Georges Bataille

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Georges Bataille in 1943 Signature Georges Bataille.svg

Georges Bataille (born September 10, 1897 in Billom , Puy-de-Dôme department , † July 9, 1962 in Paris ) was a French writer and philosopher .

He was considered a representative of surrealism . Bataille published poetry , prose , current affairs studies, articles in magazines, and theoretical papers - especially economics. He founded the magazine Critique , now Revue Critique . His theoretical work touched politics and economics , sociology , anthropology , sexuality , art history , philosophy and atheology .

Bataille worked as an archivist and librarian .

Life

Bataille came from a wealthy farming family. He grew up with his older brother Martial. “My childhood was a deplorable series of unfortunate circumstances,” Bataille later wrote. His father, Joseph-Aristide Bataille, suffered from syphilis . He was already blind when Bataille was born and paralyzed two or three years later. The mother, Antoinette-Aglae Tournarde, repeatedly had depression and suicidal phases . The sons prevented her suicide twice. In 1900 the family moved to Reims . Bataille helped to look after the father. At the end of 1912 he decided - against the will of his parents - never to enter the local grammar school again. He suffered from the fact that his classmates “picked on” him. From October 1913 he attended the boys' school in Épernay sur Marne (26 km south of Reims) as a boarding school student . Within a year, he completed the first part of his high school here. Reims was heavily shelled by German artillery in the summer of 1914 . Most of the city was destroyed. Most of the residents fled. The mother joined the stream of refugees with George. They were taken in by their mother's parents. Bataille's brother Martial had been drafted in July. The terminally ill father was not able to cope with these exertions and had to stay behind. He died on November 6, 1915 in the care of a nurse. The family arrived a few days later.

Bombs on Reims Cathedral in 1914

During this time, Bataille wanted to write a "paradoxical philosophy". He had resolved to develop an outlook on life that was in every way opposite to that of his father. His father had rejected religion. Bataille was alien to the practice of belief. In 1914 he entered the Catholic Church. He wanted to clarify whether religion could be a possibility of his attitude towards life. In 1916 he fell ill for the first time with tuberculosis during his basic military training in Rennes . He recovered with his grandparents in the Auvergne mountains . He was preparing for the final exam of his high school education and passed the second part of his high school diploma in 1917 in the nearby Saint-Flour seminar with subjects in philosophy , history and German . His immune system remained weak and he suffered from asthmatic attacks throughout his life .

Until he was 23 years old, he went to confession every week. At times he wanted to enter a monastery or become a priest . He waited for a corresponding call , which, however, did not materialize. From now on he dealt with the history of religion , especially that of the Middle Ages with regard to Christian thought and action . He compared this Christian practice to his habits and thinking. The two were incompatible, he realized. He later published the results a. a. in his atheological writings . From November 1918, as a result of his historical interests, he attended the École des Chartes in Paris to become an archaeologist and librarian. He graduated as the second best of his class. As a reward, he was given the opportunity in 1922 to complete his training as an archivist at the French College for Spanish Studies in Madrid . Half a year later he began working at the Bibliothèque nationale de France . The mother lived until January 15, 1930.

In 1928 Bataille married actress Sylvia Maklès, who was 11 years his junior. In 1930 the daughter Laurence was born. In 1931 Bataille met Colette Peignot , known as Laure. In the course of the meetings in the Democratic-Communist Circle a relationship developed between the two. Laure died of tuberculosis in 1938. Sylvia Bataille had lived with Jacques Lacan , a psychiatrist and later famous psychoanalyst of his own school, since 1938 ; they married in 1953.

Cathedral in Saint-Flour with seminar

Bataille stayed in contact with both of them after the split. For decades he was an important source of ideas for Lacan's psychology. The marriage with Sylvia was only divorced after the end of the German occupation in 1946. In the past, out of concern about the possible application of the racial laws, they did not want to touch it. Bataille married Diane Kotchoubey de Beauharnais in 1951. She met Bataille in 1943, and her daughter, Julie Bataille, was born in 1949.

Library in Carpentras

Bataille's personal circumstances and way of life also had consequences for his work in libraries and archives of the French state. One was never completely satisfied with him. His delays and long absenteeism were criticized. The content of his publications also did not meet the expectations of a public service employee . After working in the French national library for two years, he was transferred to the archive for coin collections in 1924. In 1930 there was another transfer to the archives for book printing. In 1942 tuberculosis broke out again and he was released from duty. In 1949 he resumed work as a librarian, first in Carpentras and two years later in Orléans . At the end of 1953 the first symptoms of an illness that led to his death appeared. In 1955 his friend Théodore Fraenkel diagnosed him with arteriosclerosis of the brain. The associated anatomical changes were incurable and restricted him more and more. He suffered increasingly from very severe headaches , loss of concentration and memory . Several clinical treatments brought no improvement. Georges Bataille died in Paris seven years after his diagnosis (1962).

Act

Difficult personal sensitivities

Friedrich Nietzsche

With the beginning of his professional activity in June 1922, Bataille continued the studies and writing activities that had begun with the conversion to Catholicism . As a teenager he wrote religious prose, among other things: Notre Dame de Rheims, for example. Now he wrote poems and short stories, began several short stories, published scientific articles for numismatic magazines and translated Tolstoy and Nietzsche. The idea of ​​the good in their teachings , a work of his philosophical teacher Leo Schestow . From his studies at the École nationale des chartes, he remained friends with the painter André Masson . Bataille failed to behave appropriately. The contact with a prostitute gave him pleasure and discomfort. In a friendly correspondence with Colette Renié - a fellow student from "Charte" - he reported on his sensitivities and escapades. He also mentioned thoughts of suicide, having trouble making decisions, and realizing plans once made. He considered himself overly selfish and uncaring. "My life remains very difficult for me."

