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The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric Art and Culture collects essays and lectures by Georges Bataille spanning 30 years of research in anthropology, comparative religion, aesthetics, and philosophy. These were neither idle nor idyllic years; the discovery of Lascaux in 1940 coincides with the bloodiest war in history—with new machines of death, Auschwitz, and Hiroshima. Bataille's reflections on the possible origins of humanity coincide with the intensified threat of its possible extinction.

For Bataille, prehistory is universal history; it is the history of a human community prior to its fall into separation, into nations and races. The art of prehistory offers the earliest traces of nascent yet fully human consciousness—of consciousness not yet fully separated from natural flora and fauna, or from the energetic forces of the universe. A play of identities, the art of prehistory is the art of a consciousness struggling against itself, of a human spirit struggling against brute animal physicality. Prehistory is the cradle of humanity, the birth of tragedy.

Bataille reaches beyond disciplinary specializations to imagine a moment when thought was universal. Bataille's work provides a model for interdisciplinary inquiry in our own day, a universal imagination and thought for our own potential community. The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric Art and Culture speaks to philosophers and historians of thought, to anthropologists interested in the history of their discipline and in new methodologies, to theologians and religious comparatists interested in the origins and nature of man's encounter with the sacred, and to art historians and aestheticians grappling with the place of prehistory in the canons of art.

Distributed for Zone Books ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Man Like Us
For me, Bataille's Skira book "The Birth of Art" is his most beautiful book. For that reason, this volume is most welcome. Translator Stuart Kendall has written an excellent introduction. There are, I think, roughly two kinds of readers of Bataille: those who love the Eye and don't have much time for his philosophy, and those who focus on the latter, tending to read his artistic works through an academic lense. In some of his works the 'two Batailles' come together, works like "Guilty" and "Inner Experience", but mostly "The Birth of Art". Some of the magic of that book can be found in the Cradle of Humanity essays. Bataille's writing, at its best, becomes an adventure that parallels the sense of wonder one experiences when contemplating ancient art. We are fascinated by that ancient artist. Bataille understands that our search for him is equivalent to the search for ourselves. ... Read more

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Set against the backdrop of Europe's slide into Fascism, this twentieth-century erotic classic takes the reader on a dark journey through the psyche of the pre-war French intelligentsia, torn between identification with the victims of history and the glamour of its victors. One of Bataille's overtly political works, it explores the ambiguity of sex as a subversive force, bringing violence, power and death together in a terrifying unity. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

A Review by Dr. Joseph Suglia
According to Georges Bataille's autobiographical note, LE BLEU DU CIEL ("The Blue of the Sky") was composed in the twilight before the occupation of Vichy France.

The descending night darkens these pages.

Dissolute journalist Henri Troppmann ("Too-Much-Man") and his lover, Dirty give way to every impulse, to every surfacing urge, no matter how vulgar. Careening from one sex-and-death spasm to the next, they deliver themselves over to infinite possibilities of debauchery. A fly drowning in a puddle of whitish fluid (or is it the thought of his mother, a woman he must not desire?) prompts Troppmann to plunge a fork into a woman's supple white thigh. The threat of Nazi terror incites a coupling in a boneyard.

Their only desire is to besmirch whatever is elevated, to vulgarize the holy, to pollute it, to corrupt it, to bring it down into the mud.

By muddying whatever is "sacred," they maintain the force of "the sacred."

As a historical document, BLEU DU CIEL is eminently interesting. It offers unforgettably vivid portraits of Colette Peignot (as Dirty) and the "red nun" Simone Weil (as Lazare).

It is also the story of a man who is fascinated with fascism and the phallus, of someone who loves war, although not for teleological reasons. It is the story of a man who celebrates war on its own terms, who nihilistically affirms its limitless power of destruction.

As the night materializes, the blue of the sky disappears.

Dr. Joseph Suglia

More languid than arousing
Not nearly as memorable as the surrealist pornography of "The Story of an Eye," nor as thought-provoking as his study of the tangling of the great death and the "little death" of orgasm in his sex-and-mortality, violence-and-the sacred exploration "Erotism," this slim novel, as the author's uncomfortable tone betrays in its afterword, appears half-finished and abandoned rather than meant as it is for publication.

Lazare's fanatical devotion to the Left and especially Dirty's penchant for decadent and unsanitary lifestyle choices remain the most powerfully characterized moments, but too much of the novel remains as jittery and haphazard-- albeit Bataille argues in the afterword he meant it to be read as such-- as comparatively mundane next to the strong opening vignette of Troppmann and Dirty in one of literature's most effectively rendered dives, even by Parisian standards.

