Summary
Contents
Subject index
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 a
Politics
Politics
From the earliest writings, Bataille's texts are driven by antipathy to modern, Western, capitalist society. If anything, politics is where Bataille is at his most consistent, even if, as usual, there are shifts in emphasis and counter-intuitive moves on his part. When we look to assess his political position(s), we have to cover two distinct aspects: his stated positions, whether to do with the political position of others, his own, or his view on politics as a category of activity; and the political implications of his writings. The first set of aspects is the one that I will deal with directly here, and from these I will draw out some of the political implications.
The principal period in which Bataille is most like the figure ...
- Loading...