It should be recalled that for Bataille, a specter or ghost is not the equivalent of the fully decomposed corpse, but is conceived in the register of decay. In other words, the specter is the uncanny embodiment of fleshly corruption, [...] an irrepressible memento mori. And if Weil is Bataille’s spectral friend, it is only as she returns, like a daimonic intercessor, as the reality of bodily decay and death, and thus the nullification of illusion.
Decay and death are indeed central to Weil’s concept of incarnation, a concept that paradoxically is no less spectral in nature than Bataille’s fantasy of Lazare. Weil promotes what might be called a practice of incarnation, a practice that has as its goal the eradication of illusion. Illusion, according to Weil, is a kind of error in perception; it is the mistaking of what is merely imagined for reality itself. The ‘‘test of what is real,’’ on the other hand, is that ‘‘it is hard and rough’’—that it is painful, in body and soul. ‘‘What is pleasant,’’ says Weil, ‘‘belongs to dreams.’’ To overcome the evasions of dream and illusion, Weil says that ‘‘we must become incarnate. . . . Man has to perform an act of incarnation, for he is disembodied by his imagination.’’
JEREMY BILES — Ecce Monstrum: Georges Bataille and the Sacrifice of Form, (2007)
