The hard-to-meet conditions that Bataille imposes on us are made most explicit in ‘The Use-Value of D.A.F. de Sade (An Open Letter to My Current Comrades)’, which was probably written between 1929 and 1930 but was unpublished at the time. Even here the conditions are not set out directly but through the question of how we should read the scandalous and pornographic writings of the Marquis de Sade.

Bataille identified with Sade (1740–1814), the aristocratic libertine who supported the French revolution. Bataille is concerned with the nature of the scandal of Sade’s works and how they can still remain a scandal for us. Moreover, on many points Bataille’s ‘physics and metaphysics are not essentially different from those of the Marquis de Sade’.

When Bataille writes about Sade he is never writing only about Sade but also about himself. He is concerned with two dominant reactions to Sade: the violent rejection of Sade’s works and the admiration of Sade’s works. The first reaction is probably more prevalent and more familiar, so familiar that Simone de Beauvoir could write an article entitled ‘Must we Burn Sade?’ in 1951. However, Sade has also had his admirers and this was particularly true of when Bataille was writing. The surrealists had rediscovered Sade, along with Lautréamont, as a proto-surrealist.

When the surrealists transformed Sade into a literary precursor they were not only establishing their avant-garde credentials by appropriating him, they were also making his work available as a work of literature. Sade could eventually become a part of the literary canon, and his scandalous works could be imprisoned within the library and the bookshop. Bataille has also faced similar gestures of rejection and appropriation, which is no doubt why he considered so much to be at stake in the reading of Sade. During his lifetime Bataille was first rejected by the surrealists, being expelled from the group in 1929, and then later rejected by existentialism, when Jean-Paul Sartre described him as a case needing psychoanalysis. He had alienated himself from the two dominant radical movements of French and European intellectual life at the time, condemning himself to a marginal existence.

Even when he was admired this admiration led to an unacknowledged appropriation of his work. Lacan would draw on Bataille’s writings which analysed the violence essential to sexuality to develop his concept of jouissance, a shattering enjoyment that is ‘beyond the pleasure principle’. Despite using Bataille’s work Lacan did not make direct reference to it, and Bataille’s contribution to Lacan’s thought was erased.

The concept of the labyrinth harks back to the myth of Theseus, who confronted the Minotaur at the heart of the Labyrinth and later found his way out with the aid of the thread he had tied to the entrance (following the counsel of Ariadne).

This myth serves as a representation of the belief in the supremacy of reason to overcome challenging circumstances and maintain dominion and control at all times. Life is analogous to a treacherous maze, yet with cunning, one can retain command over circumstances.

Bataille offers a critical perspective on this conventional line of thinking. He opposes the exaltation of human rationality and asserts that full control is unattainable. No philosophical system can comprehensively chart the course of life. Instead of clutching onto the mirage of control, he insists on confronting one's own inadequacies. To put it differently, one must summon the courage to acknowledge that becoming lost in the Labyrinth is inevitable.