horror writers because of his personal racism. I'm thinking of stories like Whisperer in the Darkness where the aliens are terrifying and inhuman, but they show the protagonist things they would otherwise never be capable of experiencing like travelling through space or living outside their own body. I don't think there's a return to normalcy in any Lovecraft story that I can think of. The monsters represent something that is outside a rational understanding of the world, which would be both frightening and fascinating to someone with a scientific worldview.
Although there's a fair amount of apparently "conservative" horror in Lovecraft as Barker describes it (think "The Dunwich Horror", for example*), I agree that there is also a surprising amount of transgressive, liminal horror in Lovecraft as well. I think this is best exemplified in Cthulhu itself. Someone up the comments mentioned the "sublime", a term for a feeling of both terror and awe. Ken Hite asserts that Cthulhu is absolutely sublime. As Hite writes in "Tour de Lovecraft - The Tales", "Another quote from Burke's Enquiry to seal the deal: 'The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature...is Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other.' This Astonishment is one of the effects, of course, of seeing Cthulhu, whether in dreams or...awake. Even language becomes deranged - Lovecraft resorts to seemingly weak similes and metaphors to describe Cthulhu or R'lyeh. ('A mountain walked or stumbled.') This is not because Lovecraft is a weak writer, but because describing Cthulhu is supposed to be sheerly impossible - the mind keeps asymptotically shooting off before it can fully connect."
Alan Moore seems to agree. In an interview for The Quietus, Moore states, "It's all about alienation. The way he talks about his monsters - in his first description of Cthulhu he gives you a list of four things that Cthulhu isn't quite like. Which is brilliant!" He was referring to Lovecraft's writing: "If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful." So Cthulhu is sort of like a dragon, an octopus, or a human (none of them remotely similar to the others), but it's really the indescribable outline that's truly shocking. This is why, in his comic book miniseries Providence, Moore and illustrator Jacen Burrows never actually show us Cthulhu full-on. We only get the vaguest glimpses. Even the characters looking at it can only describe it as being like a jewel, or a cabbage. Language truly does become utterly deranged around Cthulhu. If that ain't experience at the utter outer limits, I don't know what is.
*In the larger context, not even "the good guys banish the gribbly outer monster" stories are conservative horror, though, when you realize that the central conceit of Lovecraft's work is that what we think of as the "normal" existence into which monsters invade is, in the end, the aberration. The stars will eventually come right, and the true residents of the cosmos will resume their rightful ownership.
@@briantaulbee5744 Damn, amazing comment.
@@briantaulbee5744 Great post!
I love how you pair up concepts that could seem to have no relation. This made me look at horror film and also its creators, not only writers or directors but even special fx, in a differentlight. A lot of things click so well now. I will rewatch this movie.
Opium was given to most victims of lingchi to aleviate the pain! This explains the facial expression, not some closeness between extasy and extreme pain!
Interesting. Why would they do that?
@@remotefaith to ease their pain while still offering the society their bad example ("who does like them gets the same")
Philosophy and Hellraiser, together at last? Yes, sign me up!
This is fascinating. I think in my mind I have always had an idea of what a limit experience is but I had no idea that a philosopher had come up with a word to describe something that sounds very similar to the concept I thought I made myslef in my head. I'll need to look into this more. Thank you so much for this video!
Thank you! The Wikipedia page on limit experiences should give you some leads to look into, as other philosophers influenced by Bataille theorized about this concept too.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limit-experience
Love your work - you put into words ideas I've felt but couldn't articulate. Also the Quebec horror flik
Martyrs explores this concept in relation to the afterlife.
Just one nitpick: when you mentioned Cherubim, you said they were winged lions and used a picture of a Lamassu. That's not entirely accurate. Cherubim (also known as Tetramorphs) have humanoid bodies and the heads of lions (and eagles and bulls and a human head too for good measure). There's one in the subsequent pic you used for Ezekiel's vision of God, and they DID evolve from the concept of the Lamassu you depicted, but they're not quite the same thing. Thank you!
