/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.20004919]

What does /lit/ think of Georges Bataille?

[Anonymous No.20004930]

/lit/ will become a Bataillean board

[Anonymous No.20004942]

very overrated

Blanchot is much much better

[Anonymous No.20004943]

>>20004919
Mostly based. The Accursed Share is unironically brilliant. His book on eroticism is a bit dry though.

[Anonymous No.20004957]

>>20004930
based

[Anonymous No.20004983]

>>20004919
Amazing

>>20004930
Yes, Dionysian communism will win.

[Anonymous No.20004988]

>>20004930
You are the cradle of humanity guy right?

[Anonymous No.20004991]

>>20004983
>Dionysian communism
Explain this

[Anonymous No.20005027]

>>20004988
Tell me about the caves? Why did they open them? Who came?

[Anonymous No.20005038]

>>20004991
>'ate capitalism because it's ugly and boring
>'ate fascism because it's even worse
>'ate leninism because it's only a little better
>like me some bloody revolution
>the heterogenous proletariat is the source of all beauty
>like me some ecstatic community who potlatches the global south into a state of equality
>like me a world without leaders to limit our natural ecstasy
turning point acephale - we'll help you nut
https://www.marxists.org/subject/anarchism/bataille/sacred-conspiracy.htm

[Anonymous No.20005040]

>>20004919
>>20004930
/lit/ will become a Bataillean board

[Anonymous No.20005042]

>>20005027
you tell me

[Anonymous No.20005048]

Bataillean communism is unironically the only thing that can save us

[Anonymous No.20005054]

>>20005048
prepare the sacrifice, comrade

[Anonymous No.20005058]

So is Bataille some kind of atheist materialist proponent of violent nihilism and hedonism or is it deeper than that?

[Anonymous No.20005060]

>>20005048
the 1% is a head - the state is a head
you know what we do to heads around here

[Anonymous No.20005069]

>>20005058
bataille is not an atheist, he is a atheologian
bataille is not a materialist, he is a dualistic base materialist
bataille is neither a nihilist or a hedonist, he knew what lies beyond meaning and pleasure

[Anonymous No.20005070]

>>20005058
Also deeply spiritual and even to some extend ascetic.
Read the linked essay >>20005038 he delivers more systematic analysis elsewhere, but here is his call to action.

[Anonymous No.20005071]

>>20005042
The walls. You painted them. We came

[Anonymous No.20005075]

>>20005071
Soon they'll be painted with blood

[Anonymous No.20005076]

>>20005071
show me...

[Anonymous No.20005077]

>>20005069
>atheologian
>dualistic base materialist
Could you explain those terms?
>what lies beyond meaning and pleasure
What is there?
>>20005070
How can you be an atheist and spiritual? Thanks I'll read that link

[Anonymous No.20005082]

>>20005077
>How can you be an atheist and spiritual?
one of his central questions: you really have to read him to understand, there's too much groundwork I'll have to make before I can give you his argument coherently but the essay/manifest above is a good start.

[Anonymous No.20005104]

>>20005082
I can read french fluently, what's his entry-level book that talks about these things? Inner experience? I'm really intrigued by the spiritual atheist, "atheology", atheistic metaphysics thing

[Anonymous No.20005111]

>>20005077
I don't agree with him that Bataille is a dualist. Seems clear from the involvement with mysticism and from the solar general economy in The Accursed Share that he tends toward a kind of monism or even non-duality. Or a monism regarding energy and a non-duality regarding sacred vs erotic, which are subsumed under sovereignty, a kind of pure (in)action.
>>20005076
Rare Bataille. Saved

[Anonymous No.20005115]

>>20004919
i don't think about him at all

[Anonymous No.20005118]

>>20005104
I would read his earliest three books (Inner Experience/Guilty/On Nietzsche) last. They're almost nachlass, at least from the perspective of him having not finished his work.

