Georges Bataille Overview

French essayist, philosophical theorist and novelist, often called the "metaphysician of evil." Bataille was interested in sex, death, degradation, and the power and potential of the obscene. He rejected traditional literature and considered that the ultimate aim of all intellectual, artistic,... [more]

French essayist, philosophical theorist and novelist, often called the "metaphysician of evil." Bataille was interested in sex, death, degradation, and the power and potential of the obscene. He rejected traditional literature and considered that the ultimate aim of all intellectual, artistic, or religious activity should be the annihilation of the rational individual in a violent, transcendental act of communion. Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and Philippe Sollers have all written enthusiastically about his work. "Blameless, shameless. The more desperate the eroticism, the more hopelessly women show off their heavy breasts, opening their mouths and screaming out, the greater the attraction. In contrast, a promise of light awaits at the limits of the mystical outlook. I find this unbearable and soon returned to insolence and erotic vomit - which doesn't respect anybody or anything. How sweet to enter filthy night and proudly wrap myself in it. The whore I went with was as uncomplicated as a child and she hardly talked. There was another one, who came crashing down from a tabletop - sweet, shy, heartbreakingly tender, as I watched her with drunken, unfeeling eyes." (from Guilty, 1988) Georges Bataille was born in Billon, Puy-de-Dôme, in central France. "I belong to a turbulent generation, born to literary life in the tumult of surrealism," Bataille once defined his background. His childhood was a nightmare. Bataille's mother, Marie-Antoinette, attempted suicide several times, but none of her desperate acts succeeded. Bataille loved his father, Joseph-Aristide, who suffered from general paralysis due to syphilis. In 1913 he went mad and died three years later. "What upset me more was seeing my father shit a great number of times . . . ", Bataille later wrote. At the age of fifteen Bataille left school for a period; until then he had not been a good student, but after taking up studies at a boy's school in Épernay on the Marne, he completed the first part of his baccalauréat. On the eve of World War I, Bataille converted to Catholicism. In 1916-17 he served in the army, but was discharged because of tuberculosis. Ill health and bouts of depression troubled Bataille all his life. [show less]