Leslie Hill
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198159711
- eISBN:
- 9780191716065
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159711.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
What happens when philosophy and literature meet? What is at stake when the text of a so-called single author begins to speak in two languages, now the language of theoretical reflexion, now the ...
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What happens when philosophy and literature meet? What is at stake when the text of a so-called single author begins to speak in two languages, now the language of theoretical reflexion, now the language of narrative fiction? And what relation does writing have to the limit that defines it, but, by exposing it to the limitlessness that lies beyond it, also threatens its possibility? These are some of the questions raised by three of the most provocative and influential French writers of the 20th century: Georges Bataille (1897-1962), Pierre Klossowski (1905-2001), and Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003). Examining all three together for the first time, this pioneering study explores their response to a double challenge: that of assuming the burden of philosophy whilst at the same time affirming the shadows, spirits, and spectres that go under the name of literature. It considers in detail the philosophical and literary heritage shared by all three writers (Sade, Hegel, and Nietzsche), and analyses in turn both the philosophical writing and literary output of all three authors, paying particular attention to Bataille's Histoire de l'œil, Le Bleu du ciel, and Madame Edwarda; Klossowski's Les Lois de l'hospitalité, and Blanchot's Le Très-Haut and Le Dernier Homme.Less
What happens when philosophy and literature meet? What is at stake when the text of a so-called single author begins to speak in two languages, now the language of theoretical reflexion, now the language of narrative fiction? And what relation does writing have to the limit that defines it, but, by exposing it to the limitlessness that lies beyond it, also threatens its possibility? These are some of the questions raised by three of the most provocative and influential French writers of the 20th century: Georges Bataille (1897-1962), Pierre Klossowski (1905-2001), and Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003). Examining all three together for the first time, this pioneering study explores their response to a double challenge: that of assuming the burden of philosophy whilst at the same time affirming the shadows, spirits, and spectres that go under the name of literature. It considers in detail the philosophical and literary heritage shared by all three writers (Sade, Hegel, and Nietzsche), and analyses in turn both the philosophical writing and literary output of all three authors, paying particular attention to Bataille's Histoire de l'œil, Le Bleu du ciel, and Madame Edwarda; Klossowski's Les Lois de l'hospitalité, and Blanchot's Le Très-Haut and Le Dernier Homme.
Joanna Demers
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195387650
- eISBN:
- 9780199863594
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195387650.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, History, American
Chapter 3 looked at microsound, a form of electronica often characterized as minimalist. Chapter 4 looks at music that can be described as “maximal” because it tests the physical limitations of ...
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Chapter 3 looked at microsound, a form of electronica often characterized as minimalist. Chapter 4 looks at music that can be described as “maximal” because it tests the physical limitations of listeners through excessive durations and volumes. These various manifestations of excess all purport to transcend meaning, to push sound beyond semiosis to a state in which it communicates directly to listeners’ bodies. The chapter focuses on maximal genres such as drone music, dub techno, and noise music, enlisting theories on excess and the sublime by Georges Bataille and Immanuel Kant. It also situates noise as a reaction to but also a confirmation of traditional notions of beauty in music.Less
Chapter 3 looked at microsound, a form of electronica often characterized as minimalist. Chapter 4 looks at music that can be described as “maximal” because it tests the physical limitations of listeners through excessive durations and volumes. These various manifestations of excess all purport to transcend meaning, to push sound beyond semiosis to a state in which it communicates directly to listeners’ bodies. The chapter focuses on maximal genres such as drone music, dub techno, and noise music, enlisting theories on excess and the sublime by Georges Bataille and Immanuel Kant. It also situates noise as a reaction to but also a confirmation of traditional notions of beauty in music.
Carl Olson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199959839
- eISBN:
- 9780199315970
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199959839.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
This book offers a compelling and provocative argument against the application of postmodern thought to religious studies, showing how such radically skeptical thinking undermines, subverts, and ...
