Georges Bataille () (September 10, 1897 – July 8, 1962) was a Frenchwriter. Although subsequent philosophers have been significantly influenced by his thought, Bataille tended not to refer to himself as a philosopher.
Bataille attended the École des Chartes in Paris and graduated in February 1922. Bataille is often referred to, interchangeably, as an archivist and a librarian. While it is true that he worked at the Bibliothèque Nationale, his work there was with medallion collections (he also published scholarly articles on numismatics), and his thesis at the École des Chartes was a critical edition of the medieval manuscript L?Ordre de chevalerie which he produced directly by classifying the eight manuscripts from which he reconstructed the poem. After graduating he moved to the School of Advanced Spanish Studies in Madrid.
Founder of several journals and literary groups, Bataille is the author of an oeuvre both abundant and diverse: readings, poems, essays on innumerable subjects (on the mysticism of economy, in passing of poetry, philosophy, the arts, eroticism). He sometimes published under pseudonyms, and some of his publications were banned. He was relatively ignored during his lifetime and scorned by contemporaries such as Jean-Paul Sartre as an advocate of mysticism, but after his death had considerable influence on authors such as Michel Foucault, Philippe Sollers and Jacques Derrida, all of whom were affiliated with the Tel Quel journal. His influence is felt in the work of Jean Baudrillard, as well as in the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan.
Fascinated by human sacrifice, he founded a secret society, Acéphale, the symbol of which was a decapitated man. According to legend, Bataille and the other members of Acéphale each agreed to be the sacrificial victim as an inauguration; none of them would agree to be the executioner. An indemnity was offered for an executioner, but none was found before the dissolution of Acéphale shortly before the war. The group also published an eponymous review, concerned with Nietzsche's philosophy, and which attempted to think what Jacques Derrida has called an "anti-sovereignty". Bataille thus collaborated with André Masson, Pierre Klossowski, Roger Caillois, Jules Monnerot, Jean Rollin and Jean Wahl.
Bataille drew from diverse influences and used diverse modes of discourse to create his work. His novel Story of the Eye, published under the pseudonym Lord Auch (literally, Lord "to the shithouse" — "auch" being short for "aux chiottes," slang for telling somebody off by sending them to the toilet), was initially read as pure pornography, while interpretation of the work has gradually matured to reveal the considerable philosophical and emotional depth that is characteristic of other writers who have been categorized within "literature of transgression." The imagery of the novel is built upon a series of metaphors which in turn refer to philosophical constructs developed in his work: the eye, the egg, the sun, the earth, the testicle.
Other famous novels include the posthumousMy Mother (which would become the basis of Ma mère, a French movie written and directed by Christophe Honoré) and The Blue of Noon. The latter, with its necrophilic, political, and autobiographical undertones, is a much darker treatment of contemporary historical reality.
Bataille's first marriage was to actress Silvia Maklès; they divorced in 1934, and she later married the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Bataille also had an affair with Colette Peignot, who died in 1938. In 1946 Bataille married Diane de Beauharnais, with whom he had a daughter.
Key concepts
Base materialism
Bataille developed base materialism during the late 1920s and early 1930s as an attempt to break with mainstream materialism. Bataille argues for the concept of an active base matter that disrupts the opposition of high and low and destabilises all foundations. In a sense the concept is similar to Spinoza'sneutral monism of a substance that encompasses both the dual substances of mind and matter posited by Descartes, however it defies strict definition and remains in the realm of experience rather than rationalisation. Base materialism was a major influence on Derrida'sdeconstruction, and both share the attempt to destabilise philosophical oppositions by means of an unstable "third term." Bataille's notion of Base Materialism may also be seen as anticipating Althusser's conception of aleatory materialism or "materialism of the encounter," which draws on similar atomist metaphors to sketch a world in which causality and actuality are abandoned in favor of limitless possibilities of action.
Complete works
Georges Bataille, ?uvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard)
Volume 1: Premiers écrits, 1922-1940: Histoire de l'?il - L'Anus solaire - Sacrifices - Articles.
Volume 2: Écrits posthumes, 1922-1940
Volume 3: ?uvres littéraires: Madame Edwarda - Le Petit - L'Archangélique - L'Impossible - La Scissiparité - L'Abbé C. - L'être différencié n'est rien - Le Bleu du ciel.
Volume 4: ?uvres littéraires posthumes: Poèmes - Le Mort - Julie - La Maison brûlée - La Tombe de Louis XXX - Divinus Deus - Ébauches.
Volume 5: La Somme athéologique I: L'Expérience intérieure - Méthode de méditation - Post-scriptum 1953 - Le Coupable - L'Alleluiah.
Volume 6: La Somme athéologique II: Sur Nietzsche - Mémorandum - Annexes.
Volume 7: L'économie à la mesure de l'univers - La Part maudite - La limite de l'utile (Fragments) - Théorie de la Religion - Conférences 1947-1948 - Annexes.
Volume 8: L'Histoire de l'érotisme - Le surréalisme au jour le jour - Conférences 1951-1953 - La Souveraineté - Annexes.
Volume 9: Lascaux, ou La naissance de l?art - Manet - La littérature et le mal - Annexes
Volume 10: L?érotisme - Le procès de Gilles de Rais - Les larmes d?Eros
Noys, Benjamin, Georges Bataille: a critical introduction (London: Pluto, 2000).
Perniola, Mario, L'instant étérnel. Bataille et la pensée de la marginalité, translated by François Pelletier, preface to the French edition by the author, Paris, Méridien/Anthropos, 1981, ISBN 2-86563-024-2.
Richardson, Michael, Georges Bataille (London: Routledge, 1994).
Sollers, Philippe, Writing and the Experience of Limits (Columbia University Press, 1982).
Stoekl, Allan (ed.), On Bataille: Yale French Studies 78 (1990). Includes: Bataille, "Hegel, Death and Sacrifice"; Bataille, "Letter to René Char on the Incompatibilities of the Writer"; Jean-Luc Nancy, "Exscription"; Rebecca Comay, "Gifts without Presents: Economies of 'Experience' in Bataille and Heidegger"; Jean-Joseph Goux, "General Economics and Postmodern Capitalism."
Surya, Michel, Georges Bataille: an intellectual biography, trans. by Krzysztof Fijalkowski and Michael Richardson (London: Verso, 2002).
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