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Georges Bataille: Essential Writings
August 1998 | 256 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
Georges Bataille's work is an essential reference in any discussion of modernity and postmodernity. An important influence on Foucault, Derrida and post-structuralism, Bataille is a thinker of key significance. This volume makes a selection from the entire body of his academic work, showing how his thinking on sacrifice, eroticism, taboo and transgression, and the nature of identity inform his social theory.
Bataille - Essential Writings will be the standard introductory text to this profound and difficult thinker.
Introduction
PART ONE: COMING INTO BEING: THE CONTINUITY OF THE LIFE PROCESS
Birth and the Incomprehensible Wonder of Existence
Materiality
Sexual Differentiation and Otherness
Language
PART TWO: SOCIAL LIFE AND THE ORGANISATION OF SOCIETY
The Nature of Society
Religion and the Sacred
Taboo and Transgression
Expenditure and Sacrifice
Exchange and the Commodification of the Economy
PART THREE: HUMAN BECOMING
Work and Play
Sexual Attraction
Sickness and Laughter
Mastery and Servitude
Meditation and Inner Experience
PART FOUR: SOVEREIGNTY AND THE IMPOSSIBLE
Writing and Reading
Confrontations with the World
Sovereignty
Death
The Impossible