In previous conditions, extreme states came under the jurisdiction of the arts... People substituted writing (fiction) for what was once spiritual li… - Georges Bataille

I cannot exist entirely except when somehow I go beyond the stage of action. Otherwise I’m a soldier, a professional, a man of learning, not a “total human being.” The fragmentary state of humanity is basically the same as the choice of an object. When you limit your desires to possessing political power, for instance, you act and know what you have to do. … You insert your existence advantageously into time. Each of your moments becomes useful. With each moment, the possibility is given you to advance to some chosen goal, and your time becomes a march toward that goal—what’s normally called living. … Every action makes you a fragmentary existence. I hold on to my nature as an entirety only by refusing to act—or at least by denying the superiority of time, which is reserved for action.

Life is whole only when it isn’t subordinate to a specific object that exceeds it. In this way, the essence of entirety is freedom.

The difficulty—that contestation must be done in the name of an authority—is resolved this: I contest in the name of contestation what experience itself is.