ABSTRACT
Sacrifice, in Bataille's writing and thought, is tied to obscenity, to nudity and to eroticism. The truth of eroticism, Bataille proposes, is found in the profound link between human sexuality and death. The sacrificial scene positions a sacrificial body as the visual object of the subject; the exposure to death is experienced vicariously. Bataille proposes that the erotic object is usually feminine in that women 'dans leur attitude passive' propose themselves for desire. The history of eroticism passes from a situation of consecrated ritual, to damnation and then to social destitution. Modern eroticism thus works through a series of displacements, recovering the sense of an interdiction as a memory. The eroticism of Bataille's fictions functions in a determined social and historical context. It does not place its protagonists in an ahistorical setting in which the transgressive sexual or erotic acts would be made equivalent to the archaic ritual of sacrifice.
