Fighting With Bataille: Fight Club, Community and The Gift of Death
There is a beautiful moment i Da id Fi her s 1999 fil Fight Club when the main protagonist played by Edward Norton finds the od of Bo ei g arried i e ers of Project Mayhem, the revolutionary movement of disenfranchised men working to subvert – If not completely overthrow – the neo-liberal social system. Bob had been shot to death by a police officer during an act of vandalism within Project Mayhem. The others immediately want to dispose of his body,
rudel referri g to it as it ei g erel e ide e , e ause, after all, those within Project Mayhem have no name – a true reflection of the absolute thinghood, the utilitarian nature, of those within the movement. Norto s haracter dramatically throws himself over Bobs orpse yelling that he does have a name, his a e is ‘o ert Paulso . The others are confused by this, until one (credited as The Me ha i states that he u dersta ds, that, In death a member of Project Mayhem has a na e. His a e is ‘o ert Paulso . This is immediately picked up by all the others in the room who
egi to ha t, His name is Robert Paulson, a ha t hi h Norto s hara ter hears o e agai i a different city while learning the true size and reach of Project Mayhem.1 This moment, which may see e tirel i sig ifi a t gi e the fa t that it s o l a ere 3 i utes lo g, is argua l the ost important in the entire film because what we are witnessing is the birth of a community.
This paper will use the film version of Fight Club in an effort to explore what roles sacrifice and sovereignty play in the formation of a revolutionary community. It will also use this film to illuminate the limits of these communities; something which I feel is especially timely given the current appeal to radical communities by some of the leading intellectuals on the left. Notably, writings concerning community surfaced in the 1980s with a renewed interest in the work of Georges Bataille with the publication of Jean-Luc Nancy's The Inoperative Community and Maurice Blanchot's response, The Unavowable Community. This paper will draw from both texts; however it is situated as ore of a retur to Bataille s thought.
Following Jen-Lu Na s grou d-breaking essa The I operati e Co u it , as ell as other works centred on the lega of Bataille s thought, e a think of community as being the clinamen which binds people together.2 It is, to quote Nancy, … ade up pri ipall of the shari g, diffusio , or impregnation of an identity of a plurality wherein each member identifies himself only through the supplementary mediation of his identification with the living body of the community. In the
1
(Fincher, 1999)
2
motto of the Republic, fraternity designates community: the motto of fa il a d lo e .3 It is the site of communication and communion par excellence. However, appeals to community frequently accompany some kind of social, economic or cultural crisis, indicating that the term often also denotes, paradoxically, a present absence. As such the otio o u it is often the sign of a desire, demand or exigency, a political project, rather than a description of any actual state of being together.
In Fight Club the lack which brought the members of Project Mayhem together was their mutual sense of dissatisfaction and alienation fostered by a hyper-capitalist consumer society in which they felt as though their desires were no longer their own. Bataille noted that capitalist societies
succeeded in reducing everything, including religion, to the profane world of utilitarian usage, to thi gs, 4 lacking both community and communication.5 So the absence of community is
experienced as the lack of the sacred. In this sense divinity becomes the unattainable object of desire, one which people cannot know, so a fantasy is manufactured as to what it is/was.
The appeal to community in Fight Club is one based around the fantasy of a nostalgic return to a pre-consumerist (pre-capitalist) society. This is explicitly articulated in Tyler Durde s o ologue, I the world I see – you're stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding
else. 8“o despite their full k o ledge of life s fi itude
and willingness to die – a point made
throughout the film – they are still denied sovereignty, their work, and the glory produced from it, is fully subsumed by their political project. Prior to Bo s sa rifi e to their proje t there is no
communication or communion between them.
