Fighting With Bataille Fight Club Commun

1

Fighting With Bataille: Fight Club, Community and The Gift of Death
There is a beautiful moment i Da id Fi her s 1999 fil
played by Edward Norton finds the od of Bo

Fight Club when the main protagonist

ei g arried i

e

ers of Project Mayhem,

the revolutionary movement of disenfranchised men working to subvert – If not completely
overthrow – the neo-liberal social system. Bob had been shot to death by a police officer during an
act of vandalism within Project Mayhem. The others immediately want to dispose of his body,
rudel referri g to it as it ei g

erel


e ide e , e ause, after all, those within Project Mayhem

have no name – a true reflection of the absolute thinghood, the utilitarian nature, of those within
the movement. Norto s haracter dramatically throws himself over Bob s orpse yelling that he
does have a name, his a e is ‘o ert Paulso . The others are confused by this, until one (credited
as The Me ha i

states that he u dersta ds, that, In death a member of Project Mayhem has a

na e. His a e is ‘o ert Paulso . This is immediately picked up by all the others in the room who
egi to ha t, His name is Robert Paulson, a ha t hi h Norto s hara ter hears o e agai i a
different city while learning the true size and reach of Project Mayhem.1 This moment, which may
see

e tirel i sig ifi a t gi e the fa t that it s o l a

ere 3

i utes lo g, is argua l the


ost

important in the entire film because what we are witnessing is the birth of a community.
This paper will use the film version of Fight Club in an effort to explore what roles sacrifice and
sovereignty play in the formation of a revolutionary community. It will also use this film to
illuminate the limits of these communities; something which I feel is especially timely given the
current appeal to radical communities by some of the leading intellectuals on the left. Notably,
writings concerning community surfaced in the 1980s with a renewed interest in the work of
Georges Bataille with the publication of Jean-Luc Nancy's The Inoperative Community and Maurice
Blanchot's response, The Unavowable Community. This paper will draw from both texts; however it
is situated as

ore of a retur to Bataille s thought.

Following Jen-Lu Na

s grou d-breaking essa

works centred on the lega


The I operati e Co

u it , as ell as other

of Bataille s thought, e a think of community as being the clinamen

which binds people together.2 It is, to quote Nancy, … ade up pri ipall of the shari g, diffusio ,
or impregnation of an identity of a plurality wherein each member identifies himself only through
the supplementary mediation of his identification with the living body of the community. In the
1

(Fincher, 1999)

2

(Nancy, 2008, 3-4)

2

motto of the Republic, fraternity designates community: the motto of fa il a d lo e .3 It is the site

of communication and communion par excellence. However, appeals to community frequently
accompany some kind of social, economic or cultural crisis, indicating that the term often also
denotes, paradoxically, a present absence. As such the otio

o

u it is often the sign of a

desire, demand or exigency, a political project, rather than a description of any actual state of being
together.
In Fight Club the lack which brought the members of Project Mayhem together was their mutual
sense of dissatisfaction and alienation fostered by a hyper-capitalist consumer society in which they
felt as though their desires were no longer their own. Bataille noted that capitalist societies
succeeded in reducing everything, including religion, to the profane world of utilitarian usage, to
thi gs, 4 lacking both community and communication.5 So the absence of community is
experienced as the lack of the sacred. In this sense divinity becomes the unattainable object of
desire, one which people cannot know, so a fantasy is manufactured as to what it is/was.
The appeal to community in Fight Club is one based around the fantasy of a nostalgic return to a preconsumerist (pre-capitalist) society. This is explicitly articulated in Tyler Durde s

o ologue, I the


world I see – you're stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller
Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick
kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding
or , la i g strips of e iso o the e pt

ar pool la e of so e a a do ed superhigh a .

6

So what joins these men together is the project of revolution with the aim of resurrecting a lost (and
fictitious) community. The house lo ated o

Paper “treet becomes the nexus for those alienated

by capitalism and working together towards the common goal of its subversion. However this does
not in and of itself constitute a community. This constitutes a movement or – as Nancy would say –
emprise where community is dissolved by the submission of the members to the glory of their
project.7 Those within Project Mayhem are constantly reminded that the , …are ot spe ial, [the ]
are not beautiful or unique snowflakes. [They] are the same decaying organic matter as everything

3

(Ibid, 9) [emphasis in original]

4

(Bataille, 2007, 126-127; 136-138)

5

(Nancy, 2008, 9)

6

(Fincher, 1999)

7

(Nancy, 2008, 9)


3

else. 8 “o despite their full k o ledge of life s fi itude and willingness to die – a point made
throughout the film – they are still denied sovereignty, their work, and the glory produced from it, is
fully subsumed by their political project. Prior to Bo s sa rifi e to their proje t there is no
communication or communion between them.
For Bataille a sa rifi e

hi h et

ologi all

ea s to

ake sa red must be something valued

and irreplaceable which abject, utilitarian use has degraded and made a thing of. Through the
sacrificial act that thing is taken out of the profane world and placed in the realm of the sacred – the
world that is immanent – by its destruction. Those who are present at the sacrifice identify
themselves with the victim in the moment that restores immanence; however the assimilation that

is linked to the return to immanence is nonetheless based on the victim having been a thing.
Through this process a communication takes place between the participants and the sacred being,
engendering a community.9
The community in Fight Club then is born with the death of Robert Paulson. In that death each
member of Project Mayhem stands in communion and communication with each other. What is
being communicated is precisely the fact of death, what Bataille refers to as the negative miracle,
the impossible made possible. In other words, the impossibility to comprehend that their comrade
could be dead, but yet, there it is, his lifeless corpse laid out for all to see. Quoti g Bataille: The
miracle of death is u dersta da le i ter s of this so ereig e ige
impossible coming true, in the reign of the moment.

