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. Since the publication of Visions of Excess in 1985, there has been an explosion of interest in the work of Georges Bataille. The French surrealist continues to be important for his groundbreaking focus on the visceral, the erotic, and the relation of society to the primeval. This collection of prewar writings remains the volume in which Batailles’s positions are most clearly, forcefully, and obsessively put forward. This book challenges the notion of a “closed economy” predicated on utility, production, and rational consumption, and develops an alternative theory that takes into account the human tendency to lose, destroy, and waste. This collection is indispensible for an understanding of the future as well as the past of current critical theory. Georges Bataille (1897-1962), a librarian by profession, was founder of the French review Critique. He is the author of several books, including Story of the Eye, The Accused Share, Eroticism, and The Absence of Myth. Condition: Good.
Keywords: Georges Bataille, Language, Materialism, Gnosticism, Mutilation, Vincent Van Gogh, Hegelian Dialectic, Sacrifices, Expenditures, Fascism, Popular Front, Conspiracy, Nietzsche, Obelisk, Sorcerer, Apprentice, Joy, Sacred, Sociology
ISBN: 0816612838
[Book #85606]
Price: $50.00