AFTER BATAILLE SACRIFICE, EXPOSURE, COMMUNITY
LEGENDA
LEGENDA, founded in 1995 by the European Humanities Research Centre of the University of Oxford, is now a joint imprint of the Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge. Titles range from medieval texts to contemporary cinema and form a widely comparative view of the modem humanities, including works on Arabic, Catalan, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Yiddish literature. An Editorial Board of distinguished academic specialists works in collaboration with leading scholarly bodies such as the Society for French Studies and the British Comparative Literature Association.
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EDITORIAL BOARD
Chairman
Professor Martin McLaughlin, Magdalen College, Oxford
Professor John Batchelor, University of Newcastle (English)
Professor Malcolm Cook, University of Exeter (French)
Professor Colin Davis, Royal Holloway University of London (Modern Literature, Film and Theory)
Professor Robin Fiddian, Wadham College, Oxford (Spanish)
Professor Paul Garner, University of Leeds (Spanish)
Professor Marian Hobson Jeanneret, Queen Mary University of London (French)
Professor Catriona Kelly, New College, Oxford (Russian)
Professor Martin Maiden, Trinity College, Oxford (Linguistics)
Professor Peter Matthews, St John's College, Cambridge (Linguistics)
Dr Stephen Parkinson, Linacre College, Oxford (Portuguese)
Professor Ritchie Robertson, St John's College, Oxford (German)
Professor Lesley Sharpe, University of Exeter (German)
Professor David Shepherd, University of Sheffield (Russian)
Professor Alison Sinclair, Clare College, Cambridge (Spanish)
Professor David Treece, King's College London (Portuguese)
Professor Diego Zancani, Balliol College, Oxford (Italian)
Managing Editor
Dr Graham Nelson
41 Wellington Square, Oxford OXi 2JF, UK
legenda@mhra.org.uk
www. legenda. mhra .org.uk
After Bataille
Sacrifice, Exposure, Community
PATRICK FFRENCH
Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge
2007
First published 2007
Published by the
Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge
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LEGENDA is an imprint of the Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Modern Humanities Research Association and Taylor & Francis 2007
ISBN 978-1-90435 0-85-9 (hbk)
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Contents
Guide
FOR LAURENCE
I completed the final version of this book during research leave funded by King's College London and by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK). I would also like to thank the libraries of the University of Sussex, the Cit Universitaire Internationale de Paris and the Ecole de la Cause Freudienne for the use of their facilities. Professor Michel Maffesoli of the Universite de Paris I and Director of the Centre d'Etudes sur l'Actuel et le Quotidien generously sanctioned my residence in Paris where the book was completed. Parts of the book originated as papers at conferences and seminars organized by Andrew Hussey, in Barcelona, by Carolyn Gill, in London, by Martin Crowley, in Cambridge, by David Lomas, in Manchester, and by Ian Maclachlan, in Aberdeen. Parts of are revised from my article ' Donner voir: Bataille, Poetry and Sacrifice' in Forum for Modern Language Studies, 42:2 (April 2006), pp. 12638.Two points of contact with the legacy of Georges Bataille were occasioned by meetings with the late Jean Piel and with Marcelin Pleynet, in Paris. The intellectual example of Annette Lavers has always been and continues to be essential. Simon Gaunt has been an invaluable interlocutor throughout the gestation of the book and particularly on the question of sacrifice and the eaten heart. I am especially grateful to Simon Gaunt, to Martin Crowley and to Legenda's anonymous reviewer for their generous suggestions about the revision of the manuscript. I would like to thank Graham Nelson of Legenda and Richard Correll for their invaluable help in the preparation of this book. The book bears the trace of encounters and conversations with a multitude of colleagues and friends: in particular I would like to acknowledge the presence in this book of Andrew Asibong, Bruno Sibona, Cline Surprenant, Dominique Rabat, Hector Kollias, Jean, Pierre and Emile Demerliac, Jo Malt, Martin Crowley, Micky Sheringham, Paul Hammond, Peter Hallward, Simon Gaunt, Suzanne Guerlac, Tim Mathews, Tom Baldwin, and the late and very much missed Burhan Tufail. Finally, I would like to thank Anita Phillips for her resilience and for making the book as so many other things possible.
Unless otherwise indicated all quotations from Bataille will be from the CEuvres compltes, 12 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 197088). Reference to volume I will be to the revised edition of 1973. Volume and page numbers for direct references to the CBuvres compltes will be in brackets following quotations in the body of the text, giving the volume number followed by the page number, for example: (I, 12). Other abbreviations are as follows:
- CL Georges Bataille, Choix de lettres, ed. by Michel Surya (Paris: Gallimard, 1997)
- CS Le Collge de Sociologie, ed. by Denis Hollier (Paris: Gallimard, 1995 [1979])
All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. Publication details for translations into English of Bataille's works may be found in the bibliography.