Yeah, the cenobites aren't evil, not really. They aren't even really the antagonists, that roll falls to Frank Julia and Dr Channard
Dude! This video was awesome. There is something to this theory for sure. I was never a horror fan, but I found that I very much enjoy it when watching with a partner. There is something almost erotic about it, and when shared with a partner, is especially enjoyable. I also feel like chaotic metal music can have a paradoxically calming effect for me, which is hard to explain. If you feel the same, I highly recommend a band called Frontierer.
Dude, same! I came to "learn" how to enjoy horror movies by myself, and surprisingly it was in a dark room with headphones so I could get reeeeally immersed, so it was a little different there. But when I watch horror films with other people, the more terrifying, the better, as there's this weird "net of safety" since friends are around, but my brain is also telling me i should be scared, so this contrast becomes an interesting experience.
Same about the music. I used to think that they were just "too noisy", but actually came to love certain types of music, especially when I'm tense or stressed out about something. They calm me down and kinda "put things into perspective", if you will.
Have you seen Martyrs? French horror film, all about limit experiences and ecstatic experiences caused by torture. Definitely worth considering in conjunction w these ideas.
They either show that lingchi image or refer to it in Martyrs. I can't remember exactly but it's definitely there.
I was about to write the same thing but with a *spoiler alert for martyrs* note.
@Renegade Cut has a good critical analysis of it. From another point, though.
I thought the same thing! Limit experience is essentially what Martyrs is based around.
When Moses saw the burning bush it couldn't be rejected nor neutralized.
That's actually a very good point. The Old Testament God is very much like the angels. He's not a man with a beard, not a loving god, he's a terrifying volcano. Moses has to stand in a ravine as He passes by at a distance or else Moses won't be able to handle His blinding light.
Take the story of Job. In the New Testament Job would have been mollified with an assurance of God's love and a promise of pleasure in heaven. But because it's OT, God appears and makes it clear that he is a peerless power and Job is an ant who has no idea what's going on.
Namely because the bush was played by Charlton Heston. And not even Charlton Heston can ignore Charlton Heston.
how many times ami going to rewatch these videos?
'Hero-dose' psychedelic drug experiences are perfectly described by the concept of limit experiences.
At some point, language breaks down, your immediacy no longer really distinguishes between the connotation of tactile sensations, i.e. it feels like the incomprehensible euphoria acts as a pain masker, and even painful sensations are weirdly tolerable.
I accidentally gouged my finger on LSD, but didn't react in pain, instead being able to euphorically focus on perceiving the rate of blood loss. lol
Did you feel the pain sensation or was it dulled? You indicated there was no panic.
@Thork Rynu It's not dulled, you simply accept the pain as part of you. Imagine feeling an intense throbbing pain, but instead of tensing yourself to instinctively fight it, relaxing and welcoming the waves of sensory experience washing over your consciousness while you idly contemplate its most minute individual qualities. The effects of psychotropic drugs have been compared to high levels of meditation or incredibly intense prayer, demonstrating similar activity in the brain. Now consider the medtitative sobriety of Thich Quan Duc as he felt his flesh bubbling and melting off of his body, layer by layer, not moving, not saying a word, until his consciousness ceased to be. LSD obviously won't get you anywhere near that level of mastery over your own consciousness, but it is analogous to it.
@@Anxiathy that's fine. I was more curious about the sensation versus alarm. No disrespect to monks.
Bro you need help if you are gouging out your fingers when you are getting high. I mean wtf dude how you even gonna admit to that. That's sad as hell and a subtraction for the progress of humanity. You need to be on jack ass or something god damn bro that's sad. I'm seriously sad now because of your pathetic comment. Wow just wow.
@@bodbn I can already see all the parties you haven't been invited to
Sex has massive utility as a pleasure dispenser. I don’t get that.