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This book offers a compelling and provocative argument against the application of postmodern thought to religious studies, showing how such radically skeptical thinking undermines, subverts, and distorts the study of religion. It shows that religious studies is an ongoing experiment with various types of methodological approaches to the study of religion, which is itself a human construct with limited cross-cultural application. Without a commonly agreed-upon method for the study of its subject, religious studies is characterized by the use of multiple methods, which tend to be adopted based on the latest trends in the field. Most recently, these trends have been dominated by postmodern thought. Because the discipline of religious studies is a product of the European Enlightenment with its values and representational mode of thinking, it is challenged and even threatened by postmodern thought, which calls into question many of its values, basic presuppositions, and convictions. The author examines various postmodern positions related to the study of religion, including those of Georges Bataille, Jacques Derrida, Marcel Mauss, Michel Foucault and Edward W. Said. He contrasts the thought of traditional history of religions scholars Mircea Eliade and Wendy Doniger with selected postmodern thinkers on the topics of hermeneutics, comparison, and difference. The book concludes by exploring the postmodern challenges to such accepted concepts of religion and considers the long-term implications of a scholar's adoption of postmodern methods. Regardless of whether they are transformed by postmodern thought, it suggests all methods and concepts should be subject to pragmatic review.Less
This book offers a compelling and provocative argument against the application of postmodern thought to religious studies, showing how such radically skeptical thinking undermines, subverts, and distorts the study of religion. It shows that religious studies is an ongoing experiment with various types of methodological approaches to the study of religion, which is itself a human construct with limited cross-cultural application. Without a commonly agreed-upon method for the study of its subject, religious studies is characterized by the use of multiple methods, which tend to be adopted based on the latest trends in the field. Most recently, these trends have been dominated by postmodern thought. Because the discipline of religious studies is a product of the European Enlightenment with its values and representational mode of thinking, it is challenged and even threatened by postmodern thought, which calls into question many of its values, basic presuppositions, and convictions. The author examines various postmodern positions related to the study of religion, including those of Georges Bataille, Jacques Derrida, Marcel Mauss, Michel Foucault and Edward W. Said. He contrasts the thought of traditional history of religions scholars Mircea Eliade and Wendy Doniger with selected postmodern thinkers on the topics of hermeneutics, comparison, and difference. The book concludes by exploring the postmodern challenges to such accepted concepts of religion and considers the long-term implications of a scholar's adoption of postmodern methods. Regardless of whether they are transformed by postmodern thought, it suggests all methods and concepts should be subject to pragmatic review.
Eric Hayot
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195377965
- eISBN:
- 9780199869435
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195377965.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History, Asian History
This chapter begins by reading the controversy of Michelangelo Antonioni's 1974 documentary film, China and Pearl S. Buck's China: Past and Present (1972). Moving from Antonioni's filming of a ...
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This chapter begins by reading the controversy of Michelangelo Antonioni's 1974 documentary film, China and Pearl S. Buck's China: Past and Present (1972). Moving from Antonioni's filming of a surgical operation performed under acupuncture anesthesia to Susan Sontag's discussion of just such an operation in On Photography (1977), the chapter argues that part of what was at stake in China's public performance of such operations in the early 1970s was nothing other than the nature of modernity itself. But how, given such a theorization of the photograph, are we to understand the photographs of Chinese torture that circulated in the West in the early twentieth century? Images of Chinese lingchi, the “death of a thousand cuts,” terrified and titillated Western viewers as lingchi became an emblem of the enormous cultural gulf separating the West from China. The chapter closes by reading a photograph famously owned and reproduced by the French philosopher Georges Bataille. Bataille's relation to the photograph, the chapter argues, must be rethought inside the framework of China's relation to modernity, and to the identificatory and sympathetic claims made by the photographic subject's shocking and transformative pain.Less
This chapter begins by reading the controversy of Michelangelo Antonioni's 1974 documentary film, China and Pearl S. Buck's China: Past and Present (1972). Moving from Antonioni's filming of a surgical operation performed under acupuncture anesthesia to Susan Sontag's discussion of just such an operation in On Photography (1977), the chapter argues that part of what was at stake in China's public performance of such operations in the early 1970s was nothing other than the nature of modernity itself. But how, given such a theorization of the photograph, are we to understand the photographs of Chinese torture that circulated in the West in the early twentieth century? Images of Chinese lingchi, the “death of a thousand cuts,” terrified and titillated Western viewers as lingchi became an emblem of the enormous cultural gulf separating the West from China. The chapter closes by reading a photograph famously owned and reproduced by the French philosopher Georges Bataille. Bataille's relation to the photograph, the chapter argues, must be rethought inside the framework of China's relation to modernity, and to the identificatory and sympathetic claims made by the photographic subject's shocking and transformative pain.
Nick Mansfield
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823232413
- eISBN:
- 9780823235735
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823232413.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
This concluding chapter sums up the key findings of this study on Jacques Derrida's idea of sovereignty and its relation to subjectivity. It has been shown that Derrida's concept of subjectivity and ...
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This concluding chapter sums up the key findings of this study on Jacques Derrida's idea of sovereignty and its relation to subjectivity. It has been shown that Derrida's concept of subjectivity and sovereignty has its prior influence in Sigmund Freud's discussion of prior master and George Bataille's own discussion of the sovereign. Derrida considers subjectivity as the failure to attain sovereignty and he believes that sovereignty is itself the means of its disestablishment because of its irreducible openness on unconditionality.Less
This concluding chapter sums up the key findings of this study on Jacques Derrida's idea of sovereignty and its relation to subjectivity. It has been shown that Derrida's concept of subjectivity and sovereignty has its prior influence in Sigmund Freud's discussion of prior master and George Bataille's own discussion of the sovereign. Derrida considers subjectivity as the failure to attain sovereignty and he believes that sovereignty is itself the means of its disestablishment because of its irreducible openness on unconditionality.
