A limit-experience (French: expérience limite) is a type of action or experience which approaches the edge of living in terms of its intensity and its seeming impossibility. This approach has led to the seeking of limit experiences as a sort of dark mysticism. A limit experience breaks the subject from itself. The idea is associated with writers Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, and Michel Foucault. Classical instances of limit experiences include abandonment, fascination, suffering, madness, and poetry.