Book Description
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'.Robert John Brocklehurst (BA Hons, Fine Art, Winchester School of Art; PGD in Video Production, Bournemouth University; MA in Cultural Memory, University of London)Bob Brocklehurst is a lecturer in Technical Theatre. He is currently conducting research at the University ofManchester, focussing on the relation between visual language and communal memory within Yucatec Mayan communities, Central Yucatan, Mexico. He has also worked as both a visiting lecturer and filmmaker in California, Bosnia Herzegovina and Ghana, West Africa. ... Read more

Book Description
Over the past 30 years the writings of Georges Bataille have had a profound influence on French intellectual thought, informing the work of Foucault, Derrida, and Barthes, among others. Against Architecture offers the first serious interpretation of this challenging thinker, spelling out the profoundly original and radical nature of Bataille's work.

Denis Hollier is Professor of French at Yale University. ... Read more

Book Description

When Sartre referred to Georges Bataille as a "new mystic," he meant the label as an insult. Sartre considered mysticism to be a less rigorous mode of inquiry than philosophy -- especially dangerous where the writings of mystics adapt philosophical terminology for different purposes. In Georges Bataille and the Mysticism of Sin, Peter Connor argues that literary scholars, eager to represent Bataille as a philosopher or as an early deconstructionist, have tended to neglect or misunderstand Bataille's interest in mysticism. Connor's study corrects this distorted view of Bataille, giving us a more complete picture of the complex and influential writer.

With careful attention to Bataille's historical and intellectual context, Connor raises many important questions: What drew Bataille to the mystics? How did he conceive of their thought in relation to his own? And what is the connection between mysticism and morality? This last question raises an especially interesting issue for Bataille, an atheist whom readers generally associate with images of transgression and sin. Through examination of Bataille's writings -- including Inner Experience and his underappreciated final book, Tears of Eros -- Connor shows the surprising connection between Bataille's mysticism and his sense of personal and political ethics. Mysticism, Connor argues, lies at the heart of Bataille's double identity as an intellectual and as a kind of anarchic prophet.

Book Description

Divine Filth is a collection of long-overlooked erotic prose and scatological fragments rivaled only by Georges Bataille's most well-known work, Story of the Eye, for pure "pornographic" content that transcends the limits of literature and the self. These are the shattered mystic visions of a seminal Surrealist with a deep thirst for the negation of consciousness through ecstasy, humiliation, depravity and pain.

Book Description
Long recognized in France as a central figure in French cultural thought, the range and significance of Batille's ideas are now being grasped in the English speaking world. His influence on Derrida, Foucault, Kristeva and Baudrillard is now more clearly understood and Bataille has emerged as a front-rank cultural theorist who posed questions and paradoxes that were extraordinarily prescient.This book offers a comprehensive and detailed presentation and analysis of the full range of his writings - political, philosophical, aesthetic, literary, anthropological and cultural. And tackles his thoughts on waste, sacrifice, death, eroticism, surplus, ecstasy and drunkenness, offering the best available guide to this challenging and utterly unique thinker. ... Read more

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Product Description
The essays in this collection were originally given at the international colloquium Cent Ans de Bataille: La Bataille de Cent Ans held at the Fondació Tàpies in Barcelona in September 1998.They are written from a variety of perspectives but are drawn together by the singular aim of addressing and interrogating Georges Bataille as our contemporary whose fascination with the rupture between mythical and experimental forms of discourse defines our own age as much as it did in Bataille’s own time.More precisely, the essays in this collection range over Bataille’s status as a novelist, a poet, an art critic, a philosopher and a prophet of post-modernity with this aim in mind. They not only seek to advance and clarify debate about Bataille’s present status in the post-modern canon but also shed new light on the complex relation between Bataille and the present generation of readers who have come to him through the prism of post-modernist thought. It is of significance for each writer in this collection, most crucially, that the premonition of catastrophe which defined Bataille’s fluid political positions is also located between tragedy and irony.Table of ContentsAndrew HUSSEY: The Beast at Heaven’s Gate: Georges Bataille and the Art of TransgressionBoris BELAY: Le Secret du corps de Madame Edwarda (Bataille de la philosophie à la limite de l’obscène) Martin CROWLEY: L’eschatologie trouée de Ma MèreLina FRANCO: Deux écrivains face à l’histoire: George Bataille et Elio Vittorini. La hantise du politiquePatrick FFRENCH: Dirty LifePaul HEGARTY: As Above, So Below; Informe/Sublime/AbjectAndrew HUSSEY: ‘The Slaughterhouse of Love’: The Corpse of‘Laure’Ian JAMES: From Recuperation to Simulacrum: Klossowski’s Readings of George BatailleCathy MACGREGOR: The Eye of the Storm: Female Representation in Bataille’sMadame Edwarda and Histoire de l’oeilJohn PHILIPS: ‘The Law of the Mother’: Masochism, Fetishism and Subjectivityin George Bataille’s Histoire de l’oeilMalcolm POLLARD: The Use-Value of Georges Bataille: Philippe Sollers and the Act ofWritingRichard WILLIAMS: Informe and ‘Anti Form’Notes on Contributors ... 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

