从低级物质主义到低级文化：乔治·巴塔耶和异质性政治（上）
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https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11007-024-09639-1
During two highly productive years, Georges Bataille was the main editor for the journal Documents. Together with his close friend – the writer and would-be ethnographer – Michel Leiris, the German art critic Carl Einstein, and the museologist Georges Henri-Rivière, Bataille edited fifteen volumes of a journal which would transcend the confines of the Parisian art world and call it into question. While Documents was first of all an art journal, the artworks reproduced in the journal were juxtaposed with reproductions of ethnographic artefacts and objects from popular culture, which, when placed together, destabilized the distinctions between high and popular culture, Western and non-Western art, together with the more general distinction between art and non-art. Although Bataille only served as the main editor of the journal for two years, the legacy of Documents would live on in an almost un-paralleled way. In fact, the influence of this short-lived journal is almost impossible to survey: articles, anthologies, and monographs have been written and exhibitions have been curated, all of which seek to uncover some of the many threads that were interconnected in the journal. Considering how formative the historical avant-garde has been for the development of modernist art, this is perhaps not that surprising. However, if one revisits some of the most influential essays of the journal, such as Bataille’s programmatic essay “Formless,” the reception is striking. The essay in question is barely half a page long and has, on its own, given rise to monographs, anthologies, and exhibitions.Footnote1 在高产的两年里，乔治·巴塔耶 (Georges Bataille) 担任《文档》杂志的主编。巴塔耶与他的密友——作家和未来的民族志学者——米歇尔·莱里斯（Michel Leiris）、德国艺术评论家卡尔·爱因斯坦（Carl Einstein）和博物馆学家乔治·亨利·里维埃（Georges Henri-Rivière）一起编辑了一本杂志的十五卷，该杂志超越了巴黎艺术界的界限，对此提出质疑。虽然《文献》首先是一本艺术期刊，但该期刊中复制的艺术品与民族志文物和流行文化物品的复制品并置，当它们放在一起时，破坏了高雅文化和流行文化、西方艺术和非西方艺术之间的区别。 ，以及艺术与非艺术之间更普遍的区别。尽管巴塔耶只担任该期刊的主编两年，但《Documents》的遗产却以一种几乎无与伦比的方式得以延续。事实上，这本短命期刊的影响力几乎无法调查：文章、选集和专着已经撰写，展览也已策划，所有这些都试图揭示期刊中相互关联的众多线索中的一些。考虑到历史上的前卫艺术对现代主义艺术发展的影响，这也许并不令人惊讶。然而，如果人们重新审视该杂志上一些最有影响力的文章，例如巴塔耶的纲领性文章“无形”，反响是惊人的。这篇文章只有半页长，但它本身就催生了专着、选集和展览。脚注1
As a result, the philosophical and art historical reception of the journal has by now covered almost all of the facets of Bataille’s work in Documents: the montage technique being employed has been analyzed in depth by Georges Didi-Hubermann and the convergence of surrealism and ethnography has been discussed at length by James Clifford and others.Footnote2 However, there is one important aspect of Documents that has only received scant attention in the existent literature: the introduction of popular culture in the journal and the implicit, and at times explicit, attempt at questioning the distinction between bourgeois culture and the burgeoning popular culture of France. While the popular culture that was introduced in Documents was not as extensive as the reproductions of ethnographic artefacts, it was a recurring theme. New jazz records were reviewed by Leiris and Rivière, illustrated posters from popular films, as well as the illustrated covers of weekly published detective novels were reproduced and one of the earliest comic strips in France was analyzed. Not only was this in keeping with the montage technique of the journal, it was also an important aspect of Bataille’s famous notion of “base materialism” that he developed during these formative years and that was instrumental for the political orientation of the journal as a whole. In this article, I will revisit Bataille’s reflections on “base materialism” and seek to connect it to the broader analyses of popular culture in Documents, with the aim of analyzing some important, but overlooked, aspects of his political thought during the 1920s and 30s. 结果，该杂志的哲学和艺术史接受现在几乎涵盖了巴塔耶在文献中的作品的所有方面：所采用的蒙太奇技术已被乔治·迪迪-胡贝尔曼深入分析，超现实主义和民族志的融合詹姆斯·克利福德 (James Clifford) 等人对此进行了详细讨论。脚注2然而， 《文件》有一个重要方面在现有文献中很少受到关注：期刊中对流行文化的介绍以及隐含的、有时是明确的试图质疑资产阶级文化与新兴文化之间的区别。法国的流行文化。虽然文献中引入的流行文化不像民族志文物的复制品那么广泛，但它是一个反复出现的主题。 Leiris 和 Rivière 审查了新的爵士乐唱片，复制了流行电影的插图海报以及每周出版的侦探小说的插图封面，并对法国最早的漫画之一进行了分析。这不仅与该杂志的蒙太奇技术保持一致，而且也是巴塔耶在这些形成时期发展起来的著名的“基础唯物主义”概念的一个重要方面，这对于该杂志整体的政治取向发挥了重要作用。 。在这篇文章中，我将重新审视巴塔耶对“基础唯物主义”的反思，并试图将其与《文献》中对流行文化的更广泛的分析联系起来，旨在分析他在1920年代和30年代政治思想中一些重要但被忽视的方面。 。