Jean-Luc Nancy
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780823273843
- eISBN:
- 9780823273898
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823273843.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
Over thirty years after Maurice Blanchot writes The Unavowable Community (1983)—a book that offered a critical response to an early essay by Jean-Luc Nancy on “the inoperative community”—Nancy ...
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Over thirty years after Maurice Blanchot writes The Unavowable Community (1983)—a book that offered a critical response to an early essay by Jean-Luc Nancy on “the inoperative community”—Nancy responds in turn with The Disavowed Community (2014). Unfolding as a close reading of Blanchot’s text, Nancy’s essay addresses a range of themes and motifs that mark both his proximity to and distance from Blanchot’s thinking. These themes and motifs include: their respective readings of Georges Bataille, notably his political writings as well as his appeal to the “community of lovers”; pre- and post-war responses in France to fascism and communism; the relation between community, communitarianism, and being-in-common; the relation between the disenchantment with democracy and “aristocratic anarchism”; readings of Marguerite Duras’s récit, The Malady of Death; references to the Eucharist and Christianity; and a rethinking of politics and the political. In short, the exchange between Blanchot and Nancy opens up a rethinking of community that raises at once questions of affirmation and critique, of avowal and disavowal.Less
Over thirty years after Maurice Blanchot writes The Unavowable Community (1983)—a book that offered a critical response to an early essay by Jean-Luc Nancy on “the inoperative community”—Nancy responds in turn with The Disavowed Community (2014). Unfolding as a close reading of Blanchot’s text, Nancy’s essay addresses a range of themes and motifs that mark both his proximity to and distance from Blanchot’s thinking. These themes and motifs include: their respective readings of Georges Bataille, notably his political writings as well as his appeal to the “community of lovers”; pre- and post-war responses in France to fascism and communism; the relation between community, communitarianism, and being-in-common; the relation between the disenchantment with democracy and “aristocratic anarchism”; readings of Marguerite Duras’s récit, The Malady of Death; references to the Eucharist and Christianity; and a rethinking of politics and the political. In short, the exchange between Blanchot and Nancy opens up a rethinking of community that raises at once questions of affirmation and critique, of avowal and disavowal.
Rina Arya and Nicholas Chare (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719096280
- eISBN:
- 9781526109866
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719096280.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
The rich variety of essays in Abject Visions: Powers of Horror in Art and Visual Culture demonstrate that abjection as a concept continues to hold great value as an aid to cultural understanding and ...
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The rich variety of essays in Abject Visions: Powers of Horror in Art and Visual Culture demonstrate that abjection as a concept continues to hold great value as an aid to cultural understanding and a prompt to critical reflection. They communicate the enduring power and relevance of the abject by explaining how it conveys ideas about aesthetic, social and moral conventions with regards to representation and viewing. Theories of the abject are key to understanding the contemporary. This is because abject art and literature are not bound to a particular period or geographical location. They adapt to reflect changing times and contexts. The essays in this volume cumulatively demonstrate that abjection is not singular but plural and multiform. In their chosen themes and artists, the contributors draw on the ideas of Georges Bataille and Julia Kristeva, and others such as Judith Butler, Hal Foster and Rosalind Krauss, as part of their approach to extending current ways of conceiving abjection. The majority of the essays focus on the visual arts although there are also considerations of how attending to the abject can inform readings of film, theatre and literature, a fact which attests to its interdisciplinary relevance.Less
The rich variety of essays in Abject Visions: Powers of Horror in Art and Visual Culture demonstrate that abjection as a concept continues to hold great value as an aid to cultural understanding and a prompt to critical reflection. They communicate the enduring power and relevance of the abject by explaining how it conveys ideas about aesthetic, social and moral conventions with regards to representation and viewing. Theories of the abject are key to understanding the contemporary. This is because abject art and literature are not bound to a particular period or geographical location. They adapt to reflect changing times and contexts. The essays in this volume cumulatively demonstrate that abjection is not singular but plural and multiform. In their chosen themes and artists, the contributors draw on the ideas of Georges Bataille and Julia Kristeva, and others such as Judith Butler, Hal Foster and Rosalind Krauss, as part of their approach to extending current ways of conceiving abjection. The majority of the essays focus on the visual arts although there are also considerations of how attending to the abject can inform readings of film, theatre and literature, a fact which attests to its interdisciplinary relevance.
Alex Dubilet
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780823279463
- eISBN:
- 9780823281633
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823279463.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
Against the two dominant ethical paradigms of continental philosophy—Levinas’s ethics of the Other and Foucault’s ethics of self-cultivation—The Self-Emptying Subject: Kenosis and Immanence, Medieval ...
