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What (is) sovereignty? In order to get some clarification on Batailles position, we have to first explain his idea of sovereignty.

Bataille posits two types of existence, two worlds if you will, that of servitude and that of sovereignty. Work, language (that is, the entirety of discourse except for some poetry and literary works), philosophy, and reason (we can already vaguely see the paradox of his position), among other things, elong to the servile world. !or Bataille, these are manifestations of servitude in that they are meaningful, that is, in that they attempt to account for existence in a general, totali"ing way# y forming a continuum etween past knowledge and future research or calculation. In other words, knowledge is a servile act in that it indefinitely postpones the moment at which sovereignty is reali"ed. $o far we have at least located sovereignty within the servile world, yet it does not take place without a su %ect. &raditionally speaking, the sovereign man is self' governed, derives authority from himself, and even though he seems outside the world, his actions nevertheless work a certain magic over the masses, so he is still related to the servile world ut this relation depends on recognized distance. Bataille, in an (egelian maneuver, radicali"es this traditional concept of the sovereign y replacing the sovereigns figure (i.e. the spatial relation of su %ects to their lord) with consciousness itself. $o, within the confines of the same consciousness there is oth the potential to e servile and the potential to e sovereign. $overeignty, here, means )a stroke of fate, a piece of ad luck, which would e forever deprived of sense.* (+,) $ervility, on the contrary, is, in a sense-, the su %ects ha itual experience of eing )a separated and irreplacea le eing,* (-.), and this separation depends on the su %ects continual identification of itself with itself and with a world opposed to it. &his separation, then, for Bataille, is consciousness itself, so sovereignty would e something like the loss of consciousness. &his rings us to Batailles formulation of the /experience of death. Death and Hegelian Negativity In the essay at hand, Bataille is asing his interpretation of death on only two (egelian texts# 0o%eves reading of (egel and (egels paragraph on tarrying with the negative, located in the preface of the Phenomenology. !irst, lets turn to (egels paragraph. (-1) We read, )the life of $pirit is not that life which is frightened of death, and spares itself destruction, ut that life which assumes
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2ote that Bataille writes )in a sense*, sometimes )certain* and sometimes not, at least twice in the essay. I would argue he is implying that these instances of sense are real, undergone, and that any meaning, i.e. the sense of discourse, given to them can not ade3uately represent the initial sense, which is that of sovereignty, the latter a paradoxical experience of non'sense, i.e. the /other of the servile world.

death and lives with it.* 4nd further on, )$pirit attains its truth5.in a solute dismem erment*6 then, )$pirit5.contemplates the 2egative face to face (and) dwells with it.* Before discussing how Bataille interprets this paragraph, we should try to understand what (egel /actually meant. We see that death is mentioned at the eginning of the paragraph and (egel calls it an )unreality*, implying that it threatens reality or life with the latters a sence. What is important here is (egels use of )$pirit*, for where death and $pirit occur together, we should see death as eing an element in the greater movement of $pirit. In other words, (egel does not here consider death as an experience of the individual, and the work that is demanded in the face of death is universal work, inscri ed in $pirit. Bataille, however, neglects to mention $pirit, so this metaphysical conceit disappears. What we are left with is a non'(egelian eginning descri ed in (egelian terminology. !ollowing 0o%eve, Bataille puts all the weight on negativity as a finite movement within the totality of the real. &his movement is finite ecause its operational negativity starts with a living eing who is, at its origin and always, a locali"ed animal. $pecifically though, the animal is actually part of a continuum that remains )e3ual to 7itself8 like the waves of the sea,* (-9) so finitude, that is, the act of separation, does not commence until negativity transforms the animal into consciousness. 4s Bataille says, this transformative negation involves the death of the animal. But /death is used loosely here, for what really occurs is the transition from the continuum to the isolated eing, and it is precisely this emergent finite eing that initiali"es understanding and egins to work, there y founding the servile world. In a certain sense, death is not a thing, ut rather a reaction to a sence, to the loss of something, whether this e consciousness or animal life. &he sustained existence of this reaction implies that death may have occurred, yet, in a very (egelian manner, it could only have een a moment directed toward the future and not a radical reak with eing. &hree reactions to death# Beauty (accords with the /real6 sovereign indifference to (human) death) :ife (preserves itself animalistically6 natural recoil from death) ;nderstanding (separates and names eing6 working (as the sem lance of) death)

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