Is it just me or is a lot of this so-called "shocking" imagery that merited the trigger warnings at the beginning of this video just....not that shocking? To me, a lot of this "subversive" stuff has become so commercialized and packaged and sold like commodities that it just feels almost bland and predictable to me.
It's not really shocking to me either, I've kinda been desensitized like most of us. There are however people who might be more sensitive to such images so I emphasized the content warning just for their sake.
every subversive action that could shock gets neutralized through commercialization of it's aesthetic. This is obvious with something like activism culture but is also true of experiences of blood/guts etc. and the shock that is meant to accompany.
@david esktorp Man, that's a good one. Got a many chuckles from me. You're a beautiful example of someone possessed by contemporary ideology, a "thing" I wouldn't even transgress myself into because it's the "status quo," or, at least, one of the many "status quos" of today.
@LuiKang043 You're doing it wrong, weeb.
@@desktorp wow dude you really think you're smart when you just regurgitated the utter bullshit that drives humanity towards fractionalism and ultimately destruction, you're fucking awesome
@@desktorp "people who aren't racist can't think"
Good observation, bro.
Awesome, I was thinking about this topic just today. I love when brainwaves pass through youtube.
The idea of escaping pure utilitarianism was one thing I've been struggling to put into a train of thought that actually went somewhere. I didn't really have an idea what that endpoint was suppose to be.
Thanks!
We have such sights to show you.
😱😍😈
i only care for the first two hellraiser movies the rest of the franchise is pretty bad
The hero's journey sublimated into self destructive hedonism. Why truly challenge yourself and achieve real things, when you can feel something similar in a silly fake ritual, performed by fellow tourists?
Violent Imagery, Torture and Eroticism. You may call that a content warning, I call it an advertisement.
In the novella the movie is based on, Frank has to work a lot harder to attract the attention of the Cenobites. It isn't just a matter of opening the box. When they do come, they repeatedly ask him if he is sure that what they have to offer is what he really wants. The experiences they put him through are much more solidly in the realm of being beyond pleasure and pain, rather than being primarily about pain, like in the movies. Reaching a point of pure sensation where pain and pleasure are indistinguishable is the goal of some styles of BDSM. Barker visited Leather/BDSM clubs in the U.S. prior to writing "The Hellbound Heart."
I was thinking about the Extasy of Saint Theresa, and guess what you put the book with it on the cover!
Thanks for the warning of the image of the Death of a thousand cuts. HR Geiger was shown a copy of this and cited it as influential. In his art and self.
Please continue to give a heads up of potentially disturbing images and thanks for your work.
It's such an amazing video. It's been 5 years, and I keep on revisiting it regularly. Amazing analysis and presentation of subject of limit experience. Love it!!!
Ive read that they gave the victim of lingchi alot of opium so that could be why theybwhere smiling lol
Will you ever do a video on Salò, the 120 days of sodom?
I'd put that at a 1% chance
just a note, but bataille actually calls limit experience "inner experience," and it's the influence of his friend Maurice Blanchot (as well as Foucault, Lacan, and Kristeva, all of whom prefer limit experience) which leads critics to use the phrase "limit experience" rather than Bataille's term.
good video
That is quite interesting actually, considering that the term *inner experience* has more explanatory power, whereas the term *limit experience* stands out enough to be considered as a novel concept.
@@LuiKang043 well, limit experience says what the experience actually is, while inner experience is kind of obfuscatory.
Inner Experience sounds more like Christian Mysticism whereas Limit-Experience sounds more technical.
I like INNER EXPERIENCE👁
Also Guhyasamaja Buddhism is about this
And cruel people will use these boundary philosophy explorations as cover to do harmful things.
I think the key is self inflicted. The first movie actually also tackles typical morality and innocence versus intent. There are the same moral hand waving warning aspects of most horror films. He focused on the other aspects so he could jump to the philosophical angles often left out. The same naive curiosity versus people consciously doing bad things theme is well explored in the same movie. If the movie looks too gory there is also the book it was based on which is short.