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Against the two dominant ethical paradigms of continental philosophy—Levinas’s ethics of the Other and Foucault’s ethics of self-cultivation—The Self-Emptying Subject: Kenosis and Immanence, Medieval to Modern theorizes an ethics of self-emptying, or kenosis, that reveals the immanence of an impersonal and dispossessed life “without a why.” Rather than aligning immanence with the enclosures of the subject, The Self-Emptying Subject engages the history of Christian mystical theology, modern philosophy, and contemporary theories of the subject to rethink immanence as what precedes and exceeds the very difference between the (human) self and the (divine) other, between the subject and transcendence. By arguing that transcendence operates and subjects life in secular no less than in religious domains, this book challenges the dominant distribution of concepts in contemporary theoretical discourse, which insists on associating transcendence exclusively with religion and theology and immanence exclusively with modern secularity and philosophy. This book argues that it is important to resist framing the relationship between medieval theology and modern philosophy as a transition from the affirmation of divine transcendence to the establishment of autonomous subjects. Through an engagement with Meister Eckhart, G.W.F. Hegel, and Georges Bataille, it uncovers a medieval theological discourse that rejects the primacy of pious subjects and the transcendence of God (Eckhart); retrieves a modern philosophical discourse that critiques the creation of self-standing subjects through a speculative re-writing of the concepts of Christian theology (Hegel); and explores a discursive site that demonstrates the subjecting effects of transcendence across theological and philosophical archives (Bataille).Less
Against the two dominant ethical paradigms of continental philosophy—Levinas’s ethics of the Other and Foucault’s ethics of self-cultivation—The Self-Emptying Subject: Kenosis and Immanence, Medieval to Modern theorizes an ethics of self-emptying, or kenosis, that reveals the immanence of an impersonal and dispossessed life “without a why.” Rather than aligning immanence with the enclosures of the subject, The Self-Emptying Subject engages the history of Christian mystical theology, modern philosophy, and contemporary theories of the subject to rethink immanence as what precedes and exceeds the very difference between the (human) self and the (divine) other, between the subject and transcendence. By arguing that transcendence operates and subjects life in secular no less than in religious domains, this book challenges the dominant distribution of concepts in contemporary theoretical discourse, which insists on associating transcendence exclusively with religion and theology and immanence exclusively with modern secularity and philosophy. This book argues that it is important to resist framing the relationship between medieval theology and modern philosophy as a transition from the affirmation of divine transcendence to the establishment of autonomous subjects. Through an engagement with Meister Eckhart, G.W.F. Hegel, and Georges Bataille, it uncovers a medieval theological discourse that rejects the primacy of pious subjects and the transcendence of God (Eckhart); retrieves a modern philosophical discourse that critiques the creation of self-standing subjects through a speculative re-writing of the concepts of Christian theology (Hegel); and explores a discursive site that demonstrates the subjecting effects of transcendence across theological and philosophical archives (Bataille).
Jeremy Biles and Kent Brintnall (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823265190
- eISBN:
- 9780823266890
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823265190.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
Despite Georges Bataille’s acknowledged influence on major poststructuralist thinkers—including Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, Lacan, Baudrillard, and Barthes—and his prominence in literary, cultural, ...
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Despite Georges Bataille’s acknowledged influence on major poststructuralist thinkers—including Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, Lacan, Baudrillard, and Barthes—and his prominence in literary, cultural, and social theory, rarely has he been taken up by scholars of religion, even as issues of the sacred were central to his thinking. Bringing together established scholars and emerging voices, Negative Ecstasies engages Bataille from the perspective of religious studies and theology, forging links with feminist and queer theory, economics, secularism, psychoanalysis, fat studies, and ethics. As these essays demonstrate, Bataille’s work bears significance to contemporary questions in the academy and vital issues in the world. We continue to ignore him at our peril.Less
Despite Georges Bataille’s acknowledged influence on major poststructuralist thinkers—including Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, Lacan, Baudrillard, and Barthes—and his prominence in literary, cultural, and social theory, rarely has he been taken up by scholars of religion, even as issues of the sacred were central to his thinking. Bringing together established scholars and emerging voices, Negative Ecstasies engages Bataille from the perspective of religious studies and theology, forging links with feminist and queer theory, economics, secularism, psychoanalysis, fat studies, and ethics. As these essays demonstrate, Bataille’s work bears significance to contemporary questions in the academy and vital issues in the world. We continue to ignore him at our peril.
Boris Groys
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231146180
- eISBN:
- 9780231518499
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231146180.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
The public generally regards the media with suspicion and distrust. Therefore, the media's primary concern is to regain that trust through the production of sincerity. Advancing the field of media ...
