Georges Bataille

Georges Bataille (September 10, 1897 – July 9, 1962) was a French writer, anthropologist and philosopher, though he avoided this last term himself.

Life and work

Bataille was born in Billom (Auvergne). He initially considered priesthood and went to a Catholic seminary but renounced his faith in 1922. He is often quoted as regarding the brothels of Paris as his true churches, a sentiment which reflects the concepts in his work. He then worked as a librarian, thus keeping some relative freedom in not having to treat his thought as work.

Founder of several journals and groups of writers, Bataille is the author of an oeuvre both abundant and diverse: readings, poems, essays on innumerable subjects (on the mysticism of economy, in passing of poetry, philosophy, the arts, eroticism). He sometimes published under pseudonyms, and some of his publications were banned. He was relatively ignored in his lifetime and scorned by contemporaries such as Jean-Paul Sartre as an advocate of mysticism, but after his death had considerable influence on authors such as Michel Foucault, Philippe Sollers and Jacques Derrida, all of whom were affiliated with the Tel Quel journal. His influence is felt in the work of Jean Baudrillard, as well as in the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan.

Attracted early on to Surrealism, Bataille quickly fell out with its founder André Breton, although Bataille and the Surrealists resumed cautiously cordial relations after World War II. Bataille was a member of the extremely influential College of Sociology in France between World War I and World War II. The College of Sociology was also comprised of several renegade surrealists. He was heavily influenced by Hegel, Freud, Marx, Marcel Mauss, the Marquis de Sade, Alexandre Kojève and Friedrich Nietzsche, the last of whom he defended in a notable essay against appropriation by the Nazis.

Fascinated by human sacrifice, he founded a secret society, Acéphale (the headless), the symbol of which was a decapitated man, in order to instigate a new religion. According to legend, Bataille and the other members of Acéphale each agreed to be the sacrificial victim as an inauguration; none of them would agree to be the executioner. An indemnity was offered for an executioner, but none was found before the dissolution of Acéphale shortly before the war.

Bataille had an amazing interdisciplinary talent — he drew from diverse influences and used diverse modes of discourse to create his work. His novel The Story of the Eye, for example, published under the pseudonym Lord Auch (literally, Lord "to the shithouse" — "auch" being slang for telling somebody off by sending them to the toilet), was initially read as pure pornography, while interpretation of the work has gradually matured to reveal the considerable philosophical and emotional depth that is characteristic of other writers who have been categorized within "literature of transgression." The imagery of the novel is built upon a series of metaphors which in turn refer to philosophical constructs developed in his work: the eye, the egg, the sun, the earth, the testicle.

Other famous novels include "My Mother" and "The Blue of Noon." The latter, with its necrophilic and political tendencies, its autobiographical or testimonial undertones, and its philosophical moments turns "The Story of the Eye" on its head, providing a much darker and bleaker treatment of contemporary historical reality.

Bataille was also a philosopher (though he renounced this title), but for many, like Sartre, his philosophical claims bordered on atheist mysticism. During World War Two, and influenced by Kojève's reading of Hegel, and by Nietzsche, he wrote a Summa Atheologica (the title parallels Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica) which comprises his works "Inner Experience", "Guilty", and "On Nietzsche". After the war he composed his "The Accursed share", and founded the also extremely influential journal "Critique". His very special conception of "sovereignty" (which may be said an "anti-sovereignty") was discussed by Jacques Derrida, Giorgio Agamben, Jean-Luc Nancy and others.

Bataille was twice married, first with the actress Silvia Maklès; they divorced in 1934, and she later married the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Bataille also had a liaison with Colette Peignot, who died in 1938. In 1946 Bataille married Diane de Beauharnais; they had one daughter.

