Bacchic Intent

Abstract

Highlighting Tyler, the Creator, this chapter considers ways in which the erotic becomes a means by which to deny any effort to linguistically distinguish the dynamics of death and life. Read in relationship to Georges Bataille and Bacchus (the Greek god of sensuality), Tyler, the Creator positions deathlife as a mode of defilement, of destruction, that challenges the integrity and logic of the social world and the grammar and vocabulary used to narrate that social world. Distinction between life and death as the source of joy is disrupted through radical practices of pleasure. By merging joy and pain, death and life are denied the difference that would support the social world constructed in relationship to the demands of whiteness.