Politics, Writing, Mutilation: The Cases of Bataille, Blanchot, Roussel, Leiris, and Ponge - Allan Stoekl (1986)

Five twentieth-century French writers played, and continue to play, a pivotal role in the development of literary-philosophical thinking that has come to be known in the United States as post-structuralism. The work of Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Raymond Roussel, Michel Leiris, and Francis Ponge in the 1930s and 1940s amounts to a prehistory of today's theoretical debates; the writings of Foucault and Derrida in particular would have been unthinkable outside the context provided by these writers. In Politics, Writing, Mutilation, Allan Stoekl emphasizes their role as precursors, but he also makes clear that they created a distinctive body of work that must be read and evaluated on its own terms.

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Georges Bataille, à perte de vue - André S. Labarthe (1997)

Un film de André S. Labarthe

1997 - France - 49 minutes - Vidéo

"Comment saisir à mains nues la pensée la plus volcanique du siècle ? Comment approcher par le film ce qui se dérobe à toute approche ?
Comment le cinéma – "art de l’image", dit-on – peut-il accueillir et laisser vivre les images inadmissibles qui tissent des récits tels que "Madame Edwara" et "Le Mort" ?
Bref, comment parler de Georges Bataille dans un film quand on sait ce film impossible ?" André S. Labarthe.

 

Una silla de sangre: Georges Bataille y el surrealismo - Natalia Lorio

"La intención de nuestra ponencia es abordar algunas de las nociones y relaciones que Bataille trabaja en La religión surrealista respecto al movimiento surrealista y la soberanía que implica al apostar a al insubordinación y a la negación del interés material. En este planteo, la infracción soberana que significa el arte para Bataille cobra en el mundo moderno la misma importancia que en otras épocas tenía la religión (cuando era inconcebible la “muerte de Dios”. Si lo sagrado es lo que no puede ser reducido a cosa, ni al proyecto que se inscribe en la temporalidad de la cosa, es porque se asume como realidad profunda. Así, llegará a decir Bataille que puede pensarse el surrealismo como una religión, cuya preocupación “fue encontrar, por fuera de la actividad técnica que pesa sobre las masas humanas actuales, ese elemento irreductible por el cual el hombre solo puede asemejarse perfectamente a una estrella”. En este sentido, la literatura posibilitaría el acceso a una experiencia de lo sagrado, en tanto valor heterogéneo, que implica ese escalofrío que horroriza. Sin embargo, la perspectiva batailleana supone asimismo una mirada pensionada por la constatación de un fracaso, atravesada por la radicalidad con la que nuestro autor pensó las formas de lo bajo, el horror y la muerte".

AMÉRICA desaparecida - Georges Bataille

 

Les Cahiers de la République des Lettres, des Sciences et des Arts, XI: L’Art Précolombien. L’Amérique avant Christophe Colomb, París, [1928], pp. 5-14.

La vida de los pueblos civilizados de América precolombina no sólo es prodigiosa para nosotros por el hecho de su descubrimiento y su instantánea desaparición, sino también porque sin duda jamás la demencia humana ha concebido una excentricidad más sanguinaria: ¡crímenes continuos cometidos a pleno sol por la mera satisfacción de pesadillas deificadas, fantasías aterradoras! Comidas caníbales de los sacerdotes, ceremonias con cadáveres y con arroyos de sangre, más que una aventura histórica evoca los deslumbrantes excesos descritos por el ilustre marqués de Sade.

Es verdad que esta observación concierne sobre todo a México. Perú representa quizá un espejismo singular, una incandescencia de oro solar, un resplandor, una riqueza perturbadora: la realidad no corresponde a esta sugerencia. La capital del imperio inca, Cuzco, estaba situada sobre una meseta elevada al pie de una suerte de acrópolis fortificada. Esta ciudad tenía un carácter de grandeza pesada y masiva. Casas altas construidas en cuadros de rocas enormes, sin ventanas exteriores, sin ornamento y cubiertas en paja, daban a las calles un aspecto medio sórdido y triste. Los templos que dominaban los techos eran de una arquitectura igualmente desnuda: sólo el frontón estaba todo recubierto por una placa de oro repujado. A este oro hay que añadir las telas de colores brillantes con que se cubrían los personajes ricos y elegantes, pero nada bastaba para disipar una impresión de mediocre salvajismo y sobre todo de uniformidad embrutecedora.