The thoughts of others

Shortly before Bataille left for Spain, he met Alfred Métraux . The two discovered common interests and sympathy for one another. After his return, a close, lifelong friendship developed. Métraux, who studied ethnology , introduced Bataille to the anthropologically based concepts of his professor Marcel Mauss for the social, moral and economic organization of societies. The consequences of these suggestions were found in 1933 in the writings The Psychological Structure of Fascism and The Concept of Expenditure . In both writings, Bataille uses his ideas to formulate the terms ' homogeneous ' (in line with culture) and ' heterogeneous ' (foreign to culture), which enable new perspectives on political and economic phenomena of his time, which should make the latter understandable and stimulate social and moral norms with a view to anthropological research.

In the conversations with Metraux in the 1920s, not only ideas from Mauss, but also from Friedrich Nietzsche , André Gide , Sigmund Freud and Fyodor Michailowitsch Dostoevsky were discussed. The words he uses always bring other people's thoughts into play, said Bataille.

Easter Island ceremonial complex based on the research of Alfred Métraux

Bataille received basic philosophical knowledge from his philosophical teacher Leo Isaakowitsch Schestow , whom he met in 1922. Schestow also encouraged Bataille to follow his own thoughts, to think them through thoroughly in every respect and to develop anti- idealistic concepts. Shestov's religiosity kept the two men at a distance.

Bataille attended Alexandre Kojève's Hegel seminar , which lasted a total of 6 years (1933–39). Kojève gave lectures at the Paris École des Hautes Études on Nikolaus von Kues , Hegel's philosophy of religion and also his phenomenology . Bataille found Hegel's philosophy stimulating, but decidedly believed it to be an error. The human subject is not exhausted in dealing with Hegel's dialectic; it is exhausted in action. Despite the rejection of the Hegelian view, a lifelong friendship and a positive exchange of ideas developed between Kojève and Bataille.

Against partiality

W. Paalen: Articulated Cloud.

From 1923 Bataille came into contact with a group of surrealists. He made new friends with Michel Leiris and Théodore Fraenkel . Initially, he met with the two of them and a group of artists, including Joan Miró , in André Masson's studio. Masson devoted himself to the 'automatic painting' preferred by Surrealists and came up with results that impressed others. There were surrealistic ideas and plans etc. a. discussed for new magazines. They shared a tendency to excessive alcohol consumption, also smoked opium and had fun with prostitutes. Bataille then met - together with Leiris - André Breton and his circle of surrealists. He found that the members of this group and their leader Breton far overestimated their social effectiveness. From his point of view, they erroneously assumed that the surrealist movement can cure all social diseases. Breton expressed his corresponding views unreservedly and morally. Bataille expressed his concerns about whether and how social changes could be brought about. In 1929 there was an open conflict: Breton demanded that anyone who wanted to get serious about surrealism should join the Stalinist Communist Party of France ( PCF ). He attacked dissenters in the Second Surrealism Manifesto (published in December 1929 in the last edition of La Révolution surréaliste ), which led to sharp rejection by Bataille in the essay Un cadavre (January 1930). André Breton broke away from the PCF in 1935 and was reconciled with Bataille.

childhood memories

In 1925, Bataille published an early version of the history of the eye under a pseudonym under the title WC. It was about the representation of the traumatic consequences of a childhood experience. These traumatic consequences were intensified for the adult child when he shared this experience with others. From then on, the narrator was viewed as inferior. Bataille linked the portrayal with an experience from his childhood, which made it clear to him with horror the desperate state of his sick father at the time. In the meantime this horror had become inextricably linked with his philosophizing, he emphasized. Bataille gave the story to a few friends to read, including the doctor Camille Dausse . On Dausse, the depiction, together with Bataille's lifestyle (drinking, playing, regular visits to brothels), had a worrying effect. He advised him to see a psychoanalyst.

The choice fell on Adrien Borel, co-founder of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society. Borel worked in an unorthodox manner, but "somehow therapeutic, accepting, and basically mindful of the suffering" of his clients. Borel supported Bataille while he was writing The History of the Eye . Bataille published it in 1928 under the pseudonym Lord Auch . He portrayed the invented sexual experiences of three young people who had excessive sexual experiences with each other and continued them into young adulthood. These experiences included mental confusion as well as death. Here, too, Bataille addressed his own childhood experiences and the connection he claimed between sexuality, borderline experience and death, which he described as “a complete reversal of our ideas” or “serious, tragically taken eroticism”. The therapeutic agents that Borel employed are largely unknown. After a year-long analysis, Bataille reported that he was finally feeling more or less fit for life and freed from the unfortunate circumstances of his past, which fortunately had not harmed his intellectual abilities.

Editor and author

Modigliani, Picasso and André Salmon in Paris in 1916.

From 1929 to 1931 Bataille published the journal Documents, Doctrines, Archeology, Beaux Arts, Ethnography with the ethnologist and musician Georges-Henri Rivière , with Michel Leiris and Carl Einstein . Contributions have been published which establish connections between psychoanalysis and the areas mentioned in the title. Photos were shown that represented something striking. Individual artists, e.g. B. Picasso , entire issues were dedicated. From 1931 to 1934 Bataille joined the anti-Stalinist Cercle Communiste Démocratique Boris Souvarines . In the La Critique Sociale published by the Cercle , Bataille's studies The Concept of Waste ( La notion de Dépense ) and The Psychological Structure of Fascism ( La structure psychologique du Fascisme ) were published. This corresponded to the character of the magazine, which wanted to deliver primarily Marxist and new left-wing articles. There were also continuous reviews of new releases that were discussed in the magazine. With Breton and Roger Caillois , Bataille formed the short - lived anti - fascist group Contre-Attaque . In 1935 in Spain Bataille wrote The Blue of Heaven ( Le bleu du ciel ).

