Limit-experience (french: expérience limite) refers to actions which approach the limits of possible experience. This can be in terms of their intensity and seemingly impossible or paradoxical qualities. A limit-experience dissociates the subject from the experience that it exists in and identifies with, leading to a confrontation with

the Real In continental philosophy, the Real refers to the remainder of reality that cannot be expressed, and which surpasses reasoning. In Lacanianism, it is an "impossible" category because of its opposition to expression and inconceivability. In ...

. The idea was proposed by French philosopher

Georges Bataille Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (; ; 10 September 1897 – 9 July 1962) was a French philosopher and intellectual working in philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, ...

, and subsequently became associated with French philosophers

Maurice Blanchot Maurice Blanchot (; ; 22 September 1907 – 20 February 2003) was a French writer, philosopher and literary theorist. His work, exploring a philosophy of death alongside poetic theories of meaning and sense, bore significant influence on post- ...

and

Michel Foucault Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how ...

Interpretations

Georges Bataille

Reaching back to

Charles Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poetry, French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticis ...

and his poetics of paradoxical experience, such as in the line "O filthy grandeur! O sublime disgrace!" in poem 25 of Baudelaire's ''

Les Fleurs du mal ''Les Fleurs du mal'' (; en, The Flowers of Evil, italic=yes) is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. ''Les Fleurs du mal'' includes nearly all Baudelaire's poetry, written from 1840 until his death in August 1867. First publish ...

'', Bataille was struck by what he saw as "the fact that these two complete contrasts were identical—divine ecstasy and extreme horror". He went on to challenge the conventions laid down by the

surrealists Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...

at the time with an anti-idealist philosophy conditioned on what he called "the impossible", defined by breaking "rules" until something beyond all rules was reached. In this way, he strove for the limit-experience, what Foucault would later summarize as "the point of life which lies as close as possible to the impossibility of living, which lies at the limit or the extreme". Bataille sought to identify experiences of this kind, and to establish a philosophy that would convey how to live at the edge of limits where the ability to comprehend experience breaks down.

Michel Foucault

Foucault remarked that "the idea of a limit-experience that wrenches the subject from itself is what was important to me in my reading of

Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, Prose poetry, prose poet, cultural critic, Philology, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philo ...

, Bataille, and Blanchot". In his manner, the systems of philosophy and psychology and their conceptions of reality and the unified subject could be challenged and exposed in favor of what their systems and structures refused and excluded, viewing them from a standpoint informed by the potentials of limit-experience. How far Foucault's fascination with intense experiences goes in his entire body of work is the subject of debate, with the concept arguably being absent from his later and more well known work on sexuality and discipline, as well as strongly associated with the cult of the mad artist in ''

Madness and Civilization ''Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason'' (French: ''Folie et Déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique'', 1961) is an examination by Michel Foucault of the evolution of the meaning of madness in the cultu ...

''.

Jacques Lacan

Influenced by Bataille, from whom he drew the idea of impossibility,

Lacan Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, , ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and ...

explored the role of limit-experiences, such as "desire, boredom, confinement, revolt, prayer, sleeplessness ��and panic" in the formation of the

Other Other often refers to: * Other (philosophy), a concept in psychology and philosophy Other or The Other may also refer to: Film and television * ''The Other'' (1913 film), a German silent film directed by Max Mack * ''The Other'' (1930 film), a ...

. He also adopted some of Bataille's views on love, seeing it as predicated on man having previously "experienced the limit within which, like desire, he is bound". He saw masochism in particular as a limit-experience, an aspect which fed into his article "Kant avec Sade".Lacan, ''Concepts'' p. 276

References

External links

'The Negative Eschatology of Maurice Blanchot'
{{Michel Foucault Georges Bataille Michel Foucault