On Wikipedia it says: Classical instances of limit experiences include abandonment, fascination, suffering, madness, and poetry.[3]" But I would say that a much more striking everyday example of a 'limit experience' is probably the dream. Dreams are not only entirely unpredictable, they also often put is into terrifying and incomprehensible situations (it is said that most dreams are negative in nature and I agree with that) - last night for instance I had a dream where I was driving a car, even though I have never driven one in my life, so naturally it was a very terrifying experience.
Brilliant as ever and hyperstimulating. I'll try to go on some sort of flow of consciousness cause i'm mentally debating a few things.
I had the impression for a while that aesthetization of violence, death and other extreme states is, in some way, connected to a sort of inner security of life being safe and death free of charge. The relationship one creates with "horrific" imagery or phisical stimulae is one of detachment, of idealization of the risk instead of going close to the risk itself. It is mental trickery: you are in the safety of a simulation and trigger your demons without being really in front of them. This is at best a training for when the reality of death might come and hit, and that state is really not predictable. In some way it creates some sort of mistified anticipation of the experience, not a realistic one, and the limit itself of "limit experiences" might be escaping us constantly, and instead of rooting us into the dispersion of the self they disperse us into believing the simulation (expanding the limits doesn't mean destroying them..)
Thankyou for the mental food, as usual!
Interesting reflection
Wow you weren’t kidding about disturbing images lmao
10:14 another example that comes to mind are the "christianizations" of pre-christian pagan deities that were given more "human", sanitized appearances and personalities.
Yes. Every time I watch a Cringe Compilation, I too seek out Limit Experiences on the frontiers of pleasure and pain.
Crumbling flesh upon cracked and shattered bone.
Fear beyond the gay comfort of warmth and love.
A Dark laid over the noon light of a clear spring day.
I tempt you to prey upon a weak body… wrapped in barbs, hooks and blades.
Who here listens to hellraiser gabber hardcore?
Please talk more about Bataille!
Midssomar también juega con el concepto de experiencia límite. Las prácticas del culto y su otredad producen rechazo instantáneo pero al mismo tiempo uno entiende muy bien porque a la protagonista le sirve la comunidad.
Ohhhhh. Thats a lot about whats behind Martyrs. But Martyrs is ridiculous
Isnt Bataille idea of limit experience the same as Lacan experimentation of jouissance and the contact with the Real?
Great video and I truly enjoy this channel. This is very interesting especially in terms of how avoiding ideas that seem too radical could stunt say the political imagination. However, there seems to be a contradiction in Bataille's ideas. One cannot simply decide to live life in the realm of Limit Experience, not for any moral reason, rather because it would be self defeating. Surely a taboo is alluring because it is in fact taboo, but if you regularly "violate" this taboo it is no longer in fact taboo. Wouldn't this lead to a desensitization to most all activity? Bataille himself seems to have fallen into this trap. He could no longer find anyone to fulfill his desire for being tortured even in a secret society of his own creation dedicated to such things. It sounds as if in the pursuit of Limit Experience he became instead oversexed and unfulfilled. Does the "la petite mort" of "regular" sexual activity risk becoming hum drum (which would be tragic) or harder and harder to achieve if one constantly changes the threshold for a Limit Experience? Maybe a Limit Experience is only something you should approach but never achieve? As John Melloncamp reminds us, "Oh Lord, Life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone" ;)
I knew Hellraiser was one of my favorite movies before I realized I'm not straight.
Thats quite interesting. I know a couple of gays who all have an obsession with that movie. Its quite paradoxical that Hellraiser is a warning against the dark path of degeneracy of body and soul as well as the corruption of the wholesomeness of family which is the first step towards damnation. A contradiction in taste that connects with non straights quite deeply and I dont think thats because of the fetish outfits per se, its clearly the slow erosion of a family and the self inflicted spiral of retribution that has the deepest emotional impact. Thats why the story is so timeless and evocative. Peculiar how somthing so reactionary came out of the mind like Barkers who is a deviant himself. Almost like a projection or guilty conscious
Seen "Crash"? Outta the park again bro. Thanks.