Alternatives

In 1937 he founded a sociological academy with Caillois, Leiris and Jules Monnerot , the Collège de Sociologie , whose task it should be to develop a sociology of the sacred or sacred sociology . Jean Paulhan and others gave lectures there. The German emigrants Walter Benjamin and Hans Mayer were also involved in this project . Bataille was also the founder and leading figure of the secret society Kopflos ( Acéphale ), founded in 1936 . Four issues of a magazine of the same name appeared. The war ended these activities.

Recent projects

Representation of the 1000 cuts.

In 1946 he founded the influential monthly magazine Revue Critique , in which he published the early works of Roland Barthes , Maurice Blanchot , Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault , among others . The Revue Critique is edited to this day by Philippe Roger and an editorial board and follows the publication guidelines given by Bataille. Bataille's last work was The Tears of Eros , an art history of serious and tragic eroticism , on which Lo Duca contributed significantly. In particular, some old photos of the Chinese judiciary, the execution by the "thousand cuts" ( Lingchi ), attracted a lot of attention.

plant

Thinking and Research

Bataille's work cannot be classified because it cannot be grasped with the existing philosophical terms. He made a knowledgeable effort to find a way of thinking that was radically different and comprehensive from the usual philosophy, and that only gradually emerged. Some therefore prefer to call him not a philosopher but a writer or thinker. With Leo Schestov he acquired basic philosophical knowledge about Plato, among others. He read philosophical texts all his life: Marxist texts, texts on anthropology, ethnology and sociology. For six years he took part in Kojève's famous Hegel lectures in Paris. At first Bataille was only perceived as a “mystic of debauchery” and an author of sadomasochistic stories. Proponents of structuralist and poststructuralist philosophy came to different assessments because of the variety of topics that emerged in Bataille's work. In his systematic main publication, The Ostracized Part (1937), Bataille wrote that he wanted to give "a methodical description of all aspects of life". The existing scientific explanations and descriptions were insufficient for this. He developed his own ideas. His ideas for a far-reaching theory about the interaction of rational and irrational forces in the world were unique in his century. It is mutually agreed that Bataille's thinking arose in the middle of his life.

Bataille was strongly influenced by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Marcel Mauss, Marquis de Sade and Friedrich Nietzsche, but also by Alexandre Kojève . He is the author of a wide range of works: lectures, poems, essays on countless topics such as mysticism , the limits of the economy , poetry , philosophy , art , eroticism and death. Bataille is interested in sacrifice , transgression (crossing boundaries that evoke an inner experience) and waste , intoxication , the taboo and border areas of human thinking, feeling and acting.

Writing means stimulating

Bataille summed up that writing cannot overturn the existing order. It is fruitless and you belittle people if you ask them to free themselves from prejudice. In order to experiment with acting from his other point of view, he founded a sociological academy ( Collège de Sociologie ) and the secret society Kopflos ( Acéphale ). Reading his obscene writings should inspire one to open one's eyes to what is in our culture in the dark, e.g. B. Death and Terror. If people look with their eyes open, they may see life differently, he claimed.

Irrational theses

Human parody

As a possible means of literary representation, he used parody to evoke new ideas in readers. Things are never what they seem or how we see them. In doing so, he tied in with ancient skeptical ideas. Anything could be someone else's parody or the same thing in a deceptive, deceptive way, he said. "Parody ... holds up what it undermines." It is a reduction to the absurd. Parody is in his book The Anus (Sphincter) of the Sun (1927) the means to show how the universe works. "Great coitus with the heavenly atmosphere is determined by the earth's orbit around the sun," he wrote, for example. The anus of the sun was his attempt to create a “mythological anthropology” by presenting irrational theses. It arose from the desire to replace old, unsuitable myths of a 'dead god', which are told in homogeneous culture, with those from the world of nature. Metaphysics and psychology are not needed in a natural world. Human desires find their fulfillment in a cosmos that functions wastefully. People wanted a life in which they could spend themselves wastefully, Bataille claimed.

Concept of heterology

Throughout his work, Bataille is interested in the excluded, the heterogeneous, the “ostracized part” that is negatively determined in a social homogeneity and tends to be subjected to annihilation, La part maudite (1949). This is also the case in a Marxist discourse or in Marx himself, who delimits the revolutionary subject, the proletariat , from the lumpen proletariat (in this case that would be the heterogeneous battalion).

Bataille thus established a way of thinking that influenced a large part of French philosophy of the second half of the 20th century - postmodernism and poststructuralism . The proximity Bataille, also under consideration of his acquaintance with Walter Benjamin , for Critical Theory , however, found in Theodor W. Adorno no comment.

Fascist ideologies are also heterogeneous (excluded). Fascist leaders belong to the heterogeneous spectrum. The lower classes who follow their ideas also: their values ​​- e.g. B. the disregard of other people and values ​​- and thus they themselves are not culturally accepted. Under certain negative social conditions (consequences of war, high unemployment, economic decline), this leads to a union of many like-minded people in order to change the existing by force. The leaders serve as integration figures because they have suffered through the misery (economic hardship and war) themselves. If heterogeneous things forcibly gain entry into the homogeneous culture, it is defenseless. Violence shows that homogeneous orders can be destroyed at any time. But violence is a human dimension of behavior and can no longer be prevented when the willingness to use violence has reached a certain level. Fascism fascinates people through the characteristic of the heterogeneous. If it is possible to accept heterogeneity, this could possibly lead to changes.