10

, hi h alls for the

Bob was willing to sacrifice his life in service

to their project. As such his gift of death removed him from the profane world and moved him into
the sacred immanent realm. For Bataille all people are essentially tools, or objects, and as such are
denied sovereignty. However, as opposed to inanimate tools which remain static over time, people

die a d de o pose. It is i death the that the o tradi tio of people s thi g ess o es i to pla
because the dead person cannot again be used as a thing. Death actualizes him as the absolute
sovereign individual who can never again be reduced to servile work and as such he will live on
forever through the community, which he helped to engender, through his sacrifice.11

8

(Fincher, 1999)

9

(Bataille, 2006, 43-51; Bataille, 2007, 55-59)

10

(Bataille, 2007b, 211)

11

(Ibid, 213)


4

What this means is that the only truly sovereign person is the dead person. As such, sovereignty,
and, by extension, community exists at the same intensity as death.12 When a person dies (and this is
especially true in cases of sacrifice) those left alive make an error. They refuse to believe that s/he
no longer is, but rather continues to exist in another form – a spirit, or an essence – which
accompanies the consciousness of death which binds them together.13 However, as Blanchot notes,
sacrifice, paradoxically, founds community by undoing it, revealing again a present absence.14 Even
that which is sacred paradoxically falls back into the world of utilitarian use as a sacred thing.15 So
when Bob died he was moved into the sacred realm, but the field of imminence he created takes on
the operative function of martyr in service to the unified community. Quoting Bataille, It is from the
unitary community that the person takes his form and his being.

16

So those left alive now assume

their identity as that which is ascribed to them by their community. It is here that, as Blanchot notes,
there is the … see i gl health origi of the si kest totalitaria is .


17

So this is problematic not only insofar as it constitutes what is essentially a community of death, but
this social homology, this essentialist identity of the re olutio ar

reproduces the basic fascistic

superstructure of society. Bataille noted that social homogeneity ased o the

e

er s

18

productiveness or usefulness is the key component in the psychology of fascism. So in Fight Club
the members of Project Mayhem – joined together through their communi atio of ea h other s
finitude – become the perfect productive unified body in service to their head, Tyler Durden (who
has come to occupy a mythical presence to the men). Bataille also noted that a social organization
which consists of a singular head cannot help but to take on a discourse which situates it closely to
the religious community stating that, … the very principle of the head is the reduction to unity, the
reduction of the orld to God .19 For Bataille this social structure is the very basis of fascism.20 As
12

(Blanchot, 1988, 11)

13

(Bataille, 2007b, 216)

14

(Blanchot, 1988, 15)

15

(Bataille, 2007b, 215)

16

(Bataille, 1985, 198)

17

(Blanchot, 1988, 2)

18

(Bataille, 1997, 122-126)

19

(Bataille, 1985,199)

20

(Ibid, 197)

5

su h Proje t Ma he

s atte pt to su ert the rutal reduction to thinghood that people suffer at

the hands of Capitalism has already failed. While the social and economic order may shift, the
oedipal mechanisms of fascism remain in place.
Bataille may ha e i fa t ee the thi ker ho, to ite Na
farthest in the ru ial e perie e of o

u it s

, … has ithout a dou t gone the

oder desti , insofar as he revealed the

experience of discerning communism's failure, followed by a fascination with fascism, and finally a
"withdrawal from communitarian enterprises".21 Ho e er his

ithdra al

as ot o plete, or,

as Blanchot reminds us, was political exigency ever totally absent from his work.22 Rather what
happened was a shift from an overt political engagement to a more personal or, perhaps, micro
engagement with the literary community and the sovereign community of lovers.
Focusing on the community of lovers; Bataille established the lovers as a sovereign unity, joined
together in pure non-productive expenditure which only exists for limited periods of time.23 Their
non-produ ti e e pe diture, their happ

o su ptio , orks to su ert the productive

hegemonic social order, or, as Blanchot wrote, The o
a t it or ot, e jo it or ot, e the li ked

u ity of lovers – no matter if the lovers

ha e,

(Kleist) – has as its ulti ate goal the destru tio of so iet .

l’amour fou,
24

the passio of death

This privileging of the community of

lovers as the absolute non-fascist community working to undo society s ork is e hoed i Fi her s
film during the final beautiful scene when we see the Norto s hara ter with his love interest, Marla
Singer, holding hands and looking lovingly at each other against the backdrop of financial
institutions, the very basis of the capitalist society, exploding and crumbling to the ground.

21

(Nancy, 2008, 16-17)

22

(Blanchot, 1988, 4)

23

(Bataille, 2007b, 160-164)

24

(Blanchot, 1988, 48)

6

Works Cited
Bataille, Georges. The Accursed Share,vol 1. New York: Zone, 2007.
Bataille, Georges. The Accursed Share Vol II & III. New York: Zone, 2007b.
Bataille, Georges. Theory of Religion. New York: Zone, 2006.
Blanchot, Maurice. The Unavowable Community. Barrytown, NY: Station Hill, 1988.
Fight Club. Dir. David Fincher. 20th Century Fox, 1999.
Nancy, Jean-Luc. The Inoperative Community. Minneapolis, Minn: University of Minnesota, 2008.

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