1 Base materialism 1基础唯物主义
For Bataille, Documents was first of all conceived of as a declaration of war against all forms of idealism and, as Leiris would later describe it, as “a war machine against received ideas.”Footnote3 With Documents as his mouthpiece, Bataille waged a war against idealist philosophy and bourgeois politics, but also against the art world, and then especially Breton’s surrealism (to which I will return later on), and he did so by debasing and deforming the elevated, moralistic, and ideal forms of thought. However, this critique of idealism also entailed an attempt at developing a new understanding of materialism. In this, Bataille was clearly influenced by the Marxist tradition, even though his specific conception of materialism was formulated as an explicit critique of orthodox Marxism. 对于巴塔耶来说， 《文件》首先被认为是对一切形式的理想主义的宣战，正如莱里斯后来所描述的那样，它是“反对既定思想的战争机器”。脚注3巴塔耶以《文献》为代言人，向唯心主义哲学和资产阶级政治发起了一场战争，同时也向艺术界发起了一场战争，尤其是布列塔尼的超现实主义（我稍后会回到这一点），他通过贬低和扭曲现实主义来做到这一点。崇高的、道德的、理想的思想形式。然而，这种对唯心主义的批判也意味着对唯物主义提出新的理解的尝试。在这一点上，巴塔耶显然受到了马克思主义传统的影响，尽管他具体的唯物主义概念是作为对正统马克思主义的明确批判而提出的。
Most materialists, orthodox Marxists included, simply invert the hierarchical relation between the spiritual and the material dimension of reality. By way of this simple operation, in which matter replaces spirit at the top of the ontological hierarchy, they think they have escaped the impasses of idealist thought. However, according to Bataille this does not constitute a break with idealism, but merely a tiresome continuation of it. “Dead matter, the pure idea, and God,” Bataille writes, “in fact answer a question in the same way,” namely “the question of the essence of things, precisely of the idea by which things become intelligible.”Footnote4 Matter has in this way only replaced spirit; matter has become the new God or the new ideal form to which reality must conform. This, purportedly materialist, position is thus nothing but a “senile idealism” according to Bataille, since it forgets or represses its own idealism. If and when the concept of materialism is used it must instead “designate the direct interpretation, excluding all idealism, of raw phenomena.”Footnote5 大多数唯物主义者，包括正统马克思主义者，只是颠倒了现实的精神维度和物质维度之间的等级关系。通过这种简单的操作，即物质取代本体论层次顶部的精神，他们认为自己已经摆脱了唯心主义思想的僵局。然而，根据巴塔耶的说法，这并不构成与理想主义的决裂，而只是理想主义令人厌烦的延续。巴塔耶写道：“死物质、纯粹观念和上帝实际上以同样的方式回答了一个问题”，即“事物本质的问题，确切地说是事物变得可理解的观念的问题。”脚注4物质就这样取代了精神；物质已经成为现实必须符合的新上帝或新理想形式。因此，根据巴塔耶的说法，这种所谓的唯物主义立场只不过是一种“老年唯心主义”，因为它忘记或压抑了自己的唯心主义。如果使用唯物主义的概念，它必须“指定对原始现象的直接解释，排除所有唯心主义”。脚注5
These “raw phenomena” are the object of base materialism. They are raw or base since they disgust and disconcert us whenever we are confronted with them, and we do encounter them wherever we turn, as long as we do not shy away in disgust. In this sense, they constitute the seamy underside of human existence which, although often hidden from view, makes up the material reality that undergirds all idealist thought, however much idealist thinkers try to ignore them. In his essays in Documents, Bataille turns to different examples of this raw and base dimension of reality, indexing their different facets and properties. Among these phenomena, the big toe is a case in point. While serving as the base for our erect posture, a posture that is fundamental for our aspirations towards the heavens and all that which is elevated, as well as for our morality (our correct and steadfast composure), it serves as a constant reminder of our ignoble origins, even in the most idealized of moments. 这些“原始现象”是卑鄙唯物主义的对象。它们是原始的或卑鄙的，因为每当我们面对它们时，它们都会让我们感到厌恶和不安，而且只要我们不因厌恶而回避，无论我们走到哪里，我们都会遇到它们。从这个意义上说，它们构成了人类存在的阴暗面，虽然常常隐藏在人们的视野之外，但它们构成了支撑所有唯心主义思想的物质现实，无论唯心主义思想家多么试图忽视它们。在《文件》中的文章中，巴塔耶转向了现实的这种原始和基本维度的不同例子，索引了它们的不同方面和属性。在这些现象中，大脚趾就是一个典型的例子。它是我们立身的基础，它是我们向天和一切高尚事物的愿望以及我们的道德（我们正确和坚定的镇静）的基础，它不断地提醒着我们出身卑微，即使在最理想化的时刻。
