Tim Themi teaches in the School of Culture and Communication at The University of Melbourne and is the author of Lacan's Ethics and Nietzsche's Critique of Platonism.

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
INTRODUCTION
1BATAILLE, NIETZSCHE, LACAN, AND THE REAL OF EROTICS
1.1Palaeolithic Transition from Animal to Human
1.2 Death of Tragedy from Socrates' Incompetence
1.3Taboo on Transgression from Yahweh's Ignorance
1.4Capitalism's Curious Service of Goods
2 METAPHORISING THE SPLIT GAZE OF BATAILLE'S STORY OF EYE
2.1 Surface Formalism: Metonymic Crosscuts of Metaphoric Chains
2.2 Depth Contents: The Violence of the Eye's Transgression
2.3 Sade's Sovereign Man: The Rape of Priest's Eye by the Gaze

3 BATAILLE, NIETZSCHE, LACAN AND THE REAL OF AESTHETICS
3.1 Dissident Surrealism: Bataille's Documents Critique of Aesthetics
3.2 Lascaux Caves: Divine Animality as the Originary Real of Aesthetics
3.3 The Accursed Sovereignty of Art, and Nietzsche
4 NIETZSCHE'S AFFIRMING PSYCHOANALYSIS IN FREUD, SURREALIST MODERNSIM, BATAILLE, AND LACAN
4.1 Germanophone Context: Nietzsche and Freud
4.2 Francophone Context: Bataille, Surrealism, Modernism, Lacan
4.3 Dionysian Context: Presence of Myth in Absence
5 FROM DIONYSOS TO DEVIL: BATAILLE'S EVIL HAPPINESS OF LITERATURE
5.1 Literature's Quest for Happiness of the Erotic
5.2 Literature as Condescension of Desire to Evil
5.3 Poetry's Force of Sovereignty from the Rut of Literature
5.4Art and Politics: Separate Connection of the Imaginary and Symbolic in the Real
6 ETERNAL RETURNS: EROTIC POLITICS IN BATAILLE'S BLUE OF NOON
6.1 Superficial Socialism-The Case of Lazare
6.2 Superficial Surrealism-The Case of Xenie
6.3 Libidinal Demand for Death-The Return of Dirty Doro-thea
6.4Split-Subjects of Political Economy-Left, Right, Left . . .
CONCLUSION
Bibliography
Index

Bringing together Bataille with Lacan and Nietzsche, Tim Themi examines the role of aesthetics, implicit in each, and how this invokes an erotic process celebrating the real of what is usually excluded from articulation.