Cuzco era, en efecto, la sede de uno de los Estados más administrativos y regulares que los hombres hayan formado. Después de conquistas militares importantes, debidas a la organización meticulosa de un gigantesco ejército, el poder del Inca se extendía sobre una región considerable de América del Sur, Ecuador, Perú, Bolivia,
norte de Argentina y de Chile. En este dominio abierto por caminos, un pueblo entero obedecía a las órdenes de los funcionarios como se obedece a los oficiales en los cuarteles. El trabajo estaba repartido, los matrimonios decididos por los funcionarios. La tierra y las cosechas pertenecían al Estado. Los festejos eran fiestas religiosas del Estado. Todo se encontraba previsto en una existencia sin aire. Ésta organización no debe ser confundida con la del comunismo actual: ella difería de éste esencialmente, puesto que reposaba sobre la herencia y la jerarquía de las clases.

En estas condiciones, no es sorprendente que haya relativamente pocos trazos brillantes que reportar de la civilización Inca. Incluso los horrores son poco impactantes en Cuzco. Con la ayuda de lazos se estrangulaba a las raras víctimas en los templos, aquel del Sol, por ejemplo, cuya estatua de oro masivo, fundida desde la conquista, conserva a pesar de todo un prestigio mágico. Las artes, aunque muy brillantes, no presentan empero más que un interés de segundo orden: los tejidos, los vasos en forma de cabezas humanas o de animales son notables. Pero en esta comarca hay que buscar en otra parte, y no entre los incas, una producción verdaderamente digna de interés. En Tihuanaco, en el norte de Bolivia, la famosa puerta del Sol ya da testimonio de una arquitectura y de un arte prestigiosos que hay que atribuir a una época muy anterior. De las cerámicas, diversos fragmentos
se unen en estilo a esta puerta milenaria. En suma, en la época misma de los incas, son los pueblos de la costa, de civilización más antigua, los autores de los objetos más curiosos.

BLACK SUN: Bataille on Sade - Geoffrey Roche (2006)

Georges Bataille is one of the most influential thinkers to have seriously considered the work of Donatien Alphonse François, the Marquis de Sade. What is undeniable is that the two thinkers share a number of thematic and theoretical commonalities, in particular on the subject of human nature and sexuality. However, there are serious theoretical divergences between the two, a fact generally overlooked in the secondary literature. Rather than being a mere precursor to Bataille, as himself implies, I suggest that Sade is a very different thinker, a fact that Bataille does not fully acknowledge.

…if [Sade] had not existed he would have had to be invented…

—Bataille The Accursed Share (AS Vol. III: 252).

In the last five or so decades, a number of philosophers, writers, artists and film makers have implied that there is some profound significance to the work of the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814). One of the most prominent and influential of these was thinker and author Georges Bataille (1897-1962). Bataille almost single-handedly established Sade’s place in the realm of ideas, and is unusual, as a non-specialist, in having had a major influence on Sade scholarship. A good deal of the secondary literature on Sade (for example, that of Michel Foucault, Marcel Hénaff, David Allison, David Martyn, Deepak Narang Sawhney, Alphonso Lingis, and Béatrice Didier) takes for granted that there is a natural intellectual affinity between his work and that of Bataille. Bataille frequently introduces Sade into his meditations in such a way as to suggest a complete identification. He takes Sade to be largely in agreement with his own discussions of sexuality, ‘general economics,’ and what he refers to as the ‘Sovereign.’ This paper will function as a critique of Bataille’s utilization and identification of Sade. I aim to clarify whether we actually learn anything of Sade’s thought from reading Bataille (or vice versa), that is, whether Bataille is a help or a hindrance in coming to terms with the Sadeian labyrinth. Firstly, I will outline the thematic preoccupations that Bataille shares with Sade. Secondly, I will map the theoretical continuities and discontinuities between the two thinkers.

In the 1930 essay “The Use-Value of D.A.F. Sade (An open letter to my current comrades)” (hereafter UV), Bataille discusses what, for him, is Sade’s true message total revolution, and the wish to “release dangerous movements and be their first victims.”1 In so doing, he lambastes those members of the Surrealist circle who he felt had entirely misunderstood Sade, who instead ‘worship’ him in the manner of “primitive subjects in relation to their king” (UV: 17). Given the anodyne version of Sade embraced by André Breton and others, Bataille’s has the merit of being under no illusions as to what Sade’s work entails, this being the most striking, and vital, feature of his interpretation. Sade reappears again in most of Bataille’s subsequent works, in particular Erotism (hereafter ER, 1957), The Accursed Share (hereafter AS, written 1949, published 1967) and Tears of Eros (hereafter TE, 1961).

