Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Taboo and transgression have long been seen to be central points of discussion within criminology and more specifically cultural criminology. Bataille building on Nietsche before him , and followed by Foucault, grappled with the question as to what are the origins of limits and boundaries, taboos and transgressions, and how are these changing in late capitalist societies. What now limits social action and sexuality in a world of anti-social behaviour?
It is from this debate that the notion that law forbids transgression ‘but the fascination compels it.’ (Bataille), moves us to an understanding that ‘the initial moment of transgression…has a sublime and fascinating quality’ (Bataille). In this paper I explore the continuing idea that terror is accompanied with intense pleasure, anguish and desire, and that ‘organised transgression makes social life what it is.’ whilst ‘men and women know from birth that all pleasure is to be found in evil’ (Baudelaire). I wish to examine the continuing quest in contemporary everyday life for ‘jouissance’, the erotic ‘monstrous joy’ that contains within it a ‘radically violent pleasure’ that Barthes often described and to further speculate on whether the secular state can create boundaries ‘in the mind’ or whether with the ‘death of God’ we are more and more moving towards a boundary- less existence