The phenomenologist’s experience is basically a way of organizing the conscious perception (regard ref/exit) of any aspect of daily, lived experience in its transitory form, in order to grasp its meaning. Nietzsche, Bataille, and Blanchot, on the contrary, try through experience to reach that point of life which lies as close as possible to the impossibility of living, which lies at the limit or extreme. They attempt to gather the maximum amount of intensity and impossibility at the same time. The work of the phenomenologist, however, essentially consists of unfolding the entire field of possibilities connected to daily experience.

Moreover, phenomenology tries to grasp the significance of daily experience in order to re-affirm the fundamental character of the subject, of the self, of its transcendental functions. On the contrary, experience according to Nietzsche, Blanchot, and Bataille has rather the task of”tearing” the subject from itself in such a way that it is no longer the subject as such, or that it is completely “other” than itself so that it may arrive at its annihilation, its dissociation.

It is this de-subjectifying undertaking, the idea of a “limit-experience” that tears the subject from itself, which is the fundamental lesson that I’ve learned from these authors. And no matter how boring and erudite my resulting books have been, this lesson has always allowed me to conceive them as direct experiences to “tear” me from myself, to prevent me from always being the same.

Interview with Foucault on his intellectual development, relationship with Marx