Georges Bataille: Core Cultural Theorist

by Paul Hegarty

Long recognized in France as a central figure in French cultural thought, the range and significance of Batille's ideas are now being grasped in the English speaking world. His influence on Derrida, Foucault, Kristeva and Baudrillard is now more clearly understood and Bataille has emerged as a front-rank cultural theorist who posed questions and paradoxes that were extraordinarily prescient.



This book offers a comprehensive and detailed presentation and analysis of the full range of his writings - political, philosophical, aesthetic, literary, anthropological and cultural. And tackles his thoughts on waste, sacrifice, death, eroticism, surplus, ecstasy and drunkenness, offering the best available guide to this challenging and utterly unique thinker.

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Paul Hegarty is an author, musician, and lecturer in aesthetics at University College Cork. He performs in the noise band Safe and is involved in running the experimental music record label dotdotdotmusic.

Reviews

[s.m. k. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very accessible introduction to the thought of Bataille. As Bataille was a writer writing against systems, Hegarty does a nice job of presenting the interconnections of Bataille's work while tending with the paradoxes of such a position; this in addition to pointing out the further paradoxes and contradictions of Bataille's thought.

Having not read any Bataille before having read this book, I do not have the data to determine the appropriateness of Hegarty's interpretation, but he is fair in pointing to the strengths and weaknesses/blind spots of Bataille's work. There were extensive citations, as one would expect in such a book, and many quotes from Bataille's many works, fiction and nonfiction, illustrating the author's interpretation.

Finally, the book is quite short (160 pp.) providing a concise overview for those who want an introduction to Bataille's thought and his influence on later writers such as Kristeva, Derrida, Foucault, and Baudrillard.