The distinction between high and low, introduced in the essay “The Big Toe” as a distinction between the ideality of the heavens and the mud below our feet, is an important and recurring distinction in Bataille’s conception of base materialism as a whole. In the essay “The Language of Flowers,” he turns to the symbolism of flowers and to so called floriographies, which list the specific meaning and value associated with different flowers. Here the distinction between high and low is emblematic of the difference between the noble flower and its ignoble roots, which comingle with vermin and maggots. However, flowers are not only base because they are rooted in the same mud in which our toes are submerged, their baseness (bassesse) is also manifest in the flowers as such, at least if we strip away all of their petals. Stripped of their petals “all that remains is a rather sordid tuft” and we can clearly see, Bataille writes, that “even the most beautiful flowers are spoiled in their centers by hairy sexual organs.”Footnote6 Although all flowers are both noble and base, they are, more often than not, seen as symbols of the ideal. In this transposition from appearances to words, from base reality to the lofty and ideal symbols of poetry and philosophy, the ignoble aspects of the flowers disappear. In this respect, the symbolism of floriography is a first step towards the abstractions of idealist thought, which will build upon the idealizations of nature in order to construct ideal and abstract concepts, thereby severing all ties with the mud and soil from out of which these idealizations originally sprang forth. However, the transposition from appearances to words is not only an idealist subterfuge, designed to keep base reality at bay, but a fundamental and seemingly necessary aspect of philosophical thought. It is, Bataille writes, “only the word [that] allows one to consider the characteristics of things that determine a relative situation, in other words the properties that permit an external action.”Footnote7 Were it not for words and concepts, we would never be able to circumscribe and define the phenomena under study. However, this process of abstraction constantly runs the risk of exceeding its own bounds, thereby giving rise to a false sense of freedom and to the unworldly speculations of idealist thought. In light of this, Bataille calls for a return to appearances since appearances introduce “the decisive value of things […].”Footnote8 While this return to appearances is reminiscent of the rally cry of phenomenology with which Bataille was familiar, his “return” is not epistemological in nature, but critical: the appearances to which he returns are not the lived experiences of the life-world, but precisely the base and ignoble appearances that the history of philosophy, phenomenology included, has tried to silence and repress. Hence, base materialism can also be read as a critical project of excavation; as an attempt to shed light on appearances that have been inhumed and hidden from view by bourgeois thought and culture. Base materialism would thus constitute an inversion of Platonism, since the imperative of thought is no longer the liberation from the cave, but a return to it. 在《大脚趾》一文中，高低之间的区别被引入为天堂的理想性与我们脚下的泥土之间的区别，这是巴塔耶整个基本唯物主义概念中一个重要且反复出现的区别。在《花的语言》一文中，他转向了花的象征意义和所谓的花艺，其中列出了与不同花相关的特定含义和价值。这里，高低之分象征着高贵的花和它与害虫和蛆虫混杂在一起的卑鄙的根之间的区别。然而，花不仅是卑鄙的，因为它们扎根于我们的脚趾浸没的泥浆中，它们的卑鄙（ bassesse ）也体现在花朵本身上，至少如果我们剥掉它们所有的花瓣的话。巴塔耶写道，剥去花瓣后，“剩下的只是一簇相当肮脏的簇”，我们可以清楚地看到，“即使是最美丽的花朵，其中心也被毛茸茸的性器官破坏了。”脚注6尽管所有的花都有高贵和卑鄙的一面，但它们往往被视为理想的象征。在这种从外观到文字、从基本现实到诗歌和哲学的崇高理想象征的转变中，花朵的卑鄙一面消失了。从这个角度来看，花艺的象征意义是迈向唯心主义思想抽象的第一步，它将建立在自然的理想化之上，以构建理想和抽象的概念，从而切断与这些泥土和土壤的一切联系。理想化最初出现。 然而，从表象到文字的转换不仅是一种理想主义的诡计，旨在阻止基本现实，而且是哲学思想的一个基本且看似必要的方面。巴塔耶写道，“只有这个词允许人们考虑决定相对情况的事物的特征，换句话说，是允许外部行动的属性。”脚注7如果没有文字和概念，我们永远无法界定和定义所研究的现象。然而，这种抽象过程不断冒着超越自身界限的风险，从而产生一种错误的自由感和唯心主义思想的超凡脱俗的思辨。有鉴于此，巴塔耶呼吁回归表象，因为表象引入了“事物的决定性价值[……]”。脚注8虽然这种对表象的回归让人想起巴塔耶所熟悉的现象学的集会口号，但他的“回归”本质上不是认识论的，而是批判性的：他回归的表象并不是生活世界的生活经验，但恰恰是哲学史（包括现象学）试图压制和压制的卑鄙和不光彩的表象。因此，基础唯物主义也可以被解读为一项批判性的挖掘工程。试图揭示那些被资产阶级思想和文化所掩埋和隐藏的表象。因此，基础唯物主义将构成柏拉图主义的倒置，因为思想的当务之急不再是从洞穴中解放出来，而是回归洞穴。