Bataille shares with Sade a number of thematic preoccupations. Bataille’s fictional work, in particular Story of the Eye, is similar to that of Sade to the point of appearing derivative. As in Sade, in Bataille there is a great deal of scatology, sex scenes in churches, blasphemy, humiliation, rape, torture, and necrophilia.3 There are also philosophical similarities, although these have often been exaggerated. The most obvious theoretical commonality is in their ethical orientation. Sade’s view that civilization and morals have softened man is close to Bataille’s attitude (Juliette, hereafter J, 776). Both writers draw a link between the absence of God and the nullity of morality, suggesting a traditionally religious view of moral thought (Bataille’s project of founding an ‘anti-ethics’, without reason or justice, is explicitly a Godless ethics ).4 Bataille states that Sade took the mentality of the aristocracy to its limit under the pretence of criticizing it (ER: 166). Bataille also notes that, though Sade’s work remains on the fictional plane (ER: 175; AS Vol. II: 183) he “stated his [principles] but never really put them to practice” (TE: 142). Bataille admires Sade for his nihilism and his total disregard for his fellow man, and notes that he was a “connoisseur of torture” (ER: 171-172, 189; TE: 206).5 Yet he also describes Sade as in some sense an ethical figure. In Erotism, Bataille holds that, because “violence is silent,” Sade’s attitude is “diametrically opposed to that of the torturer” (ER: 186, 252). The paragraph below illustrates the tension in this account. Sade, for Bataille, represents both the attitude of ‘sovereignty’ that stands beyond concern for the fellow man, and the (assumedly) moral attitude of the revolutionary.

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Image: Marquis de Sade, Ladislav Guderna (1979)

INNER EXPERIENCE IS NOT PSYCHOSIS: Bataille’s Ethics and Lacanian Subjectivity - Andrew Ryder (2010)

Lacan and Bataille

Despite his personal proximity to Georges Bataille, Jacques Lacan makes very few direct references to his work. Indeed, the only mention of Bataille’s name in the 878 pages of the Écrits is in a footnote to “On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis.” This article declares that Daniel Schreber, the prototypical psychotic, was exposed to inner experience by his insight that “God is a whore.” Lacan affirms that his mention of inner experience is an allusion to Bataille, and refers the reader to Inner Experience, which he calls Bataille’s central work; and to Madame Edwarda, in which “he describes the odd extremity of this experience.” Lacan here identifies the experience of Madame Edwarda with Bataille’s “inner experience,” and stipulates that both are identical to Schreber’s psychotic break.

“On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis” was written in 1958 and generated by a seminar Lacan gave in 1955-1956. He had known Bataille for twenty years, having been a participant in Bataille’s Acéphale group. Lacan was also the companion of Sylvia Bataille (née Maklès), Bataille’s first wife, following their separation in 1934; Lacan married her in 1953. Sylvia remained close to Bataille for the rest of her life following their separation and divorce. Moreover, Lacan raised Laurence, Bataille’s daughter, because her birth parents separated when she was four years old. The 1950s was a period of close contact between the two men; Lacan contributed some of the research for Erotism, published in 1957.

Aside from this close biographical link and Lacan’s explicit invocation of Bataille in his consideration of psychosis, Slavoj Zizek has argued for another point of proximity between their thought, a link that he finds dangerous and aims to overcome. In Zizek’s view, it is in Seminar VII that Lacan is closest to Bataille in his formulation of transgressive jouissance. This is an influence that Zizek believes that Lacan subsequently escapes. I will argue that despite Lacan’s personal friendship with Bataille, his statement in “On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis” betrays a misunderstanding of Madame Edwarda. That is, while Lacan had commitments to the reconstitution of subjectivity that render Bataille’s work illustrative of psychotic experience, close reading of Bataille’s text reveals a distinct position on self and other. In consideration of these two points of contact between Lacan and Bataille (on psychotic experience and transgression), we must note that the neurotic who is led to undertake an act corresponding to the essence of his or her desire is not said to be a psychotic. To reconcile this apparent contradiction, it is necessary to realize that for Lacan, all subjects are potentially psychotic, and avoid this only by the fragile construction of an ego ideal. Psychosis, then, is the result of a foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father and a denial of the Other of the Other, leading to direct contact with the real. From this perspective, Bataille’s refusal of the Name-of-the-Father and of subjectivity (writing under a pseudonym) and emphasizing an immediate contact with otherness that identifies a specific alterity (the title character) with its ultimate guarantor can only be read as a psychotic experience. I will inquire into Lacan’s theories of subjectivity and examine the impetus they receive from Bataille’s ideas on ipseity, as well as their departure from his thought, as well as investigating the Lacanian approach to a Kantian ethical problem, as read by Adrian Johnston, with the end of comparing this to Bataille’s own imbrication of eroticism and ethics. A close reading of Bataille will show an alternative position on alterity that escapes subjectivity, while remaining distinct from the psychosis diagnosed by Lacan and the irresponsible nihilism suspected by Zizek.