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The public generally regards the media with suspicion and distrust. Therefore, the media's primary concern is to regain that trust through the production of sincerity. Advancing the field of media studies in a new way, this book focuses on the media's affect of sincerity and its manufacture of trust to appease skeptics. This book identifies forms of medial sincerity and its effect on politics, culture, society, and conceptions of the self. It relies on different philosophical writings thematizing the gaze of the other, from the theories of Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Marcel Mauss, and George Bataille to the poststructuralist formulations of Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida. It also considers media “states of exception” and their creation of effects of sincerity—a strategy that feeds the media's predilection for the extraordinary and the sensational, further fueling the public's suspicions. Emphasizing the media's production of emotion over the presentation (or lack thereof) of “facts,” the book launches a study challenging the presumed authenticity of the media's worldview.Less
The public generally regards the media with suspicion and distrust. Therefore, the media's primary concern is to regain that trust through the production of sincerity. Advancing the field of media studies in a new way, this book focuses on the media's affect of sincerity and its manufacture of trust to appease skeptics. This book identifies forms of medial sincerity and its effect on politics, culture, society, and conceptions of the self. It relies on different philosophical writings thematizing the gaze of the other, from the theories of Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Marcel Mauss, and George Bataille to the poststructuralist formulations of Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida. It also considers media “states of exception” and their creation of effects of sincerity—a strategy that feeds the media's predilection for the extraordinary and the sensational, further fueling the public's suspicions. Emphasizing the media's production of emotion over the presentation (or lack thereof) of “facts,” the book launches a study challenging the presumed authenticity of the media's worldview.
Leslie Hill
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198159711
- eISBN:
- 9780191716065
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159711.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter considers in turn the bonds of friendship linking Bataille, Klossowski, and Blanchot, the essays that each devoted to the others' work, and the shared, if paradoxical, intellectual ...
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This chapter considers in turn the bonds of friendship linking Bataille, Klossowski, and Blanchot, the essays that each devoted to the others' work, and the shared, if paradoxical, intellectual legacy of Sade, Hegel, and Nietzsche.Less
This chapter considers in turn the bonds of friendship linking Bataille, Klossowski, and Blanchot, the essays that each devoted to the others' work, and the shared, if paradoxical, intellectual legacy of Sade, Hegel, and Nietzsche.
Leslie Hill
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198159711
- eISBN:
- 9780191716065
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159711.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter analyses the relationship between philosophy and literature in the work of Georges Bataille. It concentrates in particular on the internal difficulties and inconsistencies in Bataille's ...
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This chapter analyses the relationship between philosophy and literature in the work of Georges Bataille. It concentrates in particular on the internal difficulties and inconsistencies in Bataille's influential thinking of sacrifice, excess, and the economy, and traces the implications of the writer's problematic reworking of Alexandre Kojève's interpretation of Hegel and his response to Nietzsche. It considers in some detail the causes and effects of Bataille's turn to fiction at crucial moments in his career, and examines how far Histoire de l'œil (1927), Le Bleu du ciel (1935), and Madame Edwarda (1943) challenge the authority and coherence of some of Bataille's own philosophical perspectives. It shows how philosophical thinking, even as it everywhere accompanies the literary in Bataille's work, is ultimately unable to frame or control the radical implications of fictional writing.Less
This chapter analyses the relationship between philosophy and literature in the work of Georges Bataille. It concentrates in particular on the internal difficulties and inconsistencies in Bataille's influential thinking of sacrifice, excess, and the economy, and traces the implications of the writer's problematic reworking of Alexandre Kojève's interpretation of Hegel and his response to Nietzsche. It considers in some detail the causes and effects of Bataille's turn to fiction at crucial moments in his career, and examines how far Histoire de l'œil (1927), Le Bleu du ciel (1935), and Madame Edwarda (1943) challenge the authority and coherence of some of Bataille's own philosophical perspectives. It shows how philosophical thinking, even as it everywhere accompanies the literary in Bataille's work, is ultimately unable to frame or control the radical implications of fictional writing.
Michael Newall
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199609581
- eISBN:
- 9780191746260
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199609581.003.0011
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics, Moral Philosophy
This chapter targets works of literary pornography that achieve their primary effect, sexual arousal, in part by representing a particular kind of norm-breaking, namely the violation of social or ...
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This chapter targets works of literary pornography that achieve their primary effect, sexual arousal, in part by representing a particular kind of norm-breaking, namely the violation of social or moral norms about sexual behaviour. Key examples include the Marquis de Sade's The One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom and Raymond Queneau's We Always Treat Women Too Well. While some of these norm-breaking scenarios, especially the milder ones, sometimes function as little more than an ‘interesting’ way of framing otherwise standard sex scenes, they can also add to sexual arousal, as well as provide a basis for other affective states, such as disgust, humour, and awe. Such affects, which are typically adventitious and unsolicited in popular pornography, are exploited for artistic purposes in literary pornography. This chapter not only shows how each of these affects has a basis in the norm-breaking of transgressive pornography, but also investigates the artistic value that can accrue to these affects by examining Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye and the roles that disgust, humour, and awe play in it.Less
This chapter targets works of literary pornography that achieve their primary effect, sexual arousal, in part by representing a particular kind of norm-breaking, namely the violation of social or moral norms about sexual behaviour. Key examples include the Marquis de Sade's The One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom and Raymond Queneau's We Always Treat Women Too Well. While some of these norm-breaking scenarios, especially the milder ones, sometimes function as little more than an ‘interesting’ way of framing otherwise standard sex scenes, they can also add to sexual arousal, as well as provide a basis for other affective states, such as disgust, humour, and awe. Such affects, which are typically adventitious and unsolicited in popular pornography, are exploited for artistic purposes in literary pornography. This chapter not only shows how each of these affects has a basis in the norm-breaking of transgressive pornography, but also investigates the artistic value that can accrue to these affects by examining Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye and the roles that disgust, humour, and awe play in it.