For Bataille a sa rifi e hi h et ologi all ea s to ake sa red must be something valued and irreplaceable which abject, utilitarian use has degraded and made a thing of. Through the sacrificial act that thing is taken out of the profane world and placed in the realm of the sacred – the world that is immanent – by its destruction. Those who are present at the sacrifice identify
themselves with the victim in the moment that restores immanence; however the assimilation that is linked to the return to immanence is nonetheless based on the victim having been a thing. Through this process a communication takes place between the participants and the sacred being, engendering a community.9
The community in Fight Club then is born with the death of Robert Paulson. In that death each member of Project Mayhem stands in communion and communication with each other. What is being communicated is precisely the fact of death, what Bataille refers to as the negative miracle, the impossible made possible. In other words, the impossibility to comprehend that their comrade could be dead, but yet, there it is, his lifeless corpse laid out for all to see. Quoti g Bataille: The
miracle of death is u dersta da le i ter s of this so ereig e ige , hi h alls for the
impossible coming true, in the reign of the moment. 10 Bob was willing to sacrifice his life in service to their project. As such his gift of death removed him from the profane world and moved him into the sacred immanent realm. For Bataille all people are essentially tools, or objects, and as such are denied sovereignty. However, as opposed to inanimate tools which remain static over time, people die a d de o pose. It is i death the that the o tradi tio of people s thi g ess o es i to pla because the dead person cannot again be used as a thing. Death actualizes him as the absolute sovereign individual who can never again be reduced to servile work and as such he will live on forever through the community, which he helped to engender, through his sacrifice.11
8
(Fincher, 1999)
9
(Bataille, 2006, 43-51; Bataille, 2007, 55-59)
10
(Bataille, 2007b, 211)
11
What this means is that the only truly sovereign person is the dead person. As such, sovereignty, and, by extension, community exists at the same intensity as death.12 When a person dies (and this is especially true in cases of sacrifice) those left alive make an error. They refuse to believe that s/he no longer is, but rather continues to exist in another form – a spirit, or an essence – which
accompanies the consciousness of death which binds them together.13 However, as Blanchot notes, sacrifice, paradoxically, founds community by undoing it, revealing again a present absence.14 Even that which is sacred paradoxically falls back into the world of utilitarian use as a sacred thing.15 So when Bob died he was moved into the sacred realm, but the field of imminence he created takes on the operative function of martyr in service to the unified community. Quoting Bataille, It is from the unitary community that the person takes his form and his being. 16 So those left alive now assume their identity as that which is ascribed to them by their community. It is here that, as Blanchot notes, there is the … see i gl health origi of the si kest totalitaria is . 17
So this is problematic not only insofar as it constitutes what is essentially a community of death, but this social homology, this essentialist identity of the re olutio ar reproduces the basic fascistic superstructure of society. Bataille noted that social homogeneity ased o the e er s
su h Proje t Ma he s atte pt to su ert the rutal reduction to thinghood that people suffer at the hands of Capitalism has already failed. While the social and economic order may shift, the oedipal mechanisms of fascism remain in place.
Bataille may ha e i fa t ee the thi ker ho, to ite Na , … has ithout a dou t gone the farthest in the ru ial e perie e of o u it s oder desti , insofar as he revealed the experience of discerning communism's failure, followed by a fascination with fascism, and finally a "withdrawal from communitarian enterprises".21Ho e er his ithdra al as ot o plete, or, as Blanchot reminds us, was political exigency ever totally absent from his work.22 Rather what happened was a shift from an overt political engagement to a more personal or, perhaps, micro engagement with the literary community and the sovereign community of lovers.
Focusing on the community of lovers; Bataille established the lovers as a sovereign unity, joined together in pure non-productive expenditure which only exists for limited periods of time.23 Their non-produ ti e e pe diture, their happ o su ptio , orks to su ert the productive
hegemonic social order, or, as Blanchot wrote, The o u ity of lovers – no matter if the lovers a t it or ot, e jo it or ot, e the li ked ha e, l’amour fou, the passio of death (Kleist) – has as its ulti ate goal the destru tio of so iet . 24 This privileging of the community of lovers as the absolute non-fascist community working to undo societys orkis e hoed i Fi her s film during the final beautiful scene when we see the Norto s hara ter with his love interest, Marla Singer, holding hands and looking lovingly at each other against the backdrop of financial
institutions, the very basis of the capitalist society, exploding and crumbling to the ground.
21
(Nancy, 2008, 16-17)
22
(Blanchot, 1988, 4)
23
(Bataille, 2007b, 160-164)
24
Works Cited
Bataille, Georges. The Accursed Share,vol 1. New York: Zone, 2007. Bataille, Georges. The Accursed Share Vol II & III. New York: Zone, 2007b. Bataille, Georges. Theory of Religion. New York: Zone, 2006.
Blanchot, Maurice. The Unavowable Community. Barrytown, NY: Station Hill, 1988. Fight Club. Dir. David Fincher. 20th Century Fox, 1999.