Who else searched for images of Death by a thousand cuts after watching this?
10:41 Rilke angels have a pretty similar concept:
"For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror. which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so, because it serenely disdains to destroy us"
Dude, this video is insanely good. I remember I was very impressionable when young, and remember thinking I got traumatized by watching The Ring lmao. A few years later I watched Hellraiser 1 & 2 alongside my mom and remember the state of ecstasy I was in for watching that and not feeling scared like when I watched The Ring, and I honestly think that was a very important moment in reshaping how I absorb new information and tackle diversity and each person's individual behaviour much more openly.
I keep revisiting this, I've made a scarification based on Betaille and this video. I've discovered Clive Barker's work. Thank you for doing this video it shaped my comprehension of my self
Ahh I'm just reading Bataille's Inner Experience at the moment
Allure of the forbidden, to me, always seems like related to conquest. While it's still forbidden, you have to go out and get it, but once it's allowed it becomes available and the fun is over.
Molanna (Rumi) referred to his death as his "Wedding Night" - being reunited with the Beloved
don't you think it's cute how jamie stewart from xiu xiu kinda looks like georges bataille
Grindcore is a limit experiences
This video made me mildly uncomfortable.
I think you are confusing this video with your stepfather.
I love Bataille.
I love Clive Barker's few fantasy novels. Had no idea he was such a handsome fella in the 90s! Funny how you can be such a fan of someone and never recognize them if you saw them on the street.
SpooOOooOky
Bataille’s work seems very similar to Lavey’s ideas of satanism
But while Bataille affirms that one should pursue taboo Lavey says that we should pursue anything that’s pleasurable doesn’t matter if it taboo or isn’t as long as you truly want to experience it.
It's a little bit of a narrow observation though. Bataille believed pushing transgression to its absolute limits to reach an inner experience similar to that of a religious revelation or the destruction of self.
To me, what's so cool about Barkers Helleaiser is, his imagination, ingenuity, and articulate expression. If you're perhaps Catholic, or Christian in some sense, going to hell has a new meaning. The movie fleshes out what it likely looks and feels like. Ironically enough, that mangled, twisted wreck of a body they have, is just the begining stages of true transformation into birds. After while, it's no longer just torture and adaptation, no .. at a point they become flying angles down there.
I think Jordan Peele does a phenomenal job with Us and his shadow figures, questioning whom the actual outsider is
So that's why I hate scary movies
The subtitles said "lemon experience"
I would love to see someone do a similar analysis but on Lars von Triers "Antichrist", which in some ways even more pronounces Batailles thoughts. Great video, though, loved it!
Ok this video was very spooky. If the next video isn't a philosophical video on the cuteness of puppies I am definitely unsubscribing!!
The picture you used for the Marquis de Sade is actually of his father, Jean-Baptiste François Joseph de Sade.
I adore Bataille so much!
these comments need a trigger warning
Wow. That was a lighting paced journey through many difficult ideas. Worth a second watch, taking notes this time
[insert "change your name" meme here]
One question I'm left with is why is it that limit experiences aren't considered to have been ubiquitous throughout all of time but the last few centuries? Can limit experiences be induced by the death of a loved one? The contraction of a fatal illness? Is it the case that people in devastated regions of the world--living in perpetual need and threat of violence and loss of life and loved ones--live in a constant limit experience? Or is there something about limit experience that makes it only accessible via art and psychedelics and other associated objects?
Ali Hamandi First, according to Bataille, these limit-experiences are experienced when self encounters non-self or when we experience moments of intensity that violently disrupt our sense of identity. These states (Bataille calls them sovereign operations) are linked to drunkenness, eroticism, poetry, art, transgression, and laughter.