[Anonymous No.20005119]

>>20005104
Inner experience, Guilty and On Nietzsche is his summa atheologica which is his inner investigation while Accursed share vol 1-3 + eroticism and theory of religion is his more structural outer analysis of it.

[Anonymous No.20005139]

>>20005118
>>20005119
Forgot to ask, how opaque is he? Is he as confusing and obfuscating as Deleuze, Derrida and the pomos or less so?

[Anonymous No.20005158]

>>20005139
Much easier to read than Deleuze. Deleuze is often a philosopher's philosopher. Writes entire commentaries on other authors just to express his own viewpoint instead of explaining theirs.

[Anonymous No.20005162]

>>20005139
What i termed his outer theory is much easier to understand than Deleuze though not as precise with words as him, when Bataille uses words that can be synonymous it's often because he means the same thing whereas more academic philosophers would be more careful: that makes his prose more relaxed though but again less precise. Inner experience is on the other hand quite hard.

[Anonymous No.20005170]

>>20005158
>>20005162
Got it, thanks.

[Anonymous No.20005270]

>>20004942
It's no contest.
Bataille Blanchot Klossowski is the holy trinity anyway

[Anonymous No.20005347]

Refuted by a Wehrmacht Soldier walking through a quaint french village and a girl smiling at him.

[Anonymous No.20005348]

>>20004919
Raging boner for his ouvre

[Anonymous No.20005351]

I am intrigued but I sense some fanboyism from this thread and this is always a bad thing. Am I wrong?

[Anonymous No.20005365]

>>20005351
No worse than a "read the Bible" thread

[Anonymous No.20005376]

Sad him and his mother leaving his blind dad to die during the nazi invasion. Cold shit.

[Anonymous No.20005394]

>>20004919
Theorycel faggot. If you've never been in a fight your opinion is irrelevant.

[Anonymous No.20005401]

>>20004919
>Writes a a pornographic novel about a 16 year old couple who go on a crime spree raping and murdering people
The only people who would enjoy a book like that are pedophiles. He is a pedophile who writes for other pedophiles.

[Anonymous No.20005402]

>>20005394
That's a cope for having an irrelevant opinion yourself but nothing else to attack someone else with

[Anonymous No.20005411]

>>20005402
>Implying anyone outside of Twitter even knows or cares who Battaile is

[Anonymous No.20005422]

>>20005411
is twitter in the room with you right now?

[Anonymous No.20005425]

>>20005394
Based. Islamic communism rising. WE ARE THE HORDE

[Anonymous No.20005563]

>>20005394
I won a fight with a guy at a trafic light that I started because he brake checked me. Plus the two in school I won, and the one I would have lost if the big kid I used to tease in grade school didn't save me.
Bataille is based, and you should run along.

[Anonymous No.20005597]

In history when ""communists"" took power and killed millions of citizens I depended on if the communists who took power were satanic, or divine, and thus if they massacred satanic or divine citizens, as this thread displays the variety?

[Anonymous No.20005607]

>>20005422
yeah, it's you nigger

[Anonymous No.20005733]

There is absolute order, absolute chaos, and the infinities in between.

Most or many people if lived in a perpetual state of perfect order might long for a little freedom/chaos; if lived in a perpetual state if chaos/freedom might long for a little order.

The world is chaoses and orders; the nation is chaoses and orders; the state is chaoses and orders; the city is chaoses and orders; the town is chaoses and orders; the corporation is chaoses and orders; the family is chaoses and orders; the individual is chaoses and orders;

It is a matter of how muches, and of what kinds, and when, how often, wheres and hows and whys

[Anonymous No.20006070]

There’s a series of his complete works available in French. Why has it not been made available in English? The series is relatively small compared to other major writers’ complete works and he’s a fairly popular writer.

