The Obsessions of Georges Bataille

Community and Communication

Edited by Andrew J. Mitchell & Jason Kemp Winfree

Subjects: Continental Philosophy, Philosophy Of Communication, Comparative Literature
Series: SUNY series in Contemporary French Thought
Paperback : 9781438428246, 232 pages, October 2009
Hardcover : 9781438428239, 232 pages, October 2009

Table of contents

List of Illustrations
Editors’ Preface
Acknowledgments
Key to Abbreviations
Editors’ Introduction: Community and Communication
1. The Confronted Community
Jean-Luc Nancy
2. The Contestation of Community
Jason Kemp Winfree
3. The Horror of Liberty
Stuart Kendall
4. Of Goods and Things: Refl ections on an Ethics of Community
Chris Gemerchak
5. Transgression and the Community of the Sacred 83
David B. Allison
6. Elements of Experience: Bataille’s Drama
Kalliopi Nikolopoulou
7. Contact and Communication
Alphonso Lingis
8. Sharing God’s Wounds: Laceration, Communication, and Stigmata
Karmen MacKendrick
9. A Blood Altered in Its Own Sense
Marc Froment-Meurice
10. Bataille: Discerning Edges in the Art of Lascaux
Edward S. Casey
Appendices
1. What We Have Undertaken . . .
Georges Bataille
2. Silence and Literature
Georges Bataille
3. The Political Lie
Georges Bataille
List of Contributors
Index

Considers Bataille’s work from an explicitly philosophical perspective.

Description

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 indispensable 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. Communication is brought out not as a singular activity, but as a collective natural state—a medium for human expression and relations.

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

Reviews

"This impressive array of essays adds significantly to the conversation on Bataille's work and voice for contemporary political questions and longstanding philosophical queries." — Shannon Winnubst, editor of Reading Bataille Now