The imitation of Christ’s suffering, and the transformation of Perpetua’s death from a spectacle for the Romans to indulge in, to a personal spiritual act, is central to a Bataillean reading of Perpetua. She is not sharing in the death of Christ, but functionally engaging in a representation of it, her act has power because, in addition to transforming it into an empowering intentional act, it is transgressive. 1
Bataille argues that Christianity cannot engage in his spiritual project because it has reduced sacrifice, degenerating the transcendental suffering of Christ into an emotional and symbolic experience, devoid of its former ‘transgressive’ power. “Continuity is reached through experience of the divine. The divine is the essence of continuity”2 Martyrdom, however, offers a path of imitation of Christ3 with no dissolution or degradation of the potency of the sacrificial event.
Perpetua, and Christian martyrdom as a whole, cannot be examined meaningfully in the context of the Accursed Share. As sacrificial acts, spiritually related to the crucifixion, they transcend the simple necessity of expenditure, and involve a personal transformation. Just as Perpetua transforms her trials and tribulations into a spiritual path, she herself is transformed, baptized and brought closer to God and Christendom. It is through self-sacrifice, as an intentional act, transgressive to Roman culture and thus empowered with the transcendental energy of the sacrificial experience, that Perpetua, and all martyrs, transform from people to saints. This is also the main distinction Bataille’s world view has helped me observe, the Christian act of sacrifice is considered transgressive as it violates roman (and some Christian) social codes, and as such has the power to transform the martyr, to bring him within the greater martyrological tradition.
The sacrificial rituals of the Romans, automated by the biological necessities of the Accursed Share, have no personal significance, and provide no opportunity for spiritual growth. The martyr subverts this paradigm and uses their suffering as a sacrificial offering, to Christ and to the Christian community itself.
Through emulation of Christ’s sacrifice the martyr overcomes his ‘discontinuity’ with the divine/Christ, and in their emancipation from the discontinuity of form, becomes immortalized in the narrative of the Christian martyrological tradition. Historically this is analogous to the role martyrdom and self-writing play in the production of early Christian society, it takes the martyrs act to place them within the martyrological tradition. One’s sacrifice is true communication in that it frees one from the uncertainty and instability of the lived life. The martyr, through their sacrifice, transcends temporality and discursive individuality, becoming one with the tradition, the community and Christ.
The victim dies and the spectators share in what his death reveals. This is what religious historians call the sacramental element. This sacramental element is the revelation of continuity through the death of a discontinuous being to those who watch it as a solemn rite. A violent death disrupts the creature’s discontinuity: what remains, what the tense onlookers experience in the succeeding silence4
Ultimately, Perpetua’s martyrdom,
viewed through a Bataillean lens, does display the complex interrelations of
the various social bodies involved, but it also demonstrates a developmental
trajectory. While the Roman Spectacle is a pure manifestation of the accursed
share, simply an indulgent waste, the tradition of the Martyrs transforms the
suffering they experienced in the promotion of the Roman state and psyche into
a personal spiritual experience.
While both sacrifices promote their respective communities, the Christian
adaptation of the Roman spectacle uses the suffering they experience to emulate
Christ and follow a spiritual Path. I believe that this also highlights and
oversight in Bataille’s over arching rejection of Christianity as well. Though it is far from a conventional or
practical methodology, the Bataillean philosophy has proven useful in
identifying a trajectory I think is also evident in the historical model. That
is the development of the martyrological spectacle out of the suffering Christians
experienced as fodder for the Roman’s rituals.
His economic theory may seem
more plausible than it really is, and the similarities between Roman and Aztec
culture may stop at my association of them, but framing these seemingly
diverse, dichotomous traditions in a system which eschews boundaries- I
believe- made the interconnections between these closely related traditions
more evident. It also displays the utility of the historical method in keeping
speculative work anchored down, there were many directions a Bataillean reading
of Perpetua could have gone. From asserting Martyrdom itself is a human
sacrifice, a simple automated manifestation of the accursed share, to asserting
Erotic overtones in the martyr’s narratives. I don’t think that any of those
readings would work within the framework of a textual or historical analysis,
however working off the basis of a historical and textual analysis of the
development of the Martyr tradition and the related tradition of Public
Spectacle in Rome, I think provides a reasonable bedrock for Bataillean
speculations.
While it is hard to say how I feel
about Bataille’s theories, which range from perplexing to reactionary to
inspiring, I think I can safely say there is a place for his philosophical
perspective in religious scholarship. Used only as a framing device I believe
the Bataillean model, whether or not you accept its worldview, can break down
dichotomous barriers and enable an exploration of ideas and relationships
freely. While it may not have told me anything that a historical or textual
analysis of Perpetua couldn’t have, I still found it a useful exercise, and one
that can potentially illuminate relationships overlooked in more conventional religious
systemizations.
Bibliography.
1 “The divine world has to descend among the world of things... {crucifixion} Continuity is reached when boundaries are crossed. {transgression}” Bataille, 1996, 119
2 Bataille, 1996, 119
3 “As Bataille indicates in his essay “Sacrifices”, the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross breaches the boundaries between discontinuity and continuity, where identities vanish and objects lose their ‘thingness’” Campbell, 140
4 ibid, 82