To The Impossible Instant

There is a clear diachronic change in Bataille’s seemingly diffuse thought: from the early system of "heterogeneity/homogeneity" to the later system of "continuity/discontinuity",Bataille’s thought has gone through the initial exploration of heterogeneous factors to the later development of the search for totality or community.As a philosophical concept,"continuity" developed in the field of physics,mathematics and Bergson’s psychology from the early natural philosophy to the late19 th and early 20 th centuries.In Bataille’s case,"continuity" refers first to physical sensation as an organism;Secondly,it points to a kind of total existence experience.It partially returns to the field of natural philosophy which is integrated with modern natural science,and at the same time has the meaning of ontology.The three characteristics of continuity,violence,chance and communication,are also the three important foundations of Bataille’s whole thought: violence connects sex and death and leads to the sacred realm;Chance is the living state of the isolated individual;Communication is the pursuit and desire of Bataille.In the field of infinite contradictions,the pursuit of continuity by discontinuous individuals is in fact the pursuit of totality;The experience of transgressing limits in the pursuit is actually the experience of the impossible.Thus,in a sense,the impossibility becomes the incarnation of continuity.Bataille’s poetics and literary practice further demonstrate the impossibility of entering the impossible: poetry is only a call to the impossible in the face of unbridgeable limits,and parody becomes the best form of play.In the end,Bataille tries to reconcile this contradiction with the "instant",which is not about entering eternity but about focusing on the present experience and giving it its sole authority and value.