The Obsessions of Georges Bataille: Community and Communication

by Mitchell, Andrew J.; Winfree, Jason Kemp

• ISBN13: 9781438428246
• ISBN10: 1438428243
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-10-08
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

Featuring a new translation of Jean-Luc Nancy's "Confronted Community" and three essays by Bataille on community and communication available here in English for the first time, The Obsessions of Georges Bataille offers an indispensible account of Bataille's work. Despite the influence of Bataille on French continental thought, his ideas remain famously obscure. This volume clarifies them by approaching Bataille's thought through the themes of community and communication. Taking up the dialogue of Nancy and Maurice Blanchot on Bataille's ideas about community, the essays engage the many perspectives from which he approaches community: encouraging greater community, expressing concern with community, and addressing the connections between community and one's inner experience.

Author Biography

Andrew J. Mitchell is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Emory University and cotranslator (with Franois Raffoul) of Four Seminars by Martin Heidegger. Jason Kemp Winfree is Associate Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Stanislaus.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. vii
Editors' Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Key to Abbreviations	p. xv
Editors' Introduction: Community and Communication	p. 1
The Confronted Community	p. 19
The Contestation of Community	p. 31
The Horror of Liberty	p. 47
Of Goods and Things: Reflections on an Ethics of Community	p. 63
Transgression and the Community of the Sacred	p. 83
Elements of Experience: Bataille's Drama	p. 99
Contact and Communication	p. 119
Sharing God's Wounds: Laceration, Communication, and Stigmata	p. 133
A Blood Altered in Its Own Sense	p. 147
Bataille: Discerning Edges in the Art of Lascaux	p. 165
Appendices
What We Have Undertaken ...	p. 189
Silence and Literature	p. 197
The Political Lie	p. 203
List of Contributors	p. 209
Index	p. 211
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