If I now do so — not without groping, continuing in the steps of those who started — I establish a new order of thought and behavior. The perception of the instant, without making an indulgent concession and without justification, presupposes a new discipline. I must:
         —acquire knowledge, as clear and distinct as possible, of the domain defined by the words erotic, comic, poetic, tragic, ecstatic...
         —determine how they respond to the desire for the instant, how they leave the door open to provision for the future; how they imply, in contradiction with the value of the immediate, miserable calculations;
         —without the shadow of duty and without any reason (except this: what is postponed until later will in the end either be reduced to the fleeting instant or will be only a lure ensuring my ‘servitude’) live erotically, comically, poetically, tragically, ecstatically;
         —subordinate all thought that touches on the erotic to eroticism, all thought on drunkenness to drunkenness, etc…

(Georges Bataille, from Initial Postulate, 1947)