As one who has read plenty of Céline, a bit of Sade, and some of Sartre's fiction, this novel held some interest. Yet, it seems too slack, too dragged down by ennui. Far less erotic than a reader of "The Story of An Eye" might expect, this instead recalls Bataille's protege, Pierre Klossowski (his novels have been reviewed by me on Amazon; he's the brother of the painter Balthus) and his philosophical protagonists who also are prone more to shuffling about rather than coupling energetically. The extravagant claims left by readers here appear unfounded, given the turgid pace of its pages and the uneven tone of the narrative.

a severely underrated masterpiece
I don't understand why this book is considered to be one of Bataille's [illegitimate] children. It's beautifully written. The man was capable of working miracles with words through his style and arrangement of them. Blue of Noon is definitely not an exception.

Bataille's style is always one of brutal elegance. He's like a lover who slaps you in the face, only to pull you into a gentle embrace a moment later.

The main character, Troppman, is the star here - he is a deviant trying is best not to be. Ahhhh, the internal struggles - do you stay married and live your life as a respectable, productive member of society. Or do you run off with [prostitutes] and derelicts to indulge the savage needs you've so long supressed.

Not to be outdone, his brightest co-star, is a woman named Dirty. She is a beautiful creation. She is a train wreck of a woman. She and Troppman braid themselves together in clearly conspicuous codependence of the worst sort, bawdy drunkeness paving the pathways to irrevocable damnation.

I also enjoyed Lazare; a woman Troppman finds himself thoroughly disgusted with, she has no redeeming features. Yet, he cannot stay away.

If you are a fan of the madman Bataille, don't miss out on this one. I think this is truly some of his best work.

a severely underrated masterpiece
I don't understand why this book is considered to be one of Bataille's bastard children. It's beautifully written. The man was capable of working miracles with words through his style and arrangement of them. Blue of Noon is definitely not an exception.

Bataille's style is always one of brutal elegance. He's like a lover who slaps you in the face, only to pull you into a gentle embrace a moment later.

The main character, Troppman, is the star here - he is a deviant trying is best not to be. Ahhhh, the internal struggles - do you stay married and live your life as a respectable, productive member of society. Or do you run off with whores and derelicts to indulge the savage needs you've so long supressed.

Not to be outdone, his brightest co-star, is a woman named Dirty. She is a beautiful creation. She is a train wreck of a woman. She and Troppman braid themselves together in clearly conspicuous codependence of the worst sort, bawdy drunkeness paving the pathways to irrevocable damnation.

I also enjoyed Lazare; a woman Troppman finds himself thoroughly disgusted with, she has no redeeming features. Yet, he cannot stay away.

If you are a fan of the madman Bataille, don't miss out on this one. I think this is truly some of his best work.

De Sade's nephew gets all sociopolitical.
"Blue of Noon" is the story of Henri, an amoral man living in Europe during the 1930s. He is supposedly married, but spends his time with similarly amoral women, lacking clothing, inhibition, shame, and even proper hygeine at times. He zips between London, Paris, Barcelona, and Frankfurt, and frankly, engages in nothing but immoral self-satisfying activities in every spot.

At various times, he agonizes over his relationships with his wife, his sexual partners, and his deceased mother. He becomes embroiled in a Communist revolutionary plot in Barcelona, with one of his sexual partners, a Jewish woman, involved in its planning and execution. He reveals his necrophilic obsession to two of his partners, further revealing the exact, even more sickening, subject of his obsession to one of them. He has sex, he gets sick, his women have sex, they get sick, everybody has sex, everybody gets sick. For the punchline, near the end of the novel, Bataille throws Nazis into the picture, showing us that all the depravity of fascism is comparable to the depravity he has shown us all along. Though published in 1957, the book was originally written in 1936.

This reviewer isn't buying it. Not a word of it. Not the story, not even the "1936" part. For one thing, the writing style is actually more mature than that of "L'Abbe C", published in 1950. Bataille is most probably trying to show off that he detected the evil inherent in the Nazis "way back when". I don't give him that much credit.

For another thing, I think he uses Nazis as an easy way to score "scary" points. One might intellectualize his choice by saying Bataille is trying to tell us that no matter how disgusting humans may act, at least we're not as bad as Nazis. Imagine a murderer begging leniency because he's not a Nazi. He's still a murderer. It seems Bataille is using Nazis to justify the pornography he just wrote, as if the world is such a horrible place that pornography is just another little bit of it, and tries to throw a philosophical wrench into the works, as if saying life is meaningless in the face of all the horrible things fascism is doing to us in Europe, but I suspect it was all done just for the hell of it. I frankly don't see any rhyme or reason to the thematic choices he makes.