This “return into the cave” is predicated on the idea that appearances reveal “the decisive value of things.” However, what is revealed is often quite disconcerting. Instead of sparking our curiosity, these appearances shock us, and instead of drawing us closer, they repel us: it is the troubling revelation of that which is normally hidden from view by way of taboos and prohibitions. Thus, the materiality in question is not a neutral surface awaiting an inscription, but an active materiality in the sense that it always gives rise to some kind of re-action. The active capacity of this materiality is addressed by Bataille in the essay, “Base Materialism and Gnosticism,” in which he also provides us with a short and significant, albeit idiosyncratic, genealogy of materialism: 这种“回归洞穴”的前提是，外表揭示了“事物的决定性价值”。然而，所揭露的内容往往令人相当不安。这些现象不但没有激发我们的好奇心，反而让我们震惊，它们不但没有拉近我们的距离，反而让我们感到排斥：这是对通常通过禁忌和禁令而隐藏在视野之外的事物的令人不安的揭露。因此，所讨论的物质性不是一个等待铭文的中性表面，而是一种活跃的物质性，因为它总是引起某种反应。巴塔耶在《基础唯物主义和诺斯替主义》一文中论述了这种物质性的积极能力，他在文中还为我们提供了一个简短而重要但又独特的唯物主义谱系：
It is nevertheless very remarkable that the only kind of materialism that up to now in its development has escaped systematic abstraction, namely dialectical materialism, had as its starting point, at least as much as ontological materialism, absolute idealism in its Hegelian form […] Now Hegelianism, no less than the classical philosophy of Hegel’s period, apparently proceeded from very ancient metaphysical conceptions, conceptions developed by, among other, the Gnostics, in an epoch when metaphysics could still be associated with the most dualistic and therefore strangely abased cosmogonies.Footnote9 然而，值得注意的是，迄今为止在其发展过程中唯一一种逃脱了系统抽象的唯物主义，即辩证唯物主义，其起点至少与本体论唯物主义一样，是黑格尔形式的绝对唯心主义。现在，黑格尔主义，不亚于黑格尔时期的古典哲学，显然是从非常古老的形而上学概念出发的，这些概念是由诺斯替派等人在形而上学仍然可以发展的时代发展起来的。与最二元的、因此奇怪地卑微的宇宙观联系在一起。脚注9
The first step of this genealogy, which takes us from Marx to Hegel, is familiar. However, the second one, which traces the history of dialectics all the way back to the Gnostics, is more surprising. In Gnosticism, Bataille finds not only an important precursor to his own conception of base materialism, since the Gnostics “introduced a most impure fermentation into Greco-Roman ideology,” but also a precursor to Hegelian dialectics.Footnote10 By introducing a radical dualism inWestern thought, a dualism in which evil and darkness were no longer seen as privations of the One, but as principles of their own, Gnosticism broke with the monism of Greek and Christian thought. According to Bataille, this radical dualism lives on in Hegel’s dialectics. However, in a footnote to the text, he adds that “the base elements that are essential in Gnosticism” only exist in “a reduced and emasculated state” in Hegel’s thought.Footnote11 The baseness of Gnosticism and the destructive capacity of the base elements is thus retained, but only in a reduced or, to phrase it differently, sublimated form. Even if Hegel reduced the destructive potential of these base elements to a moment in the dialectical process that would finally be sublated, the baseness, inherited from Gnosticism, nonetheless lived on in his thought. 这个谱系的第一步将我们从马克思带到黑格尔，这是很熟悉的。然而，第二个将辩证法的历史一直追溯到诺斯替派的人更令人惊讶。在诺斯替主义中，巴塔耶不仅发现了他自己的基本唯物主义概念的重要先驱，因为诺斯替教徒“将最不纯粹的发酵引入了希腊罗马意识形态”，而且也是黑格尔辩证法的先驱。脚注10通过在西方思想中引入一种激进的二元论，在这种二元论中，邪恶和黑暗不再被视为对“一”的匮乏，而是被视为它们自己的原则，诺斯替主义打破了希腊和基督教思想的一元论。巴塔耶认为，这种激进的二元论仍然存在于黑格尔的辩证法中。然而，在文本的脚注中，他补充说，“诺斯替主义中必不可少的基本要素”仅存在于黑格尔思想中的“简化和阉割状态”。脚注11诺斯替教的卑鄙性和基本元素的破坏能力因此被保留，但只是以一种简化的形式，或者换句话说，升华的形式。即使黑格尔将这些卑鄙因素的破坏性潜力降低到辩证过程中最终被扬弃的时刻，但从诺斯替主义继承下来的卑鄙性仍然存在于他的思想中。
