Bataille, Georges
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Bataille, Georges (1887-1962), French novelist, philosopher, and poet.
Bataille held that it was through excess alone, and not deprivation,
that one could arrive at total spiritual freedom.
Bataille was born in Billom, Puy-de-Dome, France, on Sept. 10, 1887. He
worked at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris between 1920 and 1942, first
as a librarian and then as the deputy keeper and editor of Documents. In
1946 Bataille founded the literary review Critique, which became one of
the most distinguished and influential intellectual journals in France.
He continued editing this publication until July 8, 1962, when he died
in Puy-de-Dome.
Although he usually wrote under his own name, some of Bataille's writings
bear pseudonyms. "Lord Auch" was used for the English translation of
Histoire de l'oeil (1928; The Story of the Eye, 1967), a classic of
pornographic literature that considers eroticism as it relates to obsessive
fantasies of excess. Bataille used the pseudonym "Pierre Angelique" for
Madame Edwarda (1937; The Naked Beast at Heaven's Gate, 1956).
Bataille's appearance on the French literary scene coincided with that
of the Surrealist movement. Although some of his ideas (La Coupable, 1944;
The Guilty One) were readily accepted by the Surrealists and he was admired
by them, he kept himself apart. Surrealism dwelt on the somber forces of
the unconscious. Bataille is quoted as having criticized their fixation
as "not dark enough." In his homage to Bataille, Andre Breton claimed:
"Of all our generation Bataille is the closest to Sade."
Bataille's writings include L'Erotisme (1957; Eroticism 1962), in which he,
through the works of Emily Bronte, de Sade, and many others, explores the
power of the erotic as it relates to prostitution, sadism, religious ecstasy,
and warfare; La Litterature et la mal (1957; Literature and Evil 1973); and
Le Proces de Gilles de Rais (1965; The Trial of Gilles de Rais 1991) in
which Bataille examines the extremes of human experience through the crimes,
trials, and confessions of a terrifying 15th-century child murderer. Les
Larmes d'eros (1961; Tears of Eros 1992) stands as the culmination of
Bataille's research into the relationship between violence and the sacred.
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Bataille, Georges (1897–1962)
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Georges Bataille was born in Billom, France, raised in Reims, and spent
much of his adult life in Paris. Never formally trained as a philosopher,
he worked from 1922 to 1942 as a librarian at the Bibliotheque Nationale.
In addition to his philosophical works, Bataille also wrote on the history
of art as well as a number of critical works and novels.
Owing to his position outside academic philosophy, Bataille was able to
treat diverse topics in ways which might have been unacceptable otherwise.
His work addresses the importance of sacrifice, eroticism and death, as
well as the kinds of ‘expenditure’ evidenced by what he called the
general economy. It draws on diverse sources (Hegel, Nietzsche, Marcel
Mauss, anthropological research, and the history of religion, among others)
and treats a wide range of topics: the role of art in human life, the
practice of sacrifice in ancient and modern cultures, the role of death in
our understanding of subjectivity, and the limits of knowledge.
Bataille’s major works include: L’Experience interieure (1943) (Inner
Experience, 1988; composed 1941–2; materials from 1924 on), La Part
maudite (1949) (The Accursed Share, vol. 1, 1949; vols 2–3, 1976; written
1946–9; planned as early as 1930), L’Erotisme (1957) (Erotism, Death and
Sensuality, 1986; planned from 1930), Sur Nietzsche (1945) (On Nietzsche,
1992; written mid-1940s) and Theorie de religion (1974) (Theory of Religion,
1989; composed late 1940s). He is known largely for his connections with
Surrealism, although his alliance with the movement was often strained.
He is also considered an important forerunner of ‘postmodernism’,
although he died before the word was coined. Much of his work manifests a
resistance to systematicity and a desire to produce texts (which he called
heterologies) which escape unitary interpretations. Such heterologies concern
what is entirely other, and thus resist being reduced to the identities
necessary for thought and language. The attempt to think the heterologous
means to think that which is outside, and thus to transgress the bounds of
thought (which remains, in an important way, an impossible undertaking).
