Mark Hewson - Georges Bataille Key Concepts

Georges Bataille

Georges Bataille (18971962) was a philosopher, writer, and literary critic whose work has had a significant impact across disciplines as diverse as philosophy, sociology, economics, art history, and literary criticism, as well as influencing key figures in contemporary European philosophy such as Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault.

In Georges Bataille: Key Concepts an international team of contributors provide an accessible examination of Batailles work. The chapters in the first section of the book study the social, political, artistic, and philosophical contexts that shaped Batailles thought, while those in the second section cover a series of key areas of his writings, including art, eroticism, evil, religion, sacrifice, and sovereignty.

This book is an invaluable guide for students from across the Humanities and Social Sciences coming to Batailles work for the first time.

Mark Hewson teaches at the Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy and at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of Blanchot and Literary Criticism (2011), and of articles on Wordsworth, Mallarm, and the history of literary criticism.

Marcus Coelen is an affiliate of the Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin, and a practicing psychoanalyst. He is the author of a study on Proust and the problem of aesthetic judgment in the Recherche, and several translations and editions in German of texts by Maurice Blanchot. He is a co-editor of the book series Neue Subjektile.

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Georges Bataille

Key Concepts

Edited by

Mark Hewson and Marcus Coelen

First published 2016

by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2016 Mark Hewson and Marcus Coelen, editorial matter and selection; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of Mark Hewson and Marcus Coelen to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Georges Bataille : key concepts / edited by Mark Hewson and Marcus Coelen. 1 [edition].

pages cm. (Key concepts)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Bataille, Georges, 18971962. I. Hewson, Mark, editor.

B2430.B33954G463 2016

194dc23

2015025365

ISBN: 978-1-138-90855-0 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-90856-7 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-65736-3 (ebk)

Giulia Agostini is assistant professor at Heidelberg University where she obtained her PhD with a thesis on Pierre Klossowski. From 20122014 she was a Marie-Curie fellow at Versailles University. Since October 2014 she has been visiting scholar at SorbonneParis IV. She is currently preparing a book on After Literature. Leopardi, Mallarm, Zambrano.

Elisabeth Arnould-Bloomfield is Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literatures at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is the author of Bataille, La terreur et les lettres (2009) and has published articles and book chapters on Bataille, Ponge, Proust, Pierre Michon, Marie NDiaye and others. She is currently researching contemporary representations of animals and is at work on a manuscript entitled Negative Zoologies, Death and Suffering in Twentieth- and Twenty-first Centuries Animal Representations.

Tiina Arppe is a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Social Research, University of Helsinki. She is a specialist in French social theory and has written about Rousseau, Durkheim, Mauss, Bataille and Baudrillard among others. Her publications include Affectivity and the Social Bond: Transcendence, Economy and Violence in French Social Theory (2014), Sacred Violence: Girard, Bataille and the Vicissitudes of Human Desire (Distinktion 19/2009) and Sorcerers Apprentices and the Will to Figuration: The Ambiguous Heritage of the Collge de Sociologie (Theory, Culture and Society 26(4), 2009). She has also translated several French theorists into Finnish, including texts of Derrida, Bataille, Baudrillard, Kristeva and Bourdieu.

Marcus Coelen is an affiliate of ICI Berlin and a practicing psychoanalyst. He held positions in Romance Philology and Comparative Literature at the universities of Hamburg, Zrich and Munich (LMU) and has taught in Israel and Brazil. Among his publications are a study on Proust and the problem of (aesthetic) judgment in the Recherche (Angemate Notwendigkeiten. Lektren Proust, 2007), several translations and editions in German of texts by Maurice Blanchot (Politische Schriften 19581993, 2008; Das Neutrale. Texte und Fragmente zur Philosophie, 2010; Vergehen, 2012) and a constellation around the primal scene (Die andere Urszene. Texte von Maurice Blanchot, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe et al., 2009). He is a co-editor of the book series Neue Subjektile with Turia+Kant, Vienna and Berlin.

Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the author, among other publications, of Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolinis Italy (1997) and Rethinking the Political: The Sacred, Aesthetic Politics, and the Collge de Sociologie (2011). She is also the editor of Georges Batailles unpublished lecture at the Collge, La sociologie sacre du monde contemporain (2004).

Patrick ffrench is Professor of French at Kings College London, where he specialises in 20th-century French literature and thought, especially the legacies of French theory post-1945 and the work of Georges Bataille. He is the author of The Time of Theory: A History of Tel Quel (1996),