As I had been reading this book, I thought it was perhaps no coincidence that Georges Bataille and Jacques Lacan were sort of around rather similar circles. I wonder now how the role of surplus or excess life that, under the auspices of psychological or cultural taboo, constitutes the erotic transmuted into the Lacanian concept of "surplus enjoyment," if it had at all. It may be coincidental, as Bataille was a materialist and Lacan, insofar as he conceptualizes the psyche in terms of a semiotic process, could be considered a kind of "materialist" (the psyche is precisely what can be "read"). However, Georges Bataille has a unique pull vis-a-vis Lacan due to the way he engages in interpretation of facts of biology and observations of anthropology in order to extract philosophical insight. I very much like this approach, though I find it would have been more rigorous in this case if at the time there had been a more systematic biosemiotics to provide a firmer foundation for such discussions.