I have nothing against the depravity or explicit nature of the book. "Been there, done that", right? It's not even all that explicit, there's probably less sex in this book than the average mainstream novel today, and he's certainly not advocating committing even the slightest harm to anyone. There are a few disturbing or distasteful ideas here and there, but one never gets the sense Bataille really means what he's writing. One gets the sense he's simply trying to come up with every juxtaposition of immoral behavior and social taboo he can, just to tweak the reader's moral compass a bit, trying to get a cheap rise out of his audience. Maybe this was an interesting exercise in 1957 (or "1936"), but given the state of depravity which existed in Germany during the 1920s, and the state of sexual liberation which swept Europe from the late 19th century through the early 20th century, I strongly doubt it.

Perhaps the target reader for this book will be the person interested in twisted versions of 19th-century literature (Bataille wrote like someone living 50 or 100 years before his time), or the works of De Sade (albeit in highly shortened format, this book being only 126 pages). ... Read more

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Reviled and fetishized, the work of Georges Bataille (1897–1962) has been most often reduced to his outrageous, erotic, and libertine fiction and essays. But increasingly, readers are finding his insights into politics, economics, sexuality, and performance revealing and timely. Focusing on Bataille’s most extensive work, The Accursed Share, Shannon Winnubst and the contributors to this volume present contemporary interpretations that read Bataille in a new light. These essays situate Bataille in French and European intellectual traditions, bring forward key concepts for understanding the challenges posed by his important work, and draw out his philosophy. Established voices and younger scholars cover a range of topics and themes, including ethics, politics, economy, psychology, and performance so readers can think with and through Bataille. While focusing attention on Bataille and his provocative work, this book offers a sympathetic, yet critical, reappraisal and rehabilitation.

Contributors are Alison Leigh Brown, Andrew Cutrofello, Zeynep Direk, Jesse Goldhammer, Dorothy Holland, Pierre Lamarche, Richard A. Lee, Jr., Alphonso Lingis, Ladelle McWhorter, Lucio A. Privitello, Allan Stoekl, Amy Wendling, and Shannon Winnubst. ... Read more

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A deft reconstruction of what Georges Bataille envisioned as a continuation of his work La Somme Athéologique, this volume brings together the writings of one of the foremost French thinkers of the twentieth century on the central topic of his oeuvre. Gathering Bataille's most intimate writings, these essays, aphorisms, notes, and lectures on nonknowledge, sovereignty, and sacrifice clarify and extend Bataille's radical theology, his philosophy of history, and his ecstatic method of meditation.

Following Bataille's lead, as laid out in his notebooks, editor Stuart Kendall assembles the fragments that Bataille anticipated collecting for his summa. Kendall's introduction offers a clear picture of the author's overall project, its historical and biographical context, and the place of these works within it. The "system" that emerges from these articles, notes, and lectures is "atheology," understood as a study of the effects of nonknowledge.

At the other side of realism, Bataille's writing in La Somme pushes language to its silent end. And yet, writing toward the ruin of language, in search of words that slip from their meanings, Bataille uses language-and the discourses of theology, philosophy, and literature-against itself to return us to ourselves, endlessly. The system against systems is in fact systematic, using systems and depending on discourses to achieve its own ends-the end of systematic thought.

A medievalist librarian by training, Georges Bataille (1897-1962) was active in the French intellectual scene from the 1920s through the 1950s. He founded the journal Critique and was a member of the Acéphale group and the Collège de sociologie. Among his works available in English are Visions of Excess (Minnesota, 1985), Tears of Eros (1989), and Erotism (1990).

Stuart Kendall and Michelle Kendall are freelance translators who live in Stony Brook, New York. ... Read more

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George Bataille (1867-1962) is widely recognized as one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. This is the first book in English to examine Bataille's work as a whole. It offers an accessible introduction to a complex and often ambiguous thinker. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

unclear on the concepts
This is a simplistic, narrow-minded, and conservative attempt to place Bataille within a conventional art historical framework. The author spends the first chapter ranting and raving about how poststructuralist claims of allegiance to Bataille are misguided because Bataille died before structuralism was even invented. He congratulates himself on this in-the-box insight, wondering why no one else has thought of it before. I put the book away at that point. Thank God I borrowed this from the library rather than spend money on it.

