The only truly alien planet is Earth. - UniCA Eprints - Università degli ...

dinamica di contrapposizione fra interdizione e trasgressione 32 . Nella sua lettura di Empire of the
Sun, a proposito della percezione del giovane Jim secondo la quale tutto l’esistente si riduce alla
pura materialità, Gasiorek individua un nesso oltre che con Bataille anche con il ‘grottesco terribile’
di John Ruskin, nella ossessione per la morte che si manifesta fin dall’inizio e nel senso di caducità
delle cose umane 33 . Oltre il sadismo, il riferimento a Bataille si situa nell’interesse che questi aveva
per l’elemento scatologico, attrazione di cui troviamo degli esempi in Crash. Breton definì ‘filosofo
escrementizio’ il surrealista francese deviante rispetto alla linea ortodossa del fondatore del
movimento, il quale a sua volta riteneva velleitaria e inconcludente l’idealistica tensione verso un
orizzonte ‘elevato’, trascendente, da parte del surrealismo bretoniano, quello considerato ortodosso.
In questo romanzo Ballard ne segue l’esempio, non astenendosi dal mostrare al lettore tutte quelle
secrezioni corporali che hanno scioccato e disgustato più di un critico, che ha scambiato questo
mostrare sangue, sperma ed escrementi per un esibizionismo volgare, fine a se stesso, perdendo di
vista così il quadro d’insieme 34 . La prospettiva del romanzo pertanto rimanda in questo senso alla
concezione del corpo di Bataille, un corpo che si dimostra refrattario alla classificazione e dunque
esterno alla teoria - da cui viene ‘espulso’ - e prono alla violenza per un effetto che Bataille ricerca
e che Lacan localizzerà oltre il principio di piacere 35 . Un’altra concezione del corpo non troppo
32 «The challenge which Crash throws down to its readers, should we refrain from indulging in violent fantasies, or
should we immerse ourselves in the textual abyss?, recalls the ethical discomforts of reading Bataille’s Surrealist works,
Story of the Eye (1928) and Eroticism (1957). Eroticism, Bataille’s provocative study of transgression and taboo,
resonates intertextually, for instance, throughout Ballard‘s novel. Indeed, the experience of reading Crash is, like the
experience of reading Eroticism, situated between a dynamic of interdiction/transgression. Eroticism is “the domain of
violence, of violation” which always entails “a breaking down of established patterns … of the regulated social order”
[Georges Bataille, Eroticism (1962), trad. di Mary Dalwood, London, Penguin, 2001, pp. 8-16]. In tension with this is
the prohibitive mechanism of interdiction, a repressive and regulating force which maintains an equilibrium of order
and restraint. Through the disequilibriating force of transgression Bataille’s writings negotiate the complex energies
between ‘violence and reason, nature and culture … the sacred and the profane’ in order to explode the limits of these
dualistic thought systems [Suzanne Guerlac, Literary Polemics: Bataille, Sartre, Valéry, Breton, Stanford, CA, Stanford
University Press, 1997, p. 27]. It is this transgressive drive to counter repressive cultural systems and initiate a
“bringing to consciousness” [Eroticism, p. 69] which Ballard‘s writing inherits from Bataille.» Jeannette Baxter, J. G.
Ballard’s Surrealist Imagination, op. cit., pp. 102-103.
33 «These bleak visions of an abject humanity recall Ruskin’s account of the “terrible grotesque” in which the individual
is sensitised to the “occult and subtle horror belonging to many aspects of the creation around us” and stunned by “the
continual fading of all beauty into darkness, and all of strength into dust” [The Stones of Venice, vol. 3, London, George
Allen, 1898, pp.136-137]. They also bring to mind Bataille’s reflections on abjection and his attempts to write
philosophy from the perspective of pure matter. » A. Gasiorek, op. cit., p. 161.
34 «In the manner of (what Breton pejoratively termed) Bataille’s ‘vulgar materialism’, traces of phlegm, mucus, semen
and blood circulate throughout the text in order to remind the reader of the contingent, messy, irreverent and residual
nature of our own world.» Jeannette Baxter, J. G. Ballard’s Surrealist Imagination, op. cit., p. 104.
35 «When Bataille writes about Sade he is never writing only about Sade but also about himself. He is concerned with
two dominant reactions to Sade: the violent rejection of Sade’s works and the admiration of Sade’s works. […] The
surrealists had rediscovered Sade, along with Lautréamont, as a proto-surrealist. […] When the surrealists transformed
Sade into a literary precursor they were not only establishing their avant-garde credentials by appropriating him, they
were also making his work available as a work of literature. Sade could eventually become a part of the literary canon,
and his scandalous works could be imprisoned within the library and the bookshop. Bataille has also faced similar
gestures of rejection and appropriation, which is no doubt why he considered so much to be at stake in the reading of
Sade. During his lifetime Bataille was first rejected by the surrealists, being expelled from the group in 1929, and then
later rejected by existentialism, when Jean-Paul Sartre described him as a case needing psychoanalysis. […] Lacan
would draw on Bataille’s writings which analysed the violence essential to sexuality to develop his concept of
- 12 -