[Anonymous No.20006071]

>>20005401
>16 is pedophile
Ameritard detected

[Anonymous No.20006168]

>>20006070
It’s still quite a lot to translate, with hundreds of pages of notes showing alternative manuscript variations, etc.
The more recent translations by Stuart Kendall of Inner Exp., Guilty, and On Nietzsche include all that, and are basically vols. V–VI (I think) of the Œuvres complètes. Visions of Excess is basically a selection of vols. I and II, while other compilations (Unfinished System, Cradle of Humanity, Absence of Myth) also draw from the OC. But, beside all the major works, which already have been translated, I guess there isn’t much of a push to do it – and, Anglo publishing just doesn’t do Complete Works like that very much, I think. They’d rather make a new compilation of their own or select an individual item to be translated in a journal, than publish all his book reviews from Critique and his borrowing records from the library (vol. XII). It’s a pity tho, especially as there still are some (unfinished) literary works yet to be translated.

Here’s a resource where you can see what has been translated where from the Complete Works however:
https://progressivegeographies.com/resources/georges-bataille-english-translations/

[Anonymous No.20006892]

Does anyone know of a good translation of Bataille's Solar Anus?

[Anonymous No.20006910]

>>20006892
Isn't this fine?
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/georges-bataille-the-solar-anus

[Anonymous No.20006931]

>>20006892
In Visions of Excess

[Anonymous No.20006977]

>>20006910
Yeah, I thought it was a longer short story, so I didn't think to just look for a version of it on Google. I was looking on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. Thank you.

[Anonymous No.20006984]

>>20004919
Decent, I did a video on his economic theory but it was too dry for some asshole in the comment section

[Anonymous No.20006988]

>>20006071
I live in Ohio.16 is legal here. Shows you don't know much about us.

[Anonymous No.20006989]

>>20006977
Visions of excess is quite a nice collection though if you want it in book form with a lot of really good texts

[Anonymous No.20006993]

>>20006984
link to video?

[Anonymous No.20006995]

If I'm really interested in Bataille and getting an overview of his entire writings and philosophy, what are all of the works I should read? So far, I've got The Accursed Share, Inner Experience, Guilty, On Nietzsche, Eroticism, and Story of the Eye on my list. What else do I need?

[Anonymous No.20007005]

>>20006995
Visions of excess is a good start

[Anonymous No.20007022]

>>20004919
>I piss my pants and I cry

[Anonymous No.20007025]

>>20007022
Literally me

[Anonymous No.20007099]

>>20004919
Why does he care about eggs so much?

[Anonymous No.20007335]

>>20006995
Theory of Religion
Also, Madame Edwarda, My Mother, and Blue of Noon (maybe The Impossible) for fiction

[Anonymous No.20007364]

Does anyone practice a sort of Bataillean spirituality? He wrote a lot about mysticism, he formed a cult, and he wrote a series of meditative exercises based on the philosophy of Heraclitus.

[Anonymous No.20007433]

>>20004919
Edgy atheist that isn't worth reading. Visit your local r/atheist and r/socialist board in order to get the same level of cringe.
>inb4 but he was on the spiritual plane of existence reality is a bendfleshfuck
No. I am not sympathising with a gay who is in hell.

[Anonymous No.20007461]

>>20007364
His writings on meditations taken from letters and seem to assume previous oral instruction: Does anyone here know how one would go about practicing them? If so I would like to hear.

[Anonymous No.20007466]

I wrote it a bit too fast i can see^
>>20007461

[Anonymous No.20007534]

>>20007461
Yeah, the meditation instructions seem fairly vague and not enough to practice without additional oral instruction. However, I don’t know if people actually received oral instruction as the cult didn’t seem that serious. They mostly got together to read writers like Nietzche and de Sade. They never actually carried out the planned human sacrifices or any sex rituals or anything like that.

[Anonymous No.20007598]

>>20004919
trashy retard's proust

[Anonymous No.20007835]

>>20007433
cringe

[Anonymous No.20007917]

>>20007598
Proust and Bataille are nothing alike. I've never even seen them compared before. The only thing they have