Edward J. Hughes
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199609864
- eISBN:
- 9780191731761
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199609864.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
The Introduction focuses on Proust’s response to the Dreyfus Affair as reflected in his unfinished early novel Jean Santeuil and examines Georges Bataille’s claim that the aspiring author showed ...
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The Introduction focuses on Proust’s response to the Dreyfus Affair as reflected in his unfinished early novel Jean Santeuil and examines Georges Bataille’s claim that the aspiring author showed radical social instincts in his defence of Dreyfus. Challenging the conventional image of Proust as the effete young socialite currying favour with the aristocracy, Bataille highlights a political Proust and homes in on those pages of Jean Santeuil where political scandal dominates. Reading the narrator’s reaction to questions of social justice biographically, Bataille sees in the early novel’s moral and philosophical defence of truth a reflection of the young Proust’s position. The chapter goes on to consider the representation of the Dreyfus Affair in A la recherche and reflects on how the later Proust moves away from a position of engaged solidarity and instead chooses to stress the ephemeral nature of culture wars and causes célèbres.Less
The Introduction focuses on Proust’s response to the Dreyfus Affair as reflected in his unfinished early novel Jean Santeuil and examines Georges Bataille’s claim that the aspiring author showed radical social instincts in his defence of Dreyfus. Challenging the conventional image of Proust as the effete young socialite currying favour with the aristocracy, Bataille highlights a political Proust and homes in on those pages of Jean Santeuil where political scandal dominates. Reading the narrator’s reaction to questions of social justice biographically, Bataille sees in the early novel’s moral and philosophical defence of truth a reflection of the young Proust’s position. The chapter goes on to consider the representation of the Dreyfus Affair in A la recherche and reflects on how the later Proust moves away from a position of engaged solidarity and instead chooses to stress the ephemeral nature of culture wars and causes célèbres.
Eric Robertson
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620658
- eISBN:
- 9781789623918
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620658.003.0018
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
The notion of the formless found a lasting definition in Documents, the dissident Surrealist magazine led by Georges Bataille, Carl Einstein and Michel Leiris from 1929 to 1931. In an unassuming ...
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The notion of the formless found a lasting definition in Documents, the dissident Surrealist magazine led by Georges Bataille, Carl Einstein and Michel Leiris from 1929 to 1931. In an unassuming short entry for its ‘Dictionnaire’, Bataille presents the informe emphatically not as a system or a structure, but as ‘un terme servant à déclasser’; yet neither the disruptive impulse of the 'Dictionnaire', nor the more recent exhibitions it has generated, can avoid a measure of taxonomic organisation (L'Informe: mode d'emploi, 1996; Undercover Surrealism, 2006). In the realm of poetry, free verse has eroded the boundaries of the poetic, but its freedom from formal constraints is limited too; as Jay Parini (2008) contends, ‘formless poetry does not really exist, as poets inevitably create patterns in language that replicate forms of experience.’ Through a small number of case studies, this chapter will consider the legacy of Bataille’s definition while assessing the ongoing tension between form and its undoing in textual and visual art of the twenty-first century.Less
The notion of the formless found a lasting definition in Documents, the dissident Surrealist magazine led by Georges Bataille, Carl Einstein and Michel Leiris from 1929 to 1931. In an unassuming short entry for its ‘Dictionnaire’, Bataille presents the informe emphatically not as a system or a structure, but as ‘un terme servant à déclasser’; yet neither the disruptive impulse of the 'Dictionnaire', nor the more recent exhibitions it has generated, can avoid a measure of taxonomic organisation (L'Informe: mode d'emploi, 1996; Undercover Surrealism, 2006). In the realm of poetry, free verse has eroded the boundaries of the poetic, but its freedom from formal constraints is limited too; as Jay Parini (2008) contends, ‘formless poetry does not really exist, as poets inevitably create patterns in language that replicate forms of experience.’ Through a small number of case studies, this chapter will consider the legacy of Bataille’s definition while assessing the ongoing tension between form and its undoing in textual and visual art of the twenty-first century.
Patrick ffrench
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620658
- eISBN:
- 9781789623918
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620658.003.0019
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Starting from Giorgio Agamben's proposition, in 'Notes on Gesture', that the 20th-century is beset by a 'crisis of gesture' this chapter explores the convulsive or 'innervated body' in the work of ...