It is this “after-life” of Gnosticism which is of interest here. While Bataille’s reading of Hegel can certainly be questioned on this point, his idiosyncratic genealogy of materialism tells us something important about his understanding of Marxism, and of materialism. After having chastised Hegel for “emasculating” the base elements of Gnosticism, Bataille claims that Marxism has inherited not only the Hegelian dialectic, but also its gnostic roots. When Marx stood Hegel on his head and substituted a materialist dialectic for Hegel’s idealism, matter, Bataille writes, “was no longer an abstraction but a source of contradiction.”Footnote12 In Marx’s thought, material contradictions famously propel history onward. In Bataille’s understanding of Marx, however, these material contradictions are not only socio-economical in nature (the contradictions between the productive forces and the existing social relations), but also include base and raw matter that contradicts the elevated forms of bourgeois thought and practice. By way of his short genealogy, Bataille thus tries to suture the materialism of Marx with base matter and to show that the after-life of Gnosticism haunts Marx’s thought just as much as Hegel’s. As a result, it is possible for him to claim that “Gnosticism, in its psychological process, is not so different from present-day materialism.”Footnote13 The short caveat “in its psychological process” is essential here, since it tells us that the base materialism that Bataille envisions ultimately is of a different nature than that of Marx. It is a psycho-social, or affective, materialism and not an historical or economical one. 这里感兴趣的正是诺斯替主义的“来世”。虽然巴塔耶对黑格尔的解读在这一点上肯定会受到质疑，但他独特的唯物主义谱系告诉我们一些关于他对马克思主义和唯物主义的理解的重要信息。在谴责黑格尔“阉割”诺斯替主义的基本要素之后，巴塔耶声称马克思主义不仅继承了黑格尔辩证法，而且继承了其诺斯替主义根源。巴塔耶写道，当马克思颠倒黑格尔并用唯物辩证法取代黑格尔的唯心主义时，物质“不再是抽象概念，而是矛盾的根源”。脚注12在马克思的思想中，物质矛盾推动历史前进。然而，在巴塔耶对马克思的理解中，这些物质矛盾不仅是社会经济性质的（生产力与现有社会关系之间的矛盾），而且还包括与资产阶级思想和实践的高级形式相矛盾的基础和原始物质。 。因此，巴塔耶试图通过他简短的家谱将马克思的唯物主义与基础材料缝合起来，并表明诺斯替主义的来世与黑格尔的思想一样困扰着马克思的思想。因此，他有可能声称“诺斯替主义在其心理过程上与当今的唯物主义并没有太大不同。”脚注13 “在其心理过程中”的简短警告在这里至关重要，因为它告诉我们，巴塔耶所设想的基本唯物主义最终与马克思的本质不同。它是一种心理社会的或情感的唯物主义，而不是历史或经济的唯物主义。
This affective materialism implies that one should not submit oneself “to whatever is more elevated, to whatever can give a borrowed authority to the being that I am, and to the reason that arms this being.” Instead, one should submit oneself to base matter, since it is “external and foreign to all human aspirations” and “refuses to allow itself to the great ontological machines resulting from these aspirations.”Footnote14 Here a Nietzschean transvaluation of values is at play, but with a specific inflection. One should indeed submit oneself to that which is low rather than to the elevated forms, and one should, concomitantly, debase the higher forms by soiling them with base matter, but this does not imply that the low should be reinstated as a first principle. If this was the case, one would merely repeat the traditional materialist gesture, i.e. replace spirit with matter and invert the hierarchical order. Far from being a new principle or ground (arché), base matter instead forces us to recognize, as Bataille puts it, “the helplessness of superior principles.”Footnote15 Matter should, in other words, be valorized; all of that which the history of philosophy has relegated to the dust heap of history and which idealism has emasculated by reducing to pure contingency and chance, should be re-valorized so that it can become the anarchic Abgrund of thought and politics. This is, however, a paradoxical move and one that constantly runs the risk of being overturned into yet another form of idealism and into yet another idealist form. In an attempt at clarifying this paradox, one can draw on Foucault’s reading of Bataille and speak of this affirmation of base materialism as an affirmation that “contains nothing positive,” but which instead is “an affirmation of division.”Footnote16 It does not reinstate a new foundation, nothing “positive” will come out of it, yet it nonetheless affirms the existence of something “negative.” 