Key concepts

eroticism
the accursed share
the potlatch (borrowed from Marcel Mauss's discussion of the kula and the gift economy)
absolute negativity
base materialism
formlessness
acephality
the sacred
The Solar Anus
heterogeneous matter (deviant social elements)
homogeneity's need for deviance
transgression
immanence

Bibliography

Complete works

Georges Bataille, Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard)

Volume 1: Premiers écrits, 1922-1940: Histoire de l'œil - L'Anus solaire - Sacrifices - Articles.
Volume 2: Écrits posthumes, 1922-1940
Volume 3: Œuvres littéraires: Madame Edwarda - Le Petit - L'Archangélique - L'Impossible - La Scissiparité - L'Abbé C. - L'être différencié n'est rien - Le Bleu du ciel.
Volume 4: Œuvres littéraires posthumes: Poèmes - Le Mort - Julie - La Maison brûlée - La Tombe de Louis XXX - Divinus Deus - Ébauches.
Volume 5: La Somme athéologique I: L'Expérience intérieure - Méthode de méditation - Post-scriptum 1953 - Le Coupable - L'Alleluiah.
Volume 6: La Somme athéologique II: Sur Nietzsche - Mémorandum - Annexes.
Volume 7: L'économie à la mesure de l'univers - La Part maudite - La limite de l'utile (Fragments) - Théorie de la Religion - Conférences 1947-1948 - Annexes.
Volume 8: L'Histoire de l'érotisme - Le surréalisme au jour le jour - Conférences 1951-1953 - La Souveraineté - Annexes.
Volume 9: Lascaux, ou La naissance de l’art - Manet - La littérature et le mal - Annexes
Volume 10: L’érotisme - Le procès de Gilles de Rais - Les larmes d’Eros
Volume 11: Articles I, 1944-1949
Volume 12: Articles II, 1950-1961

Selected works:

Histoire de l'oeil, 1928. (Story of the Eye) (under pseudonym of Lord Auch)
Le Bleu du ciel, 1935 (Blue of Noon)
Madame Edwarda, 1937. (under pseudonym of Pierre Angélique)
L'expérience intérieure, 1943. (Inner Experience)
La Part maudite, 1949 (The Accursed Share)
L'Erotisme, 1957 (Erotism)
La littérature et le Mal, 1957. (Literature and Evil)
Les larmes d'Éros, 1961. (The Tears of Eros)
L'Impossible, 1962. (The Impossible)
Ma Mére, 1966 (My Mother)
Le Mort, 1967 (The Dead Man)
Théorie de la Religion, 1973. (Theory of Religion)

Translated works:

Manet, Austryn Wainhouse and James Emmons, 1955, Editions d'Art Albert Skira.
Literature and Evil, Alastair Hamilton, 1973, Calder & Boyars Ltd.
Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939, Allan Stoekl, Carl R. Lovitt, and Donald M. Leslie, Jr., 1985, University of Minnesota Press.
Erotism: Death and Sensuality, Mary Dalwood, 1986, City Lights Books.
Story of the Eye, Joachim Neugroschel, 1987, City Lights Books.
Inner Experience, Leslie Anne Boldt, 1988, State University of New York.
My Mother, Madame Edwarda, The Dead Man, Austryn Wainhouse, with essays by Yukio Mishima and Ken Hollings, 1989, Marion Boyars Publishers.
The Impossible, Robert Hurley, 1991, City Lights Books.
Blue of Noon, Harry Matthews, 2002, Marion Boyars Publishers.
The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge, Stuart Kendall and Michelle Kendall, 2004, University of Minnesota Press.

As editor:

Documents (journal), Paris, 1929 - 1930

Works on Bataille

Philippe Sollers, Writing and the Experience of Limits (Columbia University Press, 1982)
Connor, Peter, Georges Bataille and the Mysticism of Sin (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000)
Gill, Carolyn, Bataille: Writing the Sacred, (London: Routledge, 1995)
ffrench, Patrick, The Cut (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)
Hollier, Denis, Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille (MIT Press, 1992)
Hussey, Andrew, Inner Scar: The Mysicism of Georges Bataille (Amsterdam: Rudopi, 2000)
Land, Nick, The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism (an essay on atheistic religion) (London: Routledge, 1992)
Noys, Benjamin, Georges Bataille: a critical introduction (London: Pluto, 2000)
Richardson, Michael, Georges Bataille (London: Routledge, 1994)
Surya, Michel, Georges Bataille: an intellectual biography, trans. by Krzysztof Fijalkowski and Michael Richardson (London: Verso, 2002)
Gemerchak, Christopher, The Sunday of the Negative: Reading Bataille Reading Hegel (SUNY Press, Series in Hegelian Studies, 2003)

External links

Bataille material by James Comas at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Overview of Bataille
George Bataille biography
Georges Bataille Electronic Library
Bataille's Apocalypse
Extract from Bataille's Eroticism