Book Description
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

Product Description
A l'heure où l' uvre de Georges Bataille a acquis une nouvelle dimension avec la publication de ses romans et de ses récits dans la Pléiade, il est temps de reconnaître toute son importance au mot de poésie qui, dans sonuvre, éclaire le mieux le rapport complexe que cet auteur entretint avec la littérature, tous genres confondus. Bien que le temps soit révolu où les études critiques consacrées à Bataille se contentaient, quand elles prenaient la peine de le faire, de reléguer la poésie au rang de question mineure, force est de constater que celle-ci reste encore marginalisée et mal comprise dans les études les plus récentes.La méditation de Bataille n'est pas d'un bloc. Fragmentaire, elle est plutôt faite de reprises incessantes où chaque fois la question de la poésie est rejouée, abordée à partir d'un biais nouveau, comme si Bataille trouvait dans cette multiplication des angles d'attaque la meilleure manière de s'approcher d'un objet qu'il savait le plus fuyant. Ainsi, seront tour à tour envisagés les rapports que Bataille entretint avec le surréalisme et plus particulièrement avec l'écriture automatique ; l'articulation qu'il voulut opérer entre la poésie et l'expérience ; la manière dont il se servit du sacrifice pour penser les modalités de l'écriture de la poésie ; la façon dont il se mit en jeu dans les poèmes et les rapports que cette mise en jeu entretient avec celle qu'il tenta à travers ses fictions; la question enfin de la communauté avec laquelle ses méditations trouvent peut-être leur plus grand accomplissement, si bien que ce qui se formule alors est sans doute ce qui, de cetteuvre, nous interroge le plus aujourd'hui.Table des Matières:**Influence du surréalisme**Dépasser les notions infiniment**Poésie et expérience**La haine et l'image**L'oeuvre sacrifiée**La poésie et la nuit**Se mettre en jeu**Vers une communauté poétique**Bibliographies** ... Read more

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A comparative study of the concept of eroticism in the works of Henry Miller and Georges Bataille, a French novelist and philosopher of the twentieth century. ... Read more

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Book Description
Bataille's Wound is a fictional presentation of the thought of a central modern French thinker and novelist, showing him as radical teacher and mentor. George Bataille was a highly controversial writer associated with the Surrealist movement and -- in writing often considered by turns pornographic and brilliant -- concerned with moral transgression and the authenticity of inner experience. Greene uses quotation, paraphrase, and the recreation of Bataille's celebrated style to further the spirit of that work. ... Read more

Book Description
An impassionate and fearless study of Georges Bataille which goes beyond analysis and criticism to actually engage with him. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Nick Land and Victor Vitanza
I remember when i was student and studying this book with Prof. Victor Vitanza who loved this book. we grew up with this book, Lyotard's libidinal economy and DG's Anti-Oedipus. We discussed that Nick Land's book is an independent work which itself is a masterpiece or at least too thrilling to bear. Although this book is very difficult and english is my second language but it is the best book i have ever read so far. this reviewer who has given it one star either doesn't understand bataille at all or has some personal issues with the writer. i don't wonder how UK reviewers hated this man when he did a radical thing and went to China and started to work as an unknown columnist. his later texts and his writings on America and War should be read with no moral presuppositions as this great book suffers no morality; i imagine they have hidden purposes behind thier clear messages. i don't exaggerate when i claim Nick Land is the bravest writer in our time compared to Lautreamont, Celine, Vian, Sade and Bataille himself. It is too much to ask UK readers or other enemies of this book and its writer to put thier hatred and rigid values aside and look deep into this book. if i could only offer this book 10 stars...

Onanistic hubris
Quite simply the most misguided, irritating, self-indulgent...let's just say the worst text ever written on Bataille (although I certainly do not limit its putrescence to Bataille literature alone). On every page this author is practically screaming, "Look at me! I can be like him! I'm the Ass who saw the Angel (yes, he wishes he were Nick Cave too, I imagine) I can write like him!". Seriously... perhaps the lowest point...an anecdote...a guy walks into a bar and explains to the bartender that he just cut the throat of God. It doesn't, nay can't get any worse than this.

A Jungle out of machines
Imagine a jungle full of machines, full of rhizomes, lines of mutations, cyclonic logics, dangerous ciphers, etc. ... Read more

Book Description
This is the first book in English to offer an accessible introduction to the work of Georges Bataille, recognized as one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. Bataille developed a complex philosophy based upon an examination of the interplay between death and eroticism. For him, eroticism was the foundation of human experience and provided sharp insight into the basis of human society and the individual's response to society.

The theories of Bataille, although largely neglected during his lifetime, have grown in influence during the last 30 years--first in France and more recently in Britain and the US, where they have often been associated with the rise of post-structuralism and postmodernism.

Although most of Bataille's works have now been translated into English, there has been little accessible critical commentary on his work. Often misunderstood and conflated too readily with postmodernism, Bataille is a far more multifaceted thinker who cannot easily be categorized. This book seeks to both identify the essential qualities of Bataille's work and to critically examine the concepts he uses. Written with both clarity and precision, Georges Bataille is a superb analysis of the intellectual roots of modern social theory and as such represents a major contribution to the historical and analytical development of postmodernism. ... Read more