I think the death of a loved one can certainly disrupt one’s being, lead one through a series of intense emotions due to the pain of loss. But Bataille is writing at the limit. He is interested in those liminal spaces where we encounter that feeling of being dispersed. What is important to remember is that this encounter takes places with self and external world.
I think we just started to understand these extreme states or have finally been able to express them theoretically within the last two hundred years. Since the dawn of humanity, man has externalized himself through art (Lascaux), rituals, hymns, prayers, and poetry. Bataille is one man to have written about these limit-experiences, but we all have experienced them!
"Is it the case that people in devastated regions of the world--living in perpetual need and threat of violence and loss of life and loved ones--live in a constant limit experience?"
It is exactly this proposal that keeps me from taking any of the philosophy of "limit experiences" as anything beyond a useful metaphor. The fetishisation of the destruction of self is a privilege afforded only to those so secure in themselves that they become detached from others; it is 359 degrees of rotation from Hegel. If I'm not mistaken, corporeal shock induced by instances of harrowing, unbelievable pain is a defense mechanism of the brain, deployed in an attempt to survive. It might be ecstasy, but it arises from utter, irreparable destruction of self; the true sufferers of such destruction would hardly describe it as transcendental (in fact they'd be unable, since they'd be dead).
mikeandyholloway Allow me to rephrase what you said: this perverse desire to destroy oneself is a “privileged” state that keeps others removed from oneself. In other words, it’s ego-centric and this self mutilation is sorta masturbatory. If I understood your response correctly then I can agree with you up to a limit ahah
Limit-experience or sovereign experience or inner experience, whatever the term, I think implies a sorta death-of-the-ego.
Bataille was interested in community and the affective force of myth within community. At the same time, the individual is significant (remember Freud in “Civilization and Its Discontents”). Society limits one’s creative demands. The sovereign individual recognizes limits impose by society, but transgresses them.
Ok...so this idea of self destruction...
Located within self destruction not only do we encounter the limit of self, but the plateau of self. I see it as a space where Borders dissolve. Following that, what if we built a community from that. It’s very Christian in a sense.
Violence.
This violence is a metonymy for self abdication. We experience an outside of ourselves via internal negation (“inner experience” or “limit-experience”).
Like when you kiss someone. Your body reaches a state of bliss because of this other body, escaping the limits of self.
Giving birth can be a limit experience, where an experience of great pain and overwhelming joy meld together
Outstanding content. I am actually catching up with Bataille's works for an introduction video to his thought on religion and spirituality, and your video was most helpful in clearing up a few notions. Alongside Antonin Artaud, René Guénon, and André Breton, I find Bataille one of the most fascinating figures of modernist French literature. Keep up the good work!
Does anyone think the limit experience is a variation on deconstructive themes?
It's partially an anticipation of deconstruction. Derrida read Bataille and was influenced by him
morbid zoo brought me here
No one asked
@@canubeetquad and only one answered
The problem is we really don’t see the cenobites do anything particularly transgressive. I like Hellraiser, but I wish it really WAS transgressive and difficult to assimilate. Cronenberg/Ballard’s Crash would be a much better example, wouldn’t it? Or the French film Martyrs?
You seem to specialize in continental philosophy. Do you ever do any work on analytic, or other schools / eras of philosophy?
I read analytic philosophy for my uni studies from time to time but personally am more interested in continental philosophy
@@dylan9966 Yep, just started
@Miguel Hernandez, I did my bachelor's in NTNU, in Norway. The department there was a mix of analytic and continental, so I didn't have that problem. The analytic professors mostly did lectures on epistemology, phil of mind and formal logic, but the rest leaned towards continental phil
the first monster corrupting parasite of all time is DRACULA and all copied and copy from him,...frank cotton is the vampire and the cenobites too, and like the bats in the attic...the return of frank is copied from the resurrection of Dracula in prince of darkness 1966,,