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FRIENDSHIP, ASYMMETRY, SACRIFICE: Bataille & Blanchot - Patrick Ffrench (2007)

Jacques Derrida’s Politics of Friendship [Politiques de l’amitié] carries within it a hope that friendship concieved as ‘familial, fraternalist and andocentric’ be interrupted. The other friendship, which interrupts the friendship of ‘brothers’ is extended to any other, and anticipates the death of the friend; it is a friendship beyond the grave. friend speaks to the friend already from beyond the grave, if the friend speaks to the friend at all, and the friend responds in a situation of survival and of mourning, if response there is. There are two politics (at least) of friendship: that of the brothers, of man, on the one hand, and on the other friendship as a rupture with any kind of reciprocity or bond. other friendship ruins reciprocal exchange; it is not of the order of dialogue or of interlocution: friendship of this kind is synonymous with asymmetry. In the final pages of Derrida’s book, this friendship without bond and beyond the bond finds an exemplar in the relation (or the non-relation) of Maurice Blanchot and Georges Bataille, and particularly in the text that Blanchot dedicated to Georges Bataille: Friendship [L’Amitié] (PF 293). The friendship which interrupts the bond is moreover to be linked, Derrida suggests, to the ‘community without community’ (48) named by Bataille, and on which Blanchot will write in The Unknowable Community [La communauté inavouable], in response to Jean-Luc Nancy’s The Inoperative Community [La communauté désoeuvrée]. Politics of Friendship thus addresses, obliquely, a community of friends whose links with each other take the written form of a series of ruptures with community, a series of asymmetrical interventions and responses. Friendship, in this sense, exists in the response or the echo that one text gives to another, where this response responds without answering, and where the echo is already another voice; community is inscribed in or rather across a disjunctive network of texts. In this context, can it be said that the text addresses or is addressed to the other? How do these conditions affect the mode of address and the character of critical thought? The reciprocity of non-reciprocity, or in other words, the way in which these texts respond to or echo each other by not responding to or echoing each other, has important consequences in terms of what does not return in Blanchot’s friendship with Bataille, and in terms of what is not addressed in Bataille’s work.

A genealogy of texts thus constitutes this series of interruptions of friendship, leading back to the encounter between Bataille and Blanchot in the early 1940s and to the interplay of their writings, which often refer to ‘conversations’; this is taken up again in the 1980s with the ‘exchange’ between Nancy and Blanchot on community (in which Blanchot’s mode of responding to is to write, partly, on Marguerite Duras’ Maladie de la mort and on the ‘community without community’ of May 1968). But the first part of The Unknowable Community at least is concerned with the theoretical legacy of Bataille’s experiments with community of the pre-war period, the ‘secret’ society Acéphale, the Collège de Sociologie, whose contexts are the precise political conjunctures of the 1930s. Blanchot and Nancy’s engagements with Bataille tend, to an extent, to disengage him from these conjunctures. Blanchot’s Friendship also, while its various articles can be situated as asymmetrical responses to specific moments in Bataille’s writing, disengages these moments from their immediate conjunctures. This dis-engagement or de-scription is, however, inherent to the mode of friendship envisaged by both Blanchot and Bataille. Their friendship, otherwise their communication, is one which withdraws from presence and from immediacy in differing ways. In both withdrawing from immediacy, Blanchot and Bataille’s texts (Friendship and ‘Friendship’) seem to gesture towards each other, on either side of the limit of Bataille’s death, texts on two sides of a tomb, to form an asymmetrical reciprocity.

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