waste

The term waste appears - parallel to his idea of ​​the cosmos - as a basic principle of economic action in Bataille's contribution to economics. In accordance with his concept of heterology , he addressed the ostracized part as a necessary component of new economic relationships. Instead of a lack of goods, Bataille assumes an abundance of goods; instead of an excess of needs, a lack of opportunities to meet one's own needs. General economics must address this deficiency . He calls this the Copernican turn in economics. He explained this idea in The Concept of Expenditure on a Known Generation Conflict. The son pursues his pleasure. The father intervenes to correct it, although he uncritically admits something similar to himself. He wants the son to do useful things. According to Bataille, this should ensure that the following generation learns to move in the homogeneous world of responsibility and that their individuals become respectable or respected members of society. This conflict is based on the fact that what does not fit into the ideality of the homogeneous world is eliminated and is therefore ostracized. Expending also has the meaning of waste . Bataille wants to bring waste back into philosophical thinking so that it can be innovative. To this end, he includes social conditions and the human way of life. Experts assume that such comprehensive or general views of economic questions are no longer common today.

Sovereignty and transgression

For Bataille, sovereignty is not so much the exercise of rule (as, for example, according to Carl Schmitt's definition : “He who decides on a state of emergency is sovereign”). Rather, Bataille is a powerless sovereignty that simultaneously becomes subversive to all powers. Bataille distinguishes between three historical stages of sovereignty:

  1. The archaic stage in which the priest or priestess exercises sacred sovereignty that is excluded from all power.
  2. The sovereignty in the classic sense of an absolutist ruler.
  3. The sovereignty of the artist, which in actu acts subversively and differs from all domination.

This is in overrun (transgression), identified by Michel Foucault is defined in reference to Bataille as non-affirmative affirmation ", alone to the movens sovereignty to the dynamic element, which lies hidden by Bataille in the sovereignty.

The obscene work

In our Christian culture, erotic action shows very specific characteristics. The associated, shared attitudes contribute - among others - to the creation of a homogeneous character that gives people security and orientation. Everything that destroys this cultural character is rejected, separated, morally condemned. Bataille experienced these consequences very clearly in the fate of his family. One of these consequences was dealing with syphilis patients, which was similar to that with lepers. They were "abandoned by fellow human beings because they look so terrifying and stink." Syphilis was seen as a result of a sinful lifestyle. In 1826 the use of condoms by Pope Leo XII. forbidden: "... the sinner should be punished on the part of the body with which he sins." It was not until the second half of the 19th century that the research results of the Parisian doctor Alfred Fournier (1832–1914) enabled a more objective discussion of venereal diseases .

Bataille was tormented for life by memories of his father's appalling physical condition and suffering. His life began with death, wrote his biographer Michel Surya . In addition, there were memories of childhood experiences in connection with heterogeneous , ie socially ostracized conceptions of sexuality , which he thematized in The Obscene Work without saying that it was. I am a child of horror. (81) he commented on his memories and I was especially afraid of sex . (7)

William-Adolphe Bouguereau: Suffering and Eroticism. (1899)

The psychiatrist Adrien Borel provided Bataille with a photo on which a death sentence was carried out: a man was cut up piece by piece. This photo played a crucial role in my life. wrote Bataille. It probably gave him the opportunity to find himself in it, guessed one of his biographers. Horror , sexuality without taboos , death, ecstasy , violence and mourning appeared in his writings Das obscene Werk . But never “Bataille described the enjoyment of one at the expense of the other.” It was always about jointly divisible and desired action. Bataille called this 'communication' and action 'expenditure'. He regarded this as a basic principle of human life, just as the sun expends itself in our universe by wasting its energy excessively.

“My childhood memories… get an 'obscene sense' in this way.” In Das Obscene Werk one reads about a father who was an alcoholic and a mother who followed her limitless sexual inclinations, from which the father suffered and who Son will suffer. (52) Sexuality did not have the high priority for Bataille, as one might assume based on his publications. He saw no reason to give sexuality a meaning that only belongs to the whole of life. (60f) With regard to his literary means of expression, he pointed out:

How can one express himself who silences philosophers, if not in a way they do not understand? (62f)

Bataille wanted to encourage reflection on traditional attitudes towards pleasure . He is about a complete reversal of our ideas (57) and he recommended his obscene texts to others: Anyone who is afraid, afraid, is alone and freezes should read Madame Edwarda. (64)

The classification and interpretation of the obscene work does not give an overall picture. It is possible that - it is said - it is a mistake to assume that Bataille led a 'dirty life, outside of normality'. In his texts, however, he only deals with “dirty things” that - as in the story of the eye - lead to death. This is reminiscent of André Breton's criticism when he spoke of the 'excrement philosophy'. Erotic literature, as Bataille wrote it, can be attributed to ' fantastic literature', is also expressed. It is also a protest against the writings that explain and justify human behavior psychoanalytically and socio-politically . Bataille's obscene work is also rated as provocative . "... so as not to make himself impossible from the beginning and for all time," he said he did not publish the story of the eye under his name. But it already contains the " quintessence of his controversial thinking". In connection with statements of Battalion about what drives sexual behavior to “transgress”, it is said: “There is an unavailable interior for everyone, which is always capable of the most unpleasant surprises, which one is capable of contrary to one's self-image.” The question Whether his obscene writings can be regarded as " surrealist experiments" or as " pornographic literature" is undecidable.