这种情感唯物主义意味着，一个人不应该屈服于“任何更高尚的东西，任何能给我这个存在借来的权威，以及武装这个存在的理性”。相反，人们应该屈服于基础物质，因为它“对于所有人类的愿望来说都是外在的和陌生的”，并且“拒绝让自己屈服于这些愿望所产生的伟大的本体论机器”。脚注14这里尼采式的价值观重估正在发挥作用，但有一个特定的变化。一个人确实应该屈服于低级形式，而不是崇高形式，同时，一个人应该通过用卑鄙的物质玷污较高的形式来贬低它们，但这并不意味着应该恢复低级形式作为首要原则。如果真是这样，那就只能重复传统的唯物主义姿态，即以物质取代精神，颠倒等级秩序。正如巴塔耶所说，基本物质远不是一个新的原则或基础（ arché ），而是迫使我们认识到“高级原则的无助”。脚注15换句话说，物质应该被重视；所有被哲学史归入历史垃圾堆的东西，以及唯心主义通过还原为纯粹的偶然性和偶然性而被阉割的东西，都应该被重新评估，以便它能够成为思想和政治的无政府主义的抽象。然而，这是一种自相矛盾的举动，并且不断冒着被推翻为另一种唯心主义形式和另一种唯心主义形式的风险。 为了澄清这一悖论，人们可以借鉴福柯对巴塔耶的解读，并将这种对基本唯物主义的肯定称为“不包含任何积极的东西”，而是“对分裂的肯定”。脚注16它并没有恢复一个新的基础，不会产生任何“积极”的东西，但它仍然肯定了一些“消极”的东西的存在。”
This affirmation of negativity is, to use a more Bataillean turn of phrase, an affirmation of uselessness, even an affirmation of the use-value of the useless – to paraphrase Denis Hollier. As Hollier has shown, Documents was organized around “a return, even a regression, to that which one might call the primitivism of use-value.” In this, the ethnographers and Bataille were in agreement, albeit for different reasons.Footnote17 While the ethnographers who participated in Documents were animated by a museological aspiration to re-contextualize ethnographic artefacts in their original practical milieu, Bataille was primarily interested in use-value since it gave access to base reality, which had been made invisible by the logic of capitalist exchange. For Bataille, capitalist society is not only defined by its reduction of everything to exchange value, but also by a utilitarian logic in which everything and everyone is useful for something else. Capitalist society is, in short, homogenous and homogenizing in nature and eradicates all that is heterogeneous – it eradicates difference. In this respect, Bataille’s return to base matter is also, as Hollier writes, a return to “the inexchangeable heterogeneity of the real, an irreducible kernel of resistance to any kind of transposition, of substitution, a real which does not yield to a metaphor.”Footnote18 The reality revealed by such a return, and by such an excavation, is useless at the same time as it constitutes a use-value precisely because it introduces something heterogeneous in a homogenous world, it introduces “an affirmation of difference.” 用更巴塔耶式的措辞来说，这种对消极性的肯定是对无用性的肯定，甚至是对无用物的使用价值的肯定——用丹尼斯·霍利尔的话来说。正如霍利尔所表明的那样， 《文档》的组织围绕着“一种回归，甚至是一种倒退，人们可以称之为使用价值的原始主义”。在这一点上，民族志学家和巴塔耶达成了一致，尽管原因不同。脚注17虽然参与文件的民族志学者被博物馆学的渴望所激励，希望将民族志文物重新置于其原始的实际环境中，但巴塔耶主要对使用价值感兴趣，因为它提供了接近基本现实的机会，而这些现实已被无形的现实所掩盖。资本主义交换的逻辑。对于巴塔耶来说，资本主义社会的定义不仅在于将一切都简化为交换价值，而且还在于功利主义逻辑，其中一切和每个人都有其他用途。简而言之，资本主义社会本质上是同质和同质化的，它消除了一切异质——它消除了差异。在这方面，正如霍利尔所写，巴塔耶对基础物质的回归也是对“真实的不可交换的异质性的回归，是对任何形式的换位、替代的抵抗的不可简化的核心，是一种不屈服于隐喻的真实”。 ”。脚注18这种回归和挖掘所揭示的现实是无用的，同时它又构成了一种使用价值，正是因为它在同质世界中引入了异质的东西，它引入了“对差异的肯定”。
This useless existence is made manifest by the big toe, by the ignoble centers of flowers, as well as by all those appearances from which bourgeois society and culture shields itself. But it is also made manifest in politics by and through the sheer appearance of the working class. In the early essay “The Solar Anus,” Bataille will for instance write: “Communist workers appear to the bourgeois to be as ugly and dirty as hairy sexual organs, or lower parts; sooner or later there will be a scandalous eruption in the course of which the asexual noble heads of the bourgeois will be chopped off.”Footnote19 To be sure, Marx also understands the proletariat by way of its negativity: it is the negative or obverse side of the bourgeoisie and the class that is destined to abolish all classes. But whereas Marx understands this in historico-materialist terms, i.e., as the result of a historical process in which the bourgeoisie “absorbs all propertied classes” while all the “earlier propertyless and a part of the hitherto propertied classes” are transformed into a new class (the proletariat), Bataille understands the negativity of the proletariat as an heterogeneous and affective force, which instigates a political as well as a cultural rupture within bourgeois society.Footnote20 这种无用的存在通过大脚趾、不光彩的花朵中心以及资产阶级社会和文化自我保护的所有这些表象来体现。