Bataille names that which transcends the bounds of science, the everyday,
and time the Sacred. His work on general economy, however, owing to the
influence of Mauss, shows certain systematic and structuralist tendencies.
Many of Bataille’s most important texts comprise what he called La Somme
atheologique, which analyses the Sacred at both individual and societal
levels. At the most individual level (that of inner experience), Bataille
investigates the possibility of transcending our everyday understanding of
individuality without losing all notions of subjectivity. These
investigations are oriented towards no particular goal or knowledge, but
begin with a ‘phenomenological’ account of experience itself. Drawing on
Nietzsche, Bataille insists that experiences and sensations take place
before there is a subject to experience them; the subject is only
established in and through experience. Moreover, if one chooses the
right sorts of experience (those of intense suffering), a point is
reached where pain ceases to be felt and one’s own subjectivity is
transcended. Since this experience is often followed by death, research
into this kind of transcendence is both dangerous and difficult to
replicate. It was these dangers, at least in part, which led Bataille to
develop alternative accounts of the move towards the Sacred. What remains
constant, however, is the important place he gave to the notion of death.
Later, Bataille developed the important systematic notion of general economy
with its emphasis on expenditure. Focusing on surplus and expenditure as the
primary notions of economics (rather than on scarcity, as standard economic
models do) allows Bataille to link his work on political economy with his
work on inner experience, eroticism and religion, all of which he
characterizes as displays of excess or surplus. Here the Sacred is
expressed in social practices rather than individual experiences. By
focusing on social behaviour which exceeds the limits of (instrumental)
rational explanation (such as Amerindian potlatch ceremonies), Bataille
highlights the myriad ways in which human life and practice resists
rational description.
The concept of a general economy of energy flows allows one to analyse not
only economic phenomena but social, anthropological, biological and physical
ones as well. The fundamental problem with which the general economy must
deal is that of excess. The earth has a constant supply of new solar energy
which must be either taken up or dispersed in some way. Societies, which
draw on this energy, quickly reach a point where production exceeds
necessity. The process by which this excess is dealt with is expenditure,
which often takes place in a way which expresses the Sacred: through
sacrifice or warfare. Such sacrifice may take a literal form (as in Aztec
society) or a more figural one as in the modern culture of conspicuous
consumption.
Practices such as sacrifice and warfare serve the Sacred by elevating those
who are destroyed, together with that in whose name the destruction occurs,
above the realm of mere things. Even the victim is elevated; for the
destruction that sacrifice is intended to bring about is not
annihilation (Bataille 1974: 43).
The Sacred in general removes things from the realm of mere usefulness and
thus elevates them above time and its laws of necessity and causality. It
not only leaves the realm of reason and discourse behind (which is part of
what makes it so difficult for Bataille to discuss it), but actually
destroys them (at least temporarily) as well. The human move towards the
Sacred is thus beset with a major difficulty. On the one hand, the Sacred
allows humans to separate themselves off from the realm of necessity by
moving towards transcendence. But if such transcendence leaves the realm
of necessity entirely behind, it results in death. Bataille’s proposed
solution to this problem is to limit moments of sacrifice so that their
transcendence of time is still caught up in time. The first example of
this is the festival; the second is war (which still results in death
for many of its participants).
Bataille also treats the problem of transcendence through investigations of
eroticism. Eroticism is simultaneously the most potent form of embodied
experience and one which, like a Dionysian festival, transcends (at least
for a time) bodily and temporal limits. And, like the festival, such
experiences risk absolute annihilation but usually end with a return to
the everyday (although not the same everyday).
How to cite this article:
MASKIT, JONATHAN (1998). Bataille, Georges. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved November 11, 2004,
from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/DE002
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