Georges Bataille

An Intellectual Biography

By: Michel Surya, Michael Richardson (Translator), Krzysztof Fijalkowski (Translator)

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Paperback | 1 March 2010 | Edition Number 1

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608 Pages

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22.7 x 15.5 x 4.6

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Georges Bataille was a philosopher, writer, librarian, pornographer and a founder of the influential journals Critique and Acéphale. He has had an enormous impact on contemporary thought, influencing such writers as Barthes, Baudrillard, Derrida, Foucault and Sontag. Many of his books, including the notorious Story of the Eye and the fascinating The Accursed Share, are modern classics.

In this acclaimed intellectual biography, Michel Surya gives a detailed and insightful account of Bataille’s work against the backdrop of his life – his troubled childhood, his difficult relationship with André Breton and the surrealists and his curious position as a thinker of excess, ‘potlatch’, sexual extremes and religious sacrifice, one who nonetheless remains at the heart of twentieth century French thought—all of it drawn here in rich and allusive prose. While exploring the source of the violent eroticism that laces Bataille’s novels, the book is also an acute guide to the development of Bataille’s philosophical thought. Enriched by testimonies from Bataille’s closest acquaintances and revealing the context in which he worked, Surya sheds light on a figure Foucault described as ‘one of the most important writers of the century’.

Industry Reviews

Such is Surya's intimacy with this material that each of his short, thoughtful chapters could serve as an introductory essay on Bataille.A" Independent

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Foreword	p. ix

In the beginning was death	p. 3
'Turn the world upside down, turn the world, quite ineluctably, upside down'	p. 14
'The thunderbolt pilots all things'	p. 16
Ave Caesar	p. 22
'Laid out like a corpse'	p. 25
The school of the flesh	p. 27
'Hard brow and clear eyes'	p. 31
Tumult and withdrawal	p. 34
The depths of worlds	p. 36
La emoción	p. 39
Letters to an unknown woman	p. 45
'When you have to embark on the seas, you emigrants'	p. 51
The joyful cynic	p. 55
'Tristi est anima mea usque ad mortem'	p. 57

Torpid Maurras and decrepit Moscow	p. 67
Magnetic field	p. 71
The mortuary chasm of debauchery	p. 82
The philosopher and the rake	p. 85
'I write in order to erase my name'	p. 88
The torture of a Hundred Pieces	p. 93
The priest of Torcy	p. 96
Triunfo de la muerte	p. 100
The eye at work	p. 107
Don't waste my time with idealism!	p. 112
The donkey's kick	p. 116
'Excrement philosopher'	p. 126
The castrated lion	p. 131
'Surrealism's secret affectations'	p. 135
The angel and the beast, part 1	p. 140
'A man is what he lacks'	p. 143
'An obscene and horribly desirable trick'	p. 153

'Someone able to see clearly'	p. 159
The Democratic Communist Circle	p. 167
The state: heartbreak and misfortune	p. 171
'A world of appearances and of old men with their teeth falling out'	p. 176
'With a single blow, like an ox in the abattoir'	p. 183
History and its ends; the end of history	p. 187
The animal-headed journal: Minotaure	p. 191
'The saint of the abyss'	p. 196
Thunderbolts and forebodings	p. 205
The sky turned upside down	p. 209
'Revolutionary offensive or death'	p. 218
The angel and the beast, part 2	p. 228
From Contre-Attaque to Acéphale: André Masson	p. 231
'Everything calls for the death which ravages us'	p. 235
Florid bullfight	p. 254
Sacred sociology	p. 261
Vivan le femmine, viva il buon vino, sostegno e gloria d'umanita	p. 271

Good fortune	p. 281
'I am myself war'	p. 283
'I love ignorance touching on the future'	p. 289
The excretions of the war: exodus, evacuation	p. 297
Nobodaddy	p. 300
Edwarda: the divine tatters	p. 305
'I call myself the abomination of God'	p. 309
The community of friends	p. 311
From the community of the impossible to the impossible community	p. 316
The annunciation made to Marie	p. 318
Sickening poetic sentimentality	p. 322
Philosophy's 'easy virtue'	p. 329
'System is needed and so is excess'	p. 337
Philosophy in the old folk's home	p. 344
The catechism of fortune	p. 352

A potential for stench and irremediable fury	p. 357
Fascism's last sanctuary	p. 363
Bataille's politics	p. 368
Il salto mortale	p. 376
The curse of history	p. 380
The empire of the double	p. 387
From Vézelay to Carpentras	p. 395
Communal demands	p. 403
The angel and the beast, part 3	p. 407
Continuity discontinued	p. 415
Non serviam	p. 420
A hypermorality: for the love of anguish alone	p. 425
Moral evil	p. 427
The sovereign individual	p. 437
The catechism of 'saints'	p. 441
The servitude of utility	p. 446
The accursed body	p. 450
What lies behind misfortune	p. 454
Felix culpa	p. 458
Universal history	p. 462
The bit between the teeth	p. 465
To die of laughing and to laugh of dying	p. 474
To think everything to a point that makes people tremble	p. 479
'God: a Feydeau-style situation comedy'	p. 482
'One day this living world will pullulate in my dead mouth'	p. 487
And finally, incompletion	p. 490
Afterword	p. 493
Notes	p. 495
Bibliography	p. 581
Index	p. 585
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Georges Bataille

An Intellectual Biography

At a Glance

Paperback

Industry Reviews

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