但它也通过工人阶级的纯粹出现在政治中得到体现。例如，巴塔耶在早期的文章《太阳肛门》中写道：“在资产阶级看来，共产主义工人就像毛茸茸的性器官或下体一样丑陋和肮脏；迟早会爆发一场丑闻，资产阶级的无性贵族头颅将被砍掉。”脚注19当然，马克思也是通过其消极性来理解无产阶级的：它是资产阶级和注定要废除所有阶级的阶级的消极面或正面。但是，尽管马克思用历史唯物主义的术语来理解这一点，即资产阶级“吸收了所有有产阶级”，而所有“早期的无产阶级和迄今为止的有产阶级的一部分”都转变为新的历史过程的结果。对于阶级（无产阶级），巴塔耶将无产阶级的消极性理解为一种异质的、情感的力量，它煽动了阶级内部的政治和文化断裂。资产阶级社会。脚注20
However, it is not only in politics that the heterogeneity of base matter is made manifest; it is also perceptible in art. Bataille writes towards the end of “Base Materialism and Gnosticism”: “certain plastic representations are the expression of an intransigent materialism, of a recourse to everything that comprises the powers that be in matters of form, ridiculing the traditional entities, naively rivalling stupefying scarecrows.”Footnote21 Even though Bataille never – aside from some oblique references to Picasso’s work – specifies what kind of art he has in mind, it is clear that he is pointing towards the art and visual culture being reproduced in Documents. 然而，基础物质的异质性不仅在政治中表现出来，而且在政治中也表现出来。这在艺术中也是可以感知的。巴塔耶在《基础唯物主义和诺斯替主义》的结尾处写道：“某些造型表现是一种不妥协的唯物主义的表达，是对形式力量的诉诸，嘲笑传统实体，天真地与令人震惊的稻草人竞争。 ”。脚注21尽管巴塔耶除了对毕加索作品的一些间接提及之外从未明确说明他心目中的艺术类型，但很明显他指向的是在文件中再现的艺术和视觉文化。
2 Heterogeneity 2异质性
However, Documents was not only conceived of as a manifestation of base matter, it was also a “war machine,” directed against the idealism inherent in surrealism. In the essay, “The ‘Old Mole’ and the Prefix Sur in the Words Surhomme and Surrealism,” Bataille begins by writing that materialism is “a crude liberation of human life from the imprisonment and masked pathology of ethics, an appeal to all that is offensive, indestructible, and even despicable, to all that overthrows, perverts, and ridicules spirit.”Footnote22 In relation to this base understanding of materialism, surrealism is nothing but a “childhood disease” according to Bataille, since it sought to create values of its own instead of finding sustenance in the baseness of human existence. The values and ideals of bourgeois society and culture were to be replaced and subverted, but with new ones that were even more noble and elevated than the existing ones; values placed above (sur) reality and which could usher in what Breton called a “revolt of the spirit.”Footnote23 In order to accomplish this, surrealism had to annihilate all that is contingent, since the contingent is nothing but an annoying disturbance if looked upon from up high. Hence, the materialist identity of surrealism is at best the symptom of a self-deceptive senility and at worst a conscious manipulation. 然而， 《文件》不仅被认为是基本物质的表现，而且还是一台“战争机器”，针对超现实主义固有的理想主义。在《‘老鼹鼠’和‘超人类’和超现实主义中的前缀苏尔》一文中，巴塔耶首先写道，唯物主义是“将人类生命从道德的禁锢和掩盖的病态中粗暴地解放出来，呼吁一切对于所有推翻、歪曲和嘲笑精神的人来说，它是令人反感的、坚不可摧的，甚至是卑鄙的。”脚注22相对于这种对唯物主义的基本理解，超现实主义只不过是巴塔耶所说的一种“儿童病”，因为它试图创造自己的价值，而不是在人类存在的卑鄙中寻找生计。资产阶级社会和文化的价值观和理想将被取代和颠覆，但新的价值观和理想比现有的更加崇高和崇高；价值观置于现实之上，这可能会引发布雷顿所说的“精神的反抗”。脚注23为了实现这一点，超现实主义必须消灭所有偶然性，因为如果从高处看，偶然性只不过是一种烦人的干扰。因此，超现实主义的唯物主义身份往好了说是一种自欺欺人的衰老症状，往坏了说是一种有意识的操纵。