Bataille, considered from a position of sobriety...
Bataille is often more fun to talk about than to actually read, more inspiring to misunderstand than to comprehend. As a result, a lot of books on Bataille end up being a record of the author's subject and intoxicated personal encounter with Bataille's supposed ideas. This, they often claim, is encouraged by the very nature of Bataille's work...in which Bataille is often engaged, quite literally, in the extreme.

Richardson's main objective in this introductory study is to rescue Bataille from this sort of breathless, hysterical, and inaccurate "critical" response and restore Bataille to his rightful place in traditional scholarship--a place, Richardson argues, that Bataille never entirely foreswore in spite of his own wild, personal, and unconventional way of philosophizing.

The results is a concise and lucidly written overvew of Bataille's work from soup to stern. Richardson does an excellent job of charting Bataille's labyrinthine thought and lighting the way through the blacker passages; it's an even more impressive accomplishment in a work as short as this one.

Although he seeks to take some of the fang out of Bataille and rather overstates his case to make his point, and to situate Bataille within the purview of a conventional scholarship where, in fact, Bataille does not easily fit, if at all, Richardson's little book remains a much-needed shot of corrective sobriety in a field where so many others have used Bataille as license to flail about unreservedly in a state of philosophical intoxication speculating in ways that reveal more about themselves than about what Bataille actually wrote.

Richardson gives us a Bataille without the hero worship, without the sensationalism, and without the personal "responses" of authors on Bataille whose value as entertainment often comes at the price of distortion.

In any event, a good little book to sit on the shelf between your others on Bataille.
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Patrick ffrench gives an imaginative theoretical reading of the unsettling masterpiece, Histoire de l'oeil (1928), by the French writer Georges Bataille, recognized now as a major figure in twentieth-century French literature. Bataille's erotic and disturbing text is a traumatic event in the history of modernity, provoking critical moments in the trajectories of structuralism and in the recent theorizations around his notion of the informe. ... Read more

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illustrated edition, tr "Jayne Austen" ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Confrontation with death with drunken sex
"Confrontation with death with drunken sex" may not sound appealing as a book.However, this book has several positives that make it worth reading and rereading: 1) the book is very well structured into shortsegments titled with a summary of the action - the titles themselves bearmuch of the meaning of the story as if they formed a poem of which the textis a commentary 2) the text is extremely well written - a lesson ineffective use of words 3) the text is thought provoking - the sexual,drunken crudeness is demanded of the text not a superficial addon.Youwill be forced to reconsider your notion of death, evil and pleasure. 4)the drawings capture the madness (darkness} of the tale

While the bookcan be read quickly, multiple readings are needed to tease out meaning(s)... and it is well worth those multiple readings. ... Read more

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Georges Bataille's powerful writings have fascinated many readers, enmeshed as they are with the themes of sex and death. His emotive discourse of excess, transgression, sacrifice, and the sacred has had a profound and notable influence on thinkers such as Foucault, Derrida and Kristeva. Bataille: Writing the Sacred examines the continuing power and influence of his work.
The full extent of Bataille's subversive and influential writings has only been made available to an English-speaking audience in recent years. By bringing together international specialists on Bataille from philosophy and literature to art history, this collection is able to explore the many facets of his writings.
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Excessive Narratives: Georges Bataille, Self-Sacrifice & The Communal Language of the Yucatec Maya:This essay is based on Georges Bataille's 1930s cultural theory of 'general economy' which presented modern living as problematic for societies that attempt to survive as a construct of multiple 'sovereign selves' expending themselves as useful in an overarching edict of economy (Bataille, 1949). However, the descendents of Late Formative Mayan culture (300BC-100AD) live according to 'other' narratives recognizing that a more 'useful' objective loss of self is to be found in the unconscious revelations of language and ritual performance. Self-sacrifice is beneficial to cross-communal relations when the sovereign self released in memorial moments facilitates a better understanding of our place in larger world and cosmic orders (Heyden 1981, Joyce, 2003).U Chan Tsola'ni Ek Balam (The Short Story of The Black Cat):Written from travel experiences in Southeast Mexico, this humorous Mexican 'memory play' explores language alterity and the roles nature and myth play in understanding the mis-understandings of the 'indigenous Maya'. The story is of a respected academic who travels to Mexico in search of the Cult of the Black Cat. Told in English, Yucatec Mayan and poor Spanish, the play is structured according to the everyday language of the Yucatec Maya where performing a triumvirate of 'teller, respondent and audience' allows physiocratic meanings to appear through acts of 'inactive witnessing'. ... Read more