Philosophy of crime

Justice and compassion are also subject to homogeneous or heterogeneous principles. In his work Gilles de Rais, Life and Trial of a Child Murderer , Bataille tells the true story of Gilles de Rais , who was a comrade in arms of Joan of Arc , Marshal of France and at the same time a monstrous mass murderer . Many children were brought to his castles by his confidants under tempting promises, where they were raped, mutilated and killed as victims of black magic in the course of orgiastic revelers. It was not until he arrested a clergyman and attacked both ecclesiastical and secular authorities that he was brought to justice. Because in doing so, Rais had violated a taboo: authorities are worth protecting. Children of the lower classes did not enjoy this protection at that time. Bataille described the crimes using the protocols of the secular and ecclesiastical trials. "The absurd story had set a judiciary in motion that would not have been particularly aroused by the little starvation that such a noble gentleman murdered." Rais was sentenced to death. As he was being led to the gallows, something surprising happened: the crowd of common people whose children he had murdered prayed for him. This sympathy is inexplicable, said Bataille. Unless one assumes that every person is capable of the monstrous ( heterogeneous ). With this in mind, he sought a psychologically sound philosophy of crime .

reception

The reception of Bataille's writings is controversial, but they are being taken note of with increasing interest.

Jürgen Habermas said that Bataille's general economy had characteristics that make it appear as a 'metaphysical worldview in the bad sense'. Further difficulties are connected with Bataille's language and his life experience only accessible to him.

Even Jean-Paul Sartre - whose existentialism Bataille rejected as an 'outdated philosophy' - had problems with this. He called Bataille a mystic. In his texts, according to Sartre, there are “slippery sentences ... from which we suddenly plunge into the unspeakable.” He also considered the mixing of theory and existential experience unsuitable for a political philosophy . In the course of the conflict over the support of the French Communist Party (PCF), which he had demanded, Breton had drawn the image of a perverse librarian from Bataille. Bataille's literary intentions are incidentally meaningless, since he did not sit in prison, but only in libraries, he added.

Only the reception by Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida brought about a positive change. Foucault's solution from the superiority of Hegel's thought mediated by university philosophy on the one hand and the existentialist phenomenology of Sartre on the other hand, as well as his call to 'think differently than you think', is seen as the legacy of Bataille. Derrida has described his most influential early works as applied readings battalion.

The new post-structuralist text term also has links with Bataille, as used by Roland Barthes , Julia Kristeva and Philippe Sollers .

Jean Baudrillard dealt with Bataille from a cultural-philosophical point of view and then critically distanced himself from Bataille. Lacan's return to Freud and, among other things, his idea of ​​the 'real' can be ascribed to his contact with Bataille.

Emmanuel Levinas was inspired by Bataille for his 'new anthropology '. From a sociological point of view, Michel Maffesoli basically agreed with Bataille's idea of ​​spending . Gerd Bergfleth and Bernd Mattheus are responsible for the scientific reception in the German-speaking area, Michel Surya and Denis Hollier in French , Marina Galletti in Italy and Stuart Kendall in English .

There are similarities between Ernesto Laclau's theory of populism and Bataille's concept of heterology, as Laclau himself notes.

Works in German editions

  • Prehistoric painting: Lascaux or the birth of art. German by Karl-Georg Hemmerich . Skira, Geneva 1955.
  • Manet. Biographical-critical study. German by Karl-Georg Hemmerich. Skira, Geneva / Paris / New York 1955.
  • Holy Eros. German by Max Hölzer. Luchterhand, Neuwied / Berlin 1963.
  • The tears of eros . German by Karin Reese, Martin Schulte a. Marta Berger. In: Lo Duca: The erotic in art. Kurt Desch, Munich / Vienna / Basel 1965.
  • Abbé C. ed. u. trans. by Max Hölzer. Luchterhand, Neuwied / Berlin 1966.
  • The blue of the sky. trans. by Sigrid Massenbach u. Hans Naumann. Luchterhand, Neuwied / Berlin 1967.
  • Gilles de Rais. Child Killer Life and Trial. trans. by Ute Erb. Merlin, Hamburg 1967, ISBN 3-87536-042-7 .
  • The obscene work. ( The Story of the Eye, Madame Edwarda, My Mother, The Little One, The Dead ). With an afterword by Francois Bondy. Translated into German and provided with an afterword by Marion Luckow. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1972.
  • The psychological structure of fascism - The sovereignty. from the French by Rita Bischof, Elisabeth Lenk and Xenia Rajewski; Edited by E. Lenk; Afterword Rita Bishop. (= Batteries. Volume 8). Matthes & Seitz, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-88221-207-1 .
  • Theoretical Work I: The Abolition of Economy ( The Concept of Expenditure - The Ostracized Part - Communism and Stalinism. ) From the French by Traugott König and Heinz Abosch ; With a study by Gerd Bergfleth . Rogner & Bernhard, Munich 1975.
  • The literature and the evil. Emily Brontë - Baudelaire - Michelet - Blake - Sade - Proust - Kafka - Genet. German by Cornelia Langendorf; With an afterword by Gert Bergfleth and an essay by Daniel Leuwer. (= Batteries. 28). Matthes & Seitz, Munich 1987.
  • The erotic. Matthes & Seitz, Munich 1994.
  • René Char and the power of poetry. In: heart attack. 4/1995, Volume VII, pp. 212-218.
  • Theory of religion. Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 1997.
  • Compensation to Nietzsche. The Nietzsche memorandum and other texts. Matthes and Seitz, Munich 1999.
  • The inner experience together with the method of meditation and postscript 1953. Atheological sum 1. Gallimard, Paris 1943/1954. German by Gerd Bergfleth. Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2017
  • Corrupted sun. Trans. V. Wroblewsky, In: Carlo Ginzburg : The sword and the light bulb. A new reading of Picasso's ›Guernica‹. (= edition suhrkamp. 2103). 1999, ISBN 3-518-12103-0 .
  • Friendship. The alleluia. Atheological sum II. Gallimard, Paris 1944/1961.
  • Nietzsche and the will to chance. Atheological sum III. Gallimard, Paris 1945.
  • with Carl Einstein , Marcel Griaule , Michel Leiris a . a .: Critical Dictionary. Merve, Berlin 2005
  • The impossible. Hanser (Edition Akzente), Munich 2007.
  • Executioner and victim. Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-88221-726-1 .
  • Hegel . Man and history. Translator Rita Bischof. Matthes & Seitz, 2017

