"It's like an earthquake."
-Marquez

"In essence the domain of eroticism is the domain of violence, of violation."
-Bataille


Like an earthquake? Yes. In what way? In that earthquakes are naturally violent. If we were discussing the problem of evil, we would discuss the natural violence of earthquakes and other facts of existence--violent events that cannot be traced to a culpable individual, but instead are chalked up to a fact of the existence into which all of us have been thrown (created), and thus which we share.

It's natural. It is not a violence one needs to remedy, much less to attempt to prevent. It is natural--it is not about blame, or guilt. It is about something more fundamental--something more prim(ordi)al.

It is about the violence of birth and death; of emerging from the nothing of Nothing into the singular existence that is discontinuous with all else. From being Nothing, or Non-Being, to Being in a way that one is separate from all else and aware of this fact. It is a violence of emerging and returning.

"existence itself is at stake in the transition from discontinuity to continuity. Only violence can bring everything to a state of flux in this way, only violence and the nameless disquiet bound up with it."

The nameless disquiet: Yes. Violence is bound up originally here. Violence is a matter of the inborn desire--the one from birth to death--to become one once again with the One--with the Nameless Quiet. Violence is being thrown from it--and returning to it.

"We cannot imagine the transition from one state to another one basically unlike it without picturing the violence done to the being called into existence through discontinuity. Not only do we find in the uneasy transitions of organisms engaged in reproduction the same basic violence which in physical eroticism leaves us gasping, but we also catch the inner meaning of that violence."

We usually do not think of violence having meaning. Natural disasters, physical violence, attack, hurt, spite, malice--these words are supposed to have definitions, but not meaning. Where does meaning come to violence?

Violence does not have a meaning; violence is the key to the possibility for meaning at all--the condition of its existence. To exist is to exist as a discontinuity resulting from violence--one that will return to the continuity of all through violence.

What does eroticism have to do here? It should come as no surprise that the erotic is a matter of violence--not only in its reproductive result, but also in the structure of the desire that propels it.

"The whole business of eroticism is to strike to the inmost core of the living being, so that the heart stands still. The transition from the normal state to that of erotic desire presupposes a partial dissolution of the person as he exists in the realm of discontinuity."

Just for a moment--even a second--my heart stands still in, within you. My discontinuity, as expressed and existent in my consciousness, my discursive thought, my sense of the temporal conditions governing existence, is suspended--is melted into the continuity of that Nameless Disquiet beyond language, beyond time, beyond the separation of me--or anything else--from Itself.

This is violence at its core. This is violation of me--myself--at the heart of who I am. This is a violent rupture of me in order to return me to the Nothing from which I came, for which I long, and to which I will return.

"The whole business of eroticism is to destroy the self-contained character of the participators as they are in their normal lives."

Normal life is a matter of discontinuity, of isolation, of singularity. We long for an encounter with unity, with union, with quiet that suspends all of that. But, we long for it while ceasing to give up on the dream--the phantom--of our discontinuity. We long for a continuity that does not mean annihilation.

"Hence love spells suffering for us in so far as it is a quest for the impossible . . ."