Transgression and conservation: rereading Georges Bataille

In this article, I read one of Georges Bataille’s most famous ideas, that of transgression, with a renewed focus on its structural implications for the human subject. Whilst Bataille’s discussions of erotic excess, violent transgression, obscenity and the threat of death are provocative and intoxicating, his anthropological philosophy of the human constitution repeatedly contextualises transgressive tendencies alongside the enduring structures and boundaries that define humanity. My reading examines key texts to elucidate a thorough explication of Bataille’s transgression, its relationship to taboo and its defining role for humanity, to claim that there is in fact a tendency towards conservation in even the most explosive and challenging of topics through which Bataille explored humanity.