Since the publication of Visions of Excess in 1985, there has been an explosion of interest in the work of Georges Bataille. The French surrealist continues to be important for his groundbreaking focus on the visceral, the erotic, and the relation of society to the primeval. This collection of prewar writings remains the volume in which Batailles's positions are most clearly, forcefully, and obsessively put forward.This book challenges the notion of a "closed economy" predicated on utility, production, and rational consumption, and develops an alternative theory that takes into account the...
Since the publication of Visions of Excess in 1985, there has been an explosion of interest in the work of Georges Bataille. The French surrealist con...
A deft reconstruction of what Georges Bataille envisioned as a continuation of his work La Somme Atheologique, 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...
A deft reconstruction of what Georges Bataille envisioned as a continuation of his work La Somme Atheologique, this volume brings together the writing...
Theory of Religion brings to philosophy what Bataille's earlier book, The Accursed Share, brought to anthropology and history; namely, an analysis based on notions of excess and expenditure. Bataille brilliantly defines religion as so many different attempts to respond to the universe's relentless generosity. Framed within his original theory of generalized economics and based on his masterly reading of archaic religious activity, Theory of Religion constitutes, along with The Accursed Share, the most important articulation of Bataille's work.Georges Bataille (1897-1962), founder of the...
Theory of Religion brings to philosophy what Bataille's earlier book, The Accursed Share, brought to anthropology and history; namely, an analysis ...
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...
The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric Art and Culture collects essays and lectures by Georges Bataille spanning 30 years of research in anthropology,...
Guilty is a searing personal record of spiritual and communal crisis, wherein the death of god announces the beginning of friendship. It takes the form of a diary, recording the earliest days of World War Two and the Nazi occupation of France, but this is no ordinary day book: it records the author's journey through a war-torn world without transcendence. Bataille's spiritual journey is also an intellectual one, a trip with Hegel, Kierkegaard, Blake, Baudelaire, and Nietzsche as his companions. And it is a school of the flesh wherein eroticism and mysticism are fused in a passionate search...
Guilty is a searing personal record of spiritual and communal crisis, wherein the death of god announces the beginning of friendship. It takes the for...
Ranging from Freud to Sade, this far-reaching and controversial study of the underlying sexual basis of religion and philosophy, especially in relation to death, includes the results of research into taboo, religious ecstacy and the erotic impulse.
Ranging from Freud to Sade, this far-reaching and controversial study of the underlying sexual basis of religion and philosophy, especially in relatio...
A masterpiece of transgressive, surrealist erotica, George Bataille's Story of the Eye was the Fifty Shades of Grey of its era. This Penguin Modern Classics edition is translated by Joachim Neugroschal, and published with essays by Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes. Bataille's first novel, published under the pseudonym 'Lord Auch', is still his most notorious work. In this explicit pornographic fantasy, the young male narrator and his lovers Simone and Marcelle embark on a sexual quest involving sadism, torture, orgies, madness and defilement, culminating in a final act of transgression....
A masterpiece of transgressive, surrealist erotica, George Bataille's Story of the Eye was the Fifty Shades of Grey of its era. This Penguin Modern Cl...
L'Abbe C is a shocking, unnerving narrative about the intense and terrifying relationship between twin brothers. Charles is a modern libertine, dedicated to vice and depravity, while Robert is a priest so devout that he is nicknamed 'l'Abbe'. When the sexually wild Eponine intrudes upon their suffocating relationship, anguish, delirium, and death ensue. Charged with sensuality and a heightened, dreamlike atmosphere, this novel portrays the darkest and most profound aspects of human experience.
L'Abbe C is a shocking, unnerving narrative about the intense and terrifying relationship between twin brothers. Charles is a modern libertine, dedica...
Through pre-war Europe, the narrator of this novel lurches despairingly from city to city in a surreal sexual and mental nightmare of squalor, sadism and drunken encounters.
Through pre-war Europe, the narrator of this novel lurches despairingly from city to city in a surreal sexual and mental nightmare of squalor, sadism ...
These three short pieces of erotic prose fuse elements of sex and spirituality in a highly personal vision of the flesh. The book contains Bataille's own introductions as well as essays by Yukio Mishima and Ken Hollings.
These three short pieces of erotic prose fuse elements of sex and spirituality in a highly personal vision of the flesh. The book contains Bataille's ...
