Visions of Excess; Selected Writings, 1927-1939
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. Second printing [stated]. Trade paperback. xxv, [1], 271, [7] pages. Notes. A commentary on the Texts. Index. Cover has some wear and soiling. A marks and comments to the introductory material and occasionally elsewhere noted. This is Volume 14 of the Theory and History of Literature series. Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (10 September 1897 – 9 July 1962) was a French philosopher and intellectual working in philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, and poetry, explored such subjects as eroticism, mysticism, surrealism, and transgression. His work would prove influential on subsequent schools of philosophy and social theory, including poststructuralism. Allan Stoekl is professor emeritus of French and comparative literature at Pennsylvania State University. His books include Bataille's Peak: Energy, Religion, and Postsustainability (Minnesota, 2007). Agonies of the Intellectual: Commitment, Subjectivity and the Performative in the Twentieth Century French tradition (1992) and Politics, Writing, Mutilation: The Cases of Bataille, Roussel, Leiris and Ponge (1985). Translator of Maurice Blanchot (The Most High, 2001), editor of Georges Bataille's Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, Stoekl has in his recent work focused on issues of energy use, sustainability and economy in a literary-cultural and philosophical context. Notably, he has been considering certain theories--of the city, of history, of writing: the surrealists, situationists, Le Corbusier, Kojève, Blanchot--in light of current conceptions (aesthetic, political, energetic) of sustainable urbanism. More