Man can find his individual isolation or discontinuity hard to bear. Thus he often seeks primal unity, or a return to universal oneness. But this will to merger is, of course, a sign of fatigue and decadence; a thinly disguised longing for oblivion.
Lawrence is clear: "The central law of all organic life is that each organism is intrinsically isolate and single in itself". When this is no longer the case - when individual singularity breaks down - death results.
And yet love, of course, is a vital attraction that brings things together into touch ...
This obliges us, therefore, to admit the relationship between Eros and Thanatos and acknowledge that the French description of orgasm as la petite mort is not merely a metaphor.
As Nick Land writes:
"Orgasm provisionally substitutes for death, fending off the impetus toward terminal oblivion, but only by infiltrating death into the silent core of vitality … The little death is not merely a simulacrum or sublimation of a big one … but a corruption that leaves the bilateral architecture of life and death in tatters, a communication and a slippage which violates the immaculate [otherness] of darkness."
When we come, we open ourselves onto this otherness and to the possibility of personal annihilation; losing identity in a spasm and an exchange of shared slime.
Despite the primary law that dictates singularity, the greater truth is that we need one another and we need love. Thus the secondary law of all organic life - according to Lawrence - is that "each organism only lives through … contact with other life".
Of course, if we go too far in this direction, then love is no longer vivifying, but destructive and deadly. Men might live by love, but so too do they die, or cause death, if they love too much or allow their love to become infected with idealism.
Lawrence values coition precisely because it is a coming-close-to-death, but not a form of merger; a meeting but not a mixing of separate blood-streams. There is no real union during sexual intercourse and, once the crisis is over, the discontinuity of each party remains intact.
But such intimacy brings us to the very point of fusion and leaves us changed, or wounded by the experience (which is why love is often poignant, painful, and transformative all at the same time).
Orgasm gives us a clue regarding the return to the actual and the deep communion that awaits us. It is, as Bataille says, a betrayal of life as something individual and distinct.
Thus, ultimately, the truth of eroticism is ... treason.
Lawrence is clear: "The central law of all organic life is that each organism is intrinsically isolate and single in itself". When this is no longer the case - when individual singularity breaks down - death results.
And yet love, of course, is a vital attraction that brings things together into touch ...
This obliges us, therefore, to admit the relationship between Eros and Thanatos and acknowledge that the French description of orgasm as la petite mort is not merely a metaphor.
As Nick Land writes:
"Orgasm provisionally substitutes for death, fending off the impetus toward terminal oblivion, but only by infiltrating death into the silent core of vitality … The little death is not merely a simulacrum or sublimation of a big one … but a corruption that leaves the bilateral architecture of life and death in tatters, a communication and a slippage which violates the immaculate [otherness] of darkness."
When we come, we open ourselves onto this otherness and to the possibility of personal annihilation; losing identity in a spasm and an exchange of shared slime.
Despite the primary law that dictates singularity, the greater truth is that we need one another and we need love. Thus the secondary law of all organic life - according to Lawrence - is that "each organism only lives through … contact with other life".
Of course, if we go too far in this direction, then love is no longer vivifying, but destructive and deadly. Men might live by love, but so too do they die, or cause death, if they love too much or allow their love to become infected with idealism.
Lawrence values coition precisely because it is a coming-close-to-death, but not a form of merger; a meeting but not a mixing of separate blood-streams. There is no real union during sexual intercourse and, once the crisis is over, the discontinuity of each party remains intact.
But such intimacy brings us to the very point of fusion and leaves us changed, or wounded by the experience (which is why love is often poignant, painful, and transformative all at the same time).
Orgasm gives us a clue regarding the return to the actual and the deep communion that awaits us. It is, as Bataille says, a betrayal of life as something individual and distinct.
Thus, ultimately, the truth of eroticism is ... treason.
See:
Nick Land, The Thirst for Annihilation, (Routledge, 1992).
D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Note: this is a revised extract from a paper presented at Treadwell's on 28 Feb, 2006 as part of a lecture series entitled Thanatology. Those interested in reading related thanatological fragments can click here and here.
Nick Land, The Thirst for Annihilation, (Routledge, 1992).
D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Note: this is a revised extract from a paper presented at Treadwell's on 28 Feb, 2006 as part of a lecture series entitled Thanatology. Those interested in reading related thanatological fragments can click here and here.
