Morphing Moonlight: Gender, masks and carnival mayhem- The ...

forms or bodies. The Dionysian, being formless and transgressing
boundaries, stands in opposition to this Apolline structure. This opposition
ensures that states of existence do not stultify or congeal. Apollo is the god
of illusion and dream, who hides the reality of humankind’s miserable
existence. Nietzsche sees culture as the ultimate illusion created by the
Apollonian. The Dionysian constantly tears at the veil of illusion, but the
Apollonian continually reasserts control, allowing illusion to reassert itself.
Nietzsche believed that if humankind were exposed to the truth that the
Dionysian contains that the terrifying nature of this truth would cause instant
insanity. The interplay of the Apollonian and the Dionysian creates a
constant cycle of transgression of boundaries, change, absorption and
reaffirmation of boundaries. As Foucault indicated in his writing on
transgression:
The limit and transgression depend on each other for whatever
density of being they possess: a limit could not exist if it were
absolutely uncrossable and, reciprocally, transgression would be
pointless if it merely crossed a limit composed of illusions and
shadows. (Foucault 1998: 73) 2
For Foucault, transgression and the limit are interrelated, though not in a
system of dualism, but rather ‘their relationship takes the form of a spiral
that no simple infraction can exhaust’ (Foucault 1998: 74).
2 La limite et la transgression se doivent l’une à l’autre la densité de leur être: inexistence d’une limite
qui ne pourrait absolument pas être franchie; vanité en retour d’une transgression qui ne franchirait
qu’une limite d’illusion ou d’ombre. (Michel Foucault, Dits et Ecrits 1, «Préface à la Transgression». p.
265).
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