literature

  • Gerd Bergfleth: Theory of Waste. Introduction to Georges Bataille's anti-economy . Matthes & Seitz, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-88221-359-0 .
  • Rita Bischof: Sovereignty and Subversion. Bataille's theory of modernity . Matthes & Seitz, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-88221-223-3 .
  • Maurice Blanchot : The inner experience. In: heart attack. 2/1995, Volume VII, pp. 192–198.
  • Artur R. Boelderl (Ed.): World of Abysses. To Georges Bataille. Turia + Kant, Vienna 2015, ISBN 978-3-85132-783-0 .
  • Jérome Bourgon: Bataille et le supplicié chinois: erhurs sur la personne. Turandot website, 2004. ( turandot.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr ( Memento of March 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ))
  • Roland A. Champagne: Georges Bataille. Twayne Publishers, New York 1998.
  • Critique n ° 195–196: Homage to Georges Bataille. Les Éditions de Minuit, Paris 1991, ISBN 2-7073-1374-2 .
  • Jacques Derrida : From the limited to the general economy. An unreserved Hegelianism. In: Jacques Derrida: The writing and the difference . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1972, ISBN 3-518-27777-4 , pp. 380-421.
  • Marcus Dick: The Dialectic of Sovereignty. Philosophical research on Georges Bataille. Georg Olms, Hildesheim / Zurich / New York 2010, ISBN 978-3-487-14406-1 .
  • Helga Finter, Georg Maag (Hrsg.): Reading Bataille: The writing and the impossible . Fink, Munich 1992.
  • Rodolphe Gasché: System and metaphor in the philosophy of Bataille . Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1978, ISBN 3-261-04612-0 .
  • Gregor Häfliger: Autonomy or Sovereignty. On the contemporary criticism of Georges Bataille . Mäander, Mittenwald 1981.
  • Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs : The desire for a sovereign existence. Georges Bataille . Droschl, Graz 1999, ISBN 3-85420-510-4 .
  • Andreas Hetzel, Peter Wiechens (eds.): Georges Bataille. Preamble to exceeding. Würzburg 1999, ISBN 3-8260-1355-7 .
  • Stuart Kendall: Georges Bataille. London 2007.
  • Patrick Kilian: Georges Bataille, André Breton and the Contre-Attaque group. About the “wild thinking” of revolutionary intellectuals in the interwar period. St. Ingbert 2013.
  • Elisabeth Lange: At the limits of language. Studies on Bataille . Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1982, ISBN 3-8204-5718-6 .
  • Michel Foucault : Preface to Exceeding. In: Michel Foucault: Dits et Ecrits. (= Writings. Volume 1). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 2-07-073844-2 , pp. 320–342.
  • Silvia Lippi: Transgressions. Bataille, Lacan . érès, Villefranche 2008, ISBN 978-2-7492-0975-3 .
  • Lo Duca (Ed.): The modern lexicon of eroticism from A – Z. Volume 1: A-Bu. Desch, Munich 1963, pp. 107-113.
  • Bernd Mattheus : Georges Bataille. A thanatography . 3 volumes. Matthes & Seitz, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-88222-225-5 .
  • Stephan Moebius : The sorcerer's apprentices. Sociological history of the Collège de Sociologie 1937–1939 . UVK, Konstanz 2006, ISBN 3-89669-532-0 .
  • Stephan Moebius: Contre-Attaque - a political initiative by French intellectuals in the 30s. In: Foundation for Social History of the 20th Century (Ed.): Social. History. Journal of historical analysis of the 20th and 21st centuries. Bern 18.2003, 2 (June), ISSN  1660-2870 , pp. 85-100.
  • Richard Reschika: The promise of ecstasy. A philosophical journey through the erotic work of Georges Bataille and Julius Evola. Projekt Verlag, Bochum / Freiburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-89733-233-1 .
  • Leander Scholz: Nature's Potlatsch. Elements of a political ecology in Georges Bataille. In: Karl-Heinz Kohl (Ed.): Paideuma. Communications on cultural studies. Volume 53, Leo Frobenius Institute, 2007, pp. 53-78.
  • Lars Steinmann: Review of Artur R. Boelderl: Georges Bataille. About God's waste and other headlessness. In: Marburg Forum. Contributions to the intellectual situation of the present. Lohra born 6.2005. ( philosophia-online.de ( Memento from August 6, 2012 in the Internet Archive ))
  • Lars Steinmann: Book review of The Tears of Eros. In: Marburg Forum. Contributions to the intellectual situation of the present. Lohra born 7/2006, 3. ( philosophia-online.de ( Memento from August 6, 2012 in the Internet Archive ))
  • Michel Surya: Georges Bataille, la mort à l'œvre. Paris 1992 et 2012. - English translation: Georges Bataille: An Intellectual Biography. London / New York 1992.
  • Hans Erich Troje: Borderline experiences. On some texts by Georges Bataille. In: Hans Erich Troje: Counterpositions. Aspects of the future of marriage and family. Böhlau, 2009, ISBN 978-3-412-20342-9 , pp. 237-257.
  • Peter Wiechens: Bataille as an introduction . Junius, Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-88506-907-5 .
  • Dawn Ades, Simon Baker: Undercover Surrealism: Georges Bataille and Documents. The MIT Press , Cambridge 2006.
  • Roland Barthes : The Metaphor of the Eye. In: Critical Essays . Trans. Richard Howard . Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL 1972, pp. 239-248.