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Starting from Giorgio Agamben's proposition, in 'Notes on Gesture', that the 20th-century is beset by a 'crisis of gesture' this chapter explores the convulsive or 'innervated body' in the work of Walter Benjamin and Georges Bataille. Taking a less melancholy approach than Agamben, I ask what can the convulsive body do and what forms can it produce. Both Benjamin and Bataille invest the convulsive body with a power susceptible to provoke affective 'discharge' and thus with a kind of political agency. Their approaches differ, however, over the nature of this politics; while Benjamin accentuates the potential of play and its gesturality, especially in his writing in cinema, Bataille pursues convulsion on the terrain of ritual and sacrifice, particularly in the novel Le Bleu du ciel. For both, however, the dangerous continuity between the convulsion and an authoritarian politics is at stake. Less
Starting from Giorgio Agamben's proposition, in 'Notes on Gesture', that the 20th-century is beset by a 'crisis of gesture' this chapter explores the convulsive or 'innervated body' in the work of Walter Benjamin and Georges Bataille. Taking a less melancholy approach than Agamben, I ask what can the convulsive body do and what forms can it produce. Both Benjamin and Bataille invest the convulsive body with a power susceptible to provoke affective 'discharge' and thus with a kind of political agency. Their approaches differ, however, over the nature of this politics; while Benjamin accentuates the potential of play and its gesturality, especially in his writing in cinema, Bataille pursues convulsion on the terrain of ritual and sacrifice, particularly in the novel Le Bleu du ciel. For both, however, the dangerous continuity between the convulsion and an authoritarian politics is at stake.
Gilda Axelroud
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381434
- eISBN:
- 9781781382387
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381434.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
In 1948, at the moment his career seemed to be taking off after twenty years of compromise and struggle, René Magritte made the peculiar decision to abandon his flatly painted, hard-edged signature ...
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In 1948, at the moment his career seemed to be taking off after twenty years of compromise and struggle, René Magritte made the peculiar decision to abandon his flatly painted, hard-edged signature style to paint in a more gestural manner reminiscent of expressionist and Fauve painting for a series of works that are now either reviled or celebrated as the ‘Vache’ paintings. A key inspiration for the style and subject matter of the Vache works was the popular French comic strip Les Pieds nickelés (‘Nickel-Plated Feet’). Originally drawn by Louis Forton in 1908 and still in print when Magritte used it for the période Vache (indeed, it is still drawn today), the comic strip had been written on twenty years prior to the exhibition (whilst Magritte was living in Paris) by Georges Bataille in his periodical Documents in a little-known text. This chapter aims to discover what we might learn about Magritte’s Vache paintings through a visual analysis and critical reading of Les Pieds nickelés partly within the framework set by Bataille’s 1929 text on the strip. The chapter then takes on a theoretical slant, examining the Vache paintings in the light of Bataille’s neglected text, in which Aztec religion and humour are brought to bear on a critique of Western civilization and society. The chapter concludes with a broader study of humour in the Surrealist group, bringing forth Magritte’s notion of humour-plaisir, which appears also to have been neglected in the few studies of his période Vache.Less
In 1948, at the moment his career seemed to be taking off after twenty years of compromise and struggle, René Magritte made the peculiar decision to abandon his flatly painted, hard-edged signature style to paint in a more gestural manner reminiscent of expressionist and Fauve painting for a series of works that are now either reviled or celebrated as the ‘Vache’ paintings. A key inspiration for the style and subject matter of the Vache works was the popular French comic strip Les Pieds nickelés (‘Nickel-Plated Feet’). Originally drawn by Louis Forton in 1908 and still in print when Magritte used it for the période Vache (indeed, it is still drawn today), the comic strip had been written on twenty years prior to the exhibition (whilst Magritte was living in Paris) by Georges Bataille in his periodical Documents in a little-known text. This chapter aims to discover what we might learn about Magritte’s Vache paintings through a visual analysis and critical reading of Les Pieds nickelés partly within the framework set by Bataille’s 1929 text on the strip. The chapter then takes on a theoretical slant, examining the Vache paintings in the light of Bataille’s neglected text, in which Aztec religion and humour are brought to bear on a critique of Western civilization and society. The chapter concludes with a broader study of humour in the Surrealist group, bringing forth Magritte’s notion of humour-plaisir, which appears also to have been neglected in the few studies of his période Vache.
Mick Smith
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816670284
- eISBN:
- 9781452947136
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816670284.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Environmental Politics
This book presents a passionate defense of radical ecology that speaks directly to current debates concerning the nature, and dangers, of sovereign power. Engaging the work of Bataille, Arendt, ...
