Swollen Big Toe: Male Subect: 62 Years Old (2025)
Photo by Stephen Alexander à la Jacques-André Boiffard [1]
"Le gros orteil est la partie la plus humaine du corps humain …" [2]
I.
Don't ask me what I've done, because I don't know what I've done; I was just innocently sitting when, suddenly, the big toe on my left foot seemed to painfully click and lock, preventing me from moving it.
That was three days ago: and now the toe is red and swollen as well as remaining stiff and acutely painful. Ice hasn't helped and neither has the attempt to keep weight off it. So, there's nothing to do but pop another paracetamol and reconsider what it was Bataille once had to say about le gros orteil - the most human part of the human body ...
II.
First of all, in case anyone is wondering why Bataille makes this claim for the big toe, it's because, he says, no other element of the human body "is as differentiated from the corresponding element of the anthropoid ape" [20].
That's debatable [c] and I can already hear Heideggerians screaming Es ist die Hand - nicht der Fuß! that is the fundamental thing that makes us human and enables us to engage with (and think) the world [d]. But it cannot be denied, however, that man, as an upright creature who walks on two legs, has a different type of big toe to the ape that spends a considerable amount of time climbing trees.
Man's big toe allows him to literally stand his ground and to glory in his own erect being.
And yet, perversely, man holds his foot - big toe and all - in contempt: for man is a creature who has his head "raised to the heavens and heavenly things" [20] and despises the fact that his feet remain caked in mud.
If he could, man would swap feet for wings, so that he might elevate himself still further and become even more like an angel, less like an ape; this despite the fact that within the body "blood flows in equal quantities from high to low and from low to high" [20].
It's just unfortunate, as Bataille notes, that the binary division of the universe into a "subterranean hell and perfectly pure heaven" [20] remains an enduring misconception; "mud and darkness being the principles of evil as light and celestial space are the principles of good" [20].
For as long as this remains the case then man will continue to curse his dogs and direct his rage against an organ he sees as fundamentally base:
"The human foot is commonly subjected to grotesque tortures that deform it and make it rickety. In an imbecilic way it is doomed to corns, calluses, and bunions, and if one takes into account turns of phrase that are only now disappearing, to the most nauseating filthiness [...]" [21]
Bataille continues:
"Man's secret horror of his foot is one of the explanations for the tendency to conceal its length and form as much as possible. Heels of greater or lesser height, depending on the sex, distract from the foot's low and flat character.
Besides, this uneasiness is often confused with a sexual uneasiness; this is especially striking among the Chinese, who, after having atrophied the feet of women, situate them at the most excessive point of deviance." [21]
That's the funny thing with feet - the more obscene we imagine them and the more immoral we think it to view them in their naked naked nakedness - the more they excite our interest [e]. Some may privilege the hand - and fingers can certainly be useful - but it's the foot that matters more in Bataille's view; even if the toes have come to signify base idiocy in comparison to the doigts de la main.
III.
So far, I have to admit that re-reading this essay by Bataille and writing this post has done precious little to alleviate (or distract from) the pain in my big toe ... It hurt before I began; it still hurts now; and I very much suspect it will continue to hurt even after I press the publish button, reminding me of my mortality.
For as Bataille points out, it doesn't take much to remind us of the fact that our bodies are frail and prone to damage and disease; even the grandest of grand human beings - one who might imagine himself a god amongst men - is quickly brought crashing back down to earth "by an atrocious pain in his big toe" [22].
In other words, feet have evolved not only so that we might stand upright and walk, but to remind us that we are allzumenschliches and will, sooner or later, return to the filth from which we emerged; thus the "hideously cadaverous and at the same time [...] proud appearance of the big toe" [22] [f].
Notes
[a] I'm thinking of Boiffard's two photos of a big toe belonging to a thirty-year-old male subject, used to illustrate Bataille's essay 'Le gros orteil' in Documents 6 (Nov. 1929): click here.
Born in 1902, Boiffard was a hard-working medical student before meeting André Breton in 1924 and deciding to dedicate himself to Surrealism. Having worked as Man Ray's assistant for five years, Boiffard then became closely associated with Bataille and the circle of writers involved in Documents (he had by this date already fallen out - like so many others - with Breton).
Following his father's death in 1935, Boiffard resumed his medical studies and abandoned his career as an avant-garde photographer. Serving as a
radiologist at the Hôpital Saint-Louis in Paris from 1940 to 1959, Boiffard died in 1961.
If little remembered today, Boiffard's images remain clever manipulations of scale and point of view, transposing multiple exposures and contrasting brightly lit objects - including body parts - against darkened backgrounds, making them monstrously unfamiliar.
For an excellent discussion of his work, see Jodi Hauptman and Stephanie O’Rourke; 'A Surrealist Fact', in Object:Photo: Modern Photographs: The Thomas Walther Collection
1909–1949, ed. Mitra
Abbaspour, Lee Ann Daffner, and Maria Morris Hambourg (The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2014). This essay can be read as an online pdf: click here.
[b] This is the opening line to Bataille's essay 'Le gros orteil', in Documents 6 (Nov. 1929), pp. 297-302. Reprinted in
Œuvres complètes, Vol. 1, ed. Denis Hollier (Gallimard, 1970), pp. 200-04.
I'm using the English translation by Allan Stoekl; 'The Big Toe', in Visions of
Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939, ed. Allan Stoekl (University of Minnesota Press,
1985), pp. 20-23 and all page numbers given in part II of this post refer to this work.
[c] It's certainly the case that apes do not possess big toes like humans; that while we have a big toe aligned with other toes and which has evolved to play a vital role in walking, chimps and gorillas, etc., have opposable big toes (i.e., a bit like thumbs) that can be moved independently and used for grasping and climbing.
However, it's arguable that what makes the human being uniquely different from other apes is not the big toe, but the large brain inside our heads that enables us to perform advanced cognitive functions such as abstract thought and complex problem-solving.
Coincidentally, it might interest readers to know that scientists have recently discovered that our big toe was one of the last parts of the foot to evolve; see the article entitled 'Evolution and function of the hominin forefoot', by Peter J. Fernández et al, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 115, No. 35, pp. 8746-8751 (August 2018): click here.
[d] See the post of 1 June 2019 - 'You Need Hands' - in which I discuss Heidegger's thoughts on the importance of the hand: click here.
[e] I understand that this is not true of all feet or all people; although, interestingly, foot fetishism (or podophilia as those in the know like to say) is the most common form of body partialism (and even amongst those sophisticated individuals who redirect desire away from the flesh and on to objects, a large number have a penchant for shoes and other forms of footwear). Foot fetishism seems to be one of those things more common amongst men than women. Whilst the origin of such is a matter of dispute, clearly Bataille is of the opinion that the erotic allure of feet is linked to their anatomical baseness (abjection); i.e., pleasure is derived from touching something that, even if they are perfectly clean and pretty, still get their sacrilegious charm from the fact that they are often dirty and easily deformed.
For an early post published on the transsexual consummation of foot fetishism (25 July 2013), click here.
[f] Bataille thinks it only fair to add that the big toe is not specifically monstrous as a form - unlike the inside of gaping mouth, for example. It is only "secondary (but common) deformations" [22] that have given the big toe its ugly and inhuman - yet exceptionally comic - character.