  • Maurice Blanchot : The Limit Experience. In: The Infinite Conversation . Trans. Susan Hanson. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1993, pp. 202-229.
  • Maurice Blanchot: The Unavowable Community . Trans. Pierre Joris. Station Hill Press, Barrytown, NY 1988.
  • Jacques Derrida : From Restricted to General Economy: A Hegelianism without Reserve. In: Writing and Difference. Routledge, London 1978.
  • German A Duarte: La chose maudite. The concept of reification in George Bataille's The Accursed Share. In: Human and Social Studies - de Gruyter Open. Vol. 5, Issue 1, 2016, pp. 113-134.
  • Michel Foucault : A Preface to Transgression. Trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon. In: James D. Faubion (Ed.): Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology: Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984. New Press, New York 1998, pp. 103-122.
  • Andrew Hussey : Inner Scar: The Mysticism of Georges Bataille. Rudopi, Amsterdam 2000.
  • Stuart Kendall: Georges Bataille. Reaction Books, Critical Lives, London 2007.
  • Rosalind Krauss: No More Play. In: The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths. MIT Press, 1985.
  • Nick Land : The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism. Routledge, London 1992.
  • Nidesh Lawtoo: The Phantom of the Ego: Modernism and the Mimetic Unconscious. Michigan State University Press, East Lansing 2013.
  • Jean-Luc Nancy : The Inoperative Community. University of Minnesota Press , Minneapolis / Oxford 1991.
  • Elisabeth Roudinesco : Jacques Lacan & Co .: a history of psychoanalysis in France, 1925–1985. Chicago University Press, Chicago 1990.
  • Roudinesco, Élisabeth: Jacques Lacan, Outline of a Life, History of a System of Thought. Columbia University Press, New York 1999.
  • Roudinesco, Élisabeth: Our Dark Side, A History of Perversion. Polity Press, Cambridge 2009.
  • Jadranka Skorin-Kapov : The Aesthetics of Desire and Surprise: Phenomenology and Speculation. Lexington Books , 2015.
  • Philippe Sollers : Writing and the Experience of Limits. Columbia University Press , 1982.
  • Sontag, Susan: The Pornographic Imagination. In: Styles of Radical Will. Picador, 1967.
  • Michel Surya: Georges Bataille: an intellectual biography. trans. by Krzysztof Fijalkowski and Michael Richardson. Verso, London 2002.
  • Chris Vanderwees: Complicating Eroticism and the Male Gaze: Feminism and Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye. In: Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature. 38.1, 2014, pp. 1-19.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michel Surya: Georges Bataille: An Intellectual Biography. London / New York 1992, p. 13.
  2. ↑ Cf. to the two sections: Bataille: The history of the eye. In: Ders .: The obscene work. Reinbek bei Hamburg 1977, p. 50 ff., And in the same volume: Ders .: W.-C. Foreword to the 'History of the Eye', p. 186 f .; Georges Bataille: Romans et récits. La Pléiade, Paris 2004, p. XCIV; Peter Wiechens: Bataille as an introduction. Hamburg 1995, p. 9 f .; Stuart Kendall: Georges Bataille. London 2007, pp. 16-31.
  3. ↑ Sylvia Makle's parents were Romanian Jews. Laurence (1930–1986, Cancer) was a Lacanian psychoanalyst. Writings collected posthumously: L'ombilic du rêve , Paris, 1987, trans. The navel of the dream. Weinheim / Berlin 1988.
  4. ↑ Colette Lucienne Peignot, * October 8, 1903, Paris, died November 7, 1938 Laure shared Bataille's life and interests, she was friends with Masson and Leiris, Piere Klossowski and Patrick Waldberg. Laure took part in Acéphale . Publications in magazines, posthumous private prints Le sacré , George Bataille with Michel Leiris (ed.), With notes by Bataille, 1939 a. Histoire d'une petite fille ; collected in the Écrits de Laure , Pauvert, Paris, 1979, ed. by her nephew Jérome Peignot and others, transl., Schriften , Matheus & Seitz, Munich, 1980.
  5. ↑ Lacan was friends with Bataille. Sylvia Bataille's daughter with Lacan, Judith Bataille, married Miller was born in 1941, which led to the divorce from Lacan's first marriage.
  6. ↑ See e.g. B. Hans Erich Troje: Borderline experiences. On some texts by George Bataille. In: Hans Erich Troje: Counterpositions. Aspects of the future of marriage and family. Böhlau, 2009, pp. 237-257.
  7. ↑ Diane Bataille was born on June 4, 1918 in Victoria on Vancouver Island . So she is Canadian. Her father was Prince Eugène Kotchoubey de Beauharnais (1894-1951), her mother Helen Pearce. She was married to Gerges Snopko (1895-1975) from 1938 to 1946, had a daughter, Catherine (1941-1990). Diane published in 1955 as XXX successful sadomasochistic novel, The Whip Angels ( The Whip Angels , Darmstadt, 1968) at Olympia Press, Paris, repr. 1968 under the pseudonym Selena Warfield! in New York. Alberto Giacometti created her bust in 1947.
  8. ↑ Michel Surya: Georges Bataille: An Intellectual Biography. London / New York 2002, pp. 146, 474; Stuart Kendall: Georges Bataille. London 2007, p. 198.
  9. ↑ Stuart Kendall: Georges Bataille. London 2007, pp. 32-42.
  10. ↑ Stuart Kendall: Georges Bataille. London 2007, p. 92. - Wolfram Malte Fues: Boundaries in dissolution. Bataille on Hegel. Germanica, 7 | 1990, 27-36.