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This book presents a passionate defense of radical ecology that speaks directly to current debates concerning the nature, and dangers, of sovereign power. Engaging the work of Bataille, Arendt, Levinas, Nancy, and Agamben, among others, the book reconnects the political critique of sovereign power with ecological considerations, arguing that ethical and political responsibilities for the consequences of our actions do not end with those defined as human. The book turns Agamben’s analysis of sovereignty and biopolitics toward an investigation of ecological concerns. In doing so, it exposes limits to that thought, maintaining that the increasingly widespread biopolitical management of human populations has an unrecognized ecological analogue—reducing nature to a “resource” for human projects. The book contends that a radical ecological politics must resist both the depoliticizing exercise of sovereign power and the pervasive spread of biopolitics in order to reveal new possibilities for creating healthy human and nonhuman communities.Less
This book presents a passionate defense of radical ecology that speaks directly to current debates concerning the nature, and dangers, of sovereign power. Engaging the work of Bataille, Arendt, Levinas, Nancy, and Agamben, among others, the book reconnects the political critique of sovereign power with ecological considerations, arguing that ethical and political responsibilities for the consequences of our actions do not end with those defined as human. The book turns Agamben’s analysis of sovereignty and biopolitics toward an investigation of ecological concerns. In doing so, it exposes limits to that thought, maintaining that the increasingly widespread biopolitical management of human populations has an unrecognized ecological analogue—reducing nature to a “resource” for human projects. The book contends that a radical ecological politics must resist both the depoliticizing exercise of sovereign power and the pervasive spread of biopolitics in order to reveal new possibilities for creating healthy human and nonhuman communities.
Jared Pappas-Kelley
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526129246
- eISBN:
- 9781526141927
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526129246.003.0004
- Subject:
- Art, Art Theory and Criticism
Chapter four introduces the example of the Momart warehouse fire, in which large amounts of art—including high profile Young British Art—was destroyed when a thief apparently broke into an adjoining ...
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Chapter four introduces the example of the Momart warehouse fire, in which large amounts of art—including high profile Young British Art—was destroyed when a thief apparently broke into an adjoining space and set the complex on fire. Works such as Tracey Emin’s Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 (lost in the fire) are examined, as well as accounts of the public backlash and media attention surrounding this event. In addition, the implications of Jake and Dinos Chapman’s exact remake of Emin's piece as The Same Only Better are considered, along with the event's legacy and the expectation that these works of art will endure.Less
Chapter four introduces the example of the Momart warehouse fire, in which large amounts of art—including high profile Young British Art—was destroyed when a thief apparently broke into an adjoining space and set the complex on fire. Works such as Tracey Emin’s Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 (lost in the fire) are examined, as well as accounts of the public backlash and media attention surrounding this event. In addition, the implications of Jake and Dinos Chapman’s exact remake of Emin's piece as The Same Only Better are considered, along with the event's legacy and the expectation that these works of art will endure.
Jeremy Biles
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823227785
- eISBN:
- 9780823235193
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823227785.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
In the 1930s, Georges Bataille proclaimed a “ferociously religious” sensibility characterized by simultaneous ecstasy and horror. This book investigates the content and implications ...
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In the 1930s, Georges Bataille proclaimed a “ferociously religious” sensibility characterized by simultaneous ecstasy and horror. This book investigates the content and implications of this religious sensibility by examining Bataille's insistent linking of monstrosity and the sacred. Extending and sometimes challenging major interpretations of Bataille by thinkers like Denis Hollier and Rosalind Krauss, the book reveals how his writings betray the monstrous marks of the affective and intellectual contradictions he seeks to produce in his readers. Charting a new approach to recent debates concerning Bataille's formulation of the informe (“formless”), the book demonstrates that the motif of monstrosity is keyed to Bataille's notion of sacrifice—an operation that ruptures the integrality of the individual form. Bataille enacts a “monstrous” mode of reading and writing in his approaches to other thinkers and artists—a mode that is at once agonistic and intimate. This book examines this monstrous mode of reading and writing through investigations of Bataille's “sacrificial” interpretations of Kojève's Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche; his contentious relationship with Simone Weil and its implications for his mystical and writing practices; his fraught affiliation with surrealist André Breton and his attempt to displace surrealism with “hyperchristianity”; and his peculiar relations to artist Hans Bellmer, whose work evokes Bataille's “religious sensibility”.Less
In the 1930s, Georges Bataille proclaimed a “ferociously religious” sensibility characterized by simultaneous ecstasy and horror. This book investigates the content and implications of this religious sensibility by examining Bataille's insistent linking of monstrosity and the sacred. Extending and sometimes challenging major interpretations of Bataille by thinkers like Denis Hollier and Rosalind Krauss, the book reveals how his writings betray the monstrous marks of the affective and intellectual contradictions he seeks to produce in his readers. Charting a new approach to recent debates concerning Bataille's formulation of the informe (“formless”), the book demonstrates that the motif of monstrosity is keyed to Bataille's notion of sacrifice—an operation that ruptures the integrality of the individual form. Bataille enacts a “monstrous” mode of reading and writing in his approaches to other thinkers and artists—a mode that is at once agonistic and intimate. This book examines this monstrous mode of reading and writing through investigations of Bataille's “sacrificial” interpretations of Kojève's Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche; his contentious relationship with Simone Weil and its implications for his mystical and writing practices; his fraught affiliation with surrealist André Breton and his attempt to displace surrealism with “hyperchristianity”; and his peculiar relations to artist Hans Bellmer, whose work evokes Bataille's “religious sensibility”.