The opposition between high and low thus reappears in this essay as well, but is re-described as an opposition between the soaring eagle and the rummaging mole in a way which further accentuates the political dynamic of the opposition. In a political sense, the eagle is identified with the splendor of imperialism; it signifies elevation, as well as absolute authoritarian power. By insisting on that which is elevated, surrealism identifies itself with the eagle, and with an eagle that soars high above reality – the very symbol of an idealism that has transcended reality altogether. In contradistinction to the eagle we find the mole who undermines all that seeks to rise above and which “hollows out chambers in a decomposed soil repugnant to the delicate noses of the utopians.”Footnote24 This is the same mole that Marx speaks of in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: the mole of the revolution that “is still journeying through purgatory,” but that “does its work methodically.” It began by perfecting parliamentary power only to overthrow it, then it concentrated all its efforts on the executive power and unleashed all its destructive force upon it. When its work has been completed Europe will “leap from its seat and exultantly exclaim: well burrowed old mole!”Footnote25 As is well-known, the mole that resurfaces in Marx’s work can, in turn, be traced back to Hamlet. However, in Hamlet the mole is no longer revolutionary, at least not in any explicit sense, instead it is the “vicious mole of nature,” which in the form of alcoholism and debauchery corrupts the Danish people.Footnote26 The methodical, political mole is thus counterpoised by the alcoholic one and the materialism of Marx is once again sutured with base materialism. By way of this operation, Bataille can also write that Marx’s analysis, just as the ignoble and revolutionary mole, “begins in the bowels of the earth, as in the materialist bowels of proletarians.”Footnote27 因此，高低之间的对立在本文中也再次出现，但被重新描述为翱翔的雄鹰与翻箱倒柜的鼹鼠之间的对立，从而进一步凸显了对立的政治动力。在政治意义上，鹰象征着帝国主义的辉煌；它象征着崇高，也象征着绝对的独裁权力。通过坚持崇高的事物，超现实主义将自己等同于鹰，以及一只翱翔在现实之上的鹰——这正是完全超越现实的理想主义的象征。与鹰相反，我们发现鼹鼠破坏了一切试图超越的事物，并且“在腐烂的土壤中挖空了房间，这对乌托邦主义者的敏感鼻子来说是令人厌恶的”。脚注24这与马克思在《路易·波拿巴的雾月十八日》中所说的同一个痣：革命的痣“仍在炼狱中行进”，但“有条不紊地开展工作”。它一开始完善了议会权力，只是为了推翻它，然后它把所有的努力都集中在行政权力上，并向行政权力释放了所有的破坏力。当它的工作完成时，欧洲将“从座位上跳起来，兴奋地喊道：挖得很好的老鼹鼠！”脚注25众所周知，马克思著作中重新出现的内奸可以追溯到哈姆雷特。然而，在《哈姆雷特》中，鼹鼠不再是革命性的，至少在任何明确的意义上都不再是革命性的，相反，它是“自然的恶毒鼹鼠”，它以酗酒和放荡的形式腐蚀着丹麦人民。脚注26因此，有条不紊的政治痣被酗酒的痣所抵消，马克思的唯物主义再次与卑鄙的唯物主义缝合在一起。通过这种操作，巴塔耶还可以写道，马克思的分析，就像卑鄙的革命鼹鼠一样，“始于地球的内部，就像无产阶级的唯物主义内部一样。”脚注27
Bataille’s reinterpretation of Marx, and his attempt to show that Marx was a base materialist avant la lettre, can certainly be questioned. Of all the categories that appear in Marx’s work, only one truly merits to be called base or ignoble and that is the Lumpenproletariat, which Marx famously dismisses as a notoriously untrustworthy, even reactionary, segment of society. It appears, as Marx writes in The Class Struggles in France, in the form of the “unbridled assertion of unhealthy and vicious appetites” among the most debauched parts of the aristocracy, thereby giving rise to a Lumpenproletariat “at the pinnacle of bourgeois society,” but more often than not it is identified with the lowest echelons of bourgeois society, with outcasts, criminals, and paupers.Footnote28 While these people are capable of great heroism, they are also easily misled; they constitute a formless and heterogeneous multitude that can be molded into almost any form and that can be used for almost any political purpose. While the Lumpenproletariat can be interpreted as a base element in Marx’s thought, it is thus ultimately rejected as being nothing but a hotbed of inchoate desires, unruly passions, and unlimited violence. It is, as Marx and Engels puts it in The Communist Manifesto, “the ‘dangerous class,’ the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society.”Footnote29 巴塔耶对马克思的重新解释，以及他试图表明马克思是一位基础唯物主义先锋派的尝试，当然可以受到质疑。在马克思著作中出现的所有类别中，只有一个真正值得被称为卑鄙或卑鄙，那就是流氓无产阶级，马克思著名地将其斥为社会中臭名昭著的不值得信任甚至反动的部分。正如马克思在《法国的阶级斗争》中所写的那样，它以贵族阶级中最放荡的部分“肆无忌惮地主张不健康和邪恶的欲望”的形式出现，从而在资产阶级社会的顶峰产生了流氓无产阶级，但更多时候，它被认为是资产阶级社会的最底层、被遗弃者、罪犯和乞丐。脚注28虽然这些人有伟大的英雄主义，但他们也很容易被误导；他们构成了一个无形的、异质的群体，可以被塑造成几乎任何形式，并且可以用于几乎任何政治目的。虽然流氓无产阶级可以被解释为马克思思想中的一个基本要素，但它最终被拒绝，因为它只不过是不成熟的欲望、不羁的激情和无限的暴力的温床。正如马克思和恩格斯在《共产党宣言》中所说的那样，“‘危险阶级’、社会败类、被旧社会最底层抛弃的被动腐烂的群众”。脚注29