  11. ↑ Stuart Kendall: Georges Bataille. London 2007, pp. 43-47.
  12. ↑ Bataille: Madame Edwarda. In: Ders .: The obscene work. Reinbek near Hamburg 1977, p. 17.
  13. ↑ Stuart Kendall: Georges Bataille. London 2007, pp. 48-51; Michel Surya: Georges Bataille: An Intellectual Biography. London / New York 1992, pp. 98-103; Georges Bataille: The History of the Eye. In: Ders .: The obscene work. Reinbek near Hamburg 1977, z. B. pp. 7-10; for the entire section, pp. 49–52.
  14. ^ Historical publications of the Critique Sociale
  15. ^ Revue Critique
  16. ↑ Jérome Bourgeon on Lo Duca's role in: Timothy Brook, Jérome Bourgon, Gregory Blue: Death by a Thousand Cuts. Harvard UP, Cambr., Mass. 2008, pp. 235f. Jerome Bourgon has made his key findings on Bataille's misinterpretation of the Lingchi photos available on the outstanding Turandot website, Bataille et le supplicié chinois: erhurs sur la personne. May 2004. ( turandot.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr ( Memento of March 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ))
  17. ↑ Artur R. Boelderl: Georges Bataille (1897-1962). P. 7. PDF. Peter Wiechens: Bataille as an introduction. Hamburg 1995, p. 102.
  18. ↑ Peter Wiechens: Bataille for an introduction. Hamburg 1995, p. 97. Stuart Kendall: Georges Bataille. London 2007, pp. 8-10.
  19. ↑ See the biography-oriented representations by Michel Surya and Stuart Kendall.
  20. ↑ Bataille: The Obscene Work. Reinbek near Hamburg, 1977, p. 58f.
  21. ↑ Stuart Kendall: Georges Bataille. London 2007, pp. 52-57.
  22. ↑ Bataille: The Psychological Structure of Fascism. - The sovereignty. Translated from the French by Rita Bischof, Elisabeth Lenk and Xenia Rajewski. ed. by E. Lenk. Afterword Rita Bishop. (= Batteries. Volume 8). Matthes & Seitz, Munich 1978, p. 483.
  23. ↑ See e.g. B. Thomas Wex: Economy of Waste. Batailles general economics and economics. In: Andreas Hetzel, Peter Wiechens (eds.): Georges Bataille: Preambles for exceeding. Würzburg 1999, pp. 182-210.
  24. ^ Rita Bischof : Sovereignty and Subversion. Bataille's theory of modernity. Introduction. Matthes & Seitz, Munich 1984.
  25. ↑ Michel Foucault : Preface to the transgression. In: Michel Foucault: Dits et Ecrits. Fonts. Volume 1, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2001, pp. 320–342.
  26. ↑ Anja Schonlau: Syphilis in literature: about aesthetics, morals, genius and medicine (1880-2000). Würzburg 2005, pp. 46-113.
  27. ^ Marion Luckow: Epilogue to Das obszöne Werk, p. 228.
  28. ↑ See for the two sections: Michel Surya: Georges Bataille la mort à l'œvre. Paris 2012, p. 116-118, 131-135, 352-355; and Marion Luckow: The obscene work. Pp. 225-236. - Stuart Kendall: Georges Bataille. London 2007, pp. 47-51. - The numbers in the text refer to The Obscene Work .
  29. ↑ Ian Pindar: Philosophy and other Pervertions. Review of Georges Bataille: An Intellectual Biography by Michel Surya. In: The Guardian. Nov. 2, 2002. Accessed August 2014.
  30. ↑ Undine Gruenter: To hurt the world. For Bataille's 100th birthday. In: The time. Nº 37, September 5, 1997. Accessed August 2014.
  31. ↑ Christoph David Piorkowski: Sleepwalker of Lust. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. Accessed August 2014.
  32. ↑ Hans-Dieter Gondek: Acephalic Subjectivity. Gift, law and transgression in Bataille and Lacan. S. 159. In: Andreas Hetzel, Peter Wiechens (eds.): Georges Bataille: Vorreden zur Übergabe. Würzburg 1999, p. 183.
  33. ↑ Edwin Baumgartner: George Bataille: The targeted violation of the world. Accessed August 2014.
  34. ^ Georges Bataille: Gilles de Rais. Merlin Verlag, Hamburg; 384 pages.
  35. ↑ Biographies / Gilles de Rais - Like an Alp. In: Der Spiegel. Issue 13/1968.
  36. ↑ Peter Wiechens: Bataille for an introduction. Hamburg 1995, pp. 97-118. Wiechens explains the influence of Battalion on Foucault and Derrida in more detail. - Boelderl: Georges Bataille. Pp. 14-18.
  37. ↑ Laclau, Ernesto, 1935-2014 .: On populist reason . Reprint edition. Verso, London 2005, ISBN 1-85984-651-3 , pp. 155 .
  38. ↑ Review note in Süddeutsche Zeitung, December 9, 1999: " Not wanting to read Picasso's Guernica as a politically motivated accusation and then doing so", is how Antje Weber describes Ginzburg's investigation. The core of Ginzburg's thesis of non-anti-fascism is the influence that George Bataille exerted on Picasso at precisely that time (1937). Due to his ambivalent criticism of fascism, the painter made certain changes to the picture (which was commissioned for the Paris World Exhibition for the pavilion of the Spanish Republic). According to Ginzburg, the lightbulb in the sun of Guernica in particular corresponds to Bataille's view of modern art as a “rotten sun” that triggers horror.

Web links

Wikiquote: Georges Bataille  - Quotes
personal data
SURNAME Bataille, Georges
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer and philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH September 10, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Billom
DATE OF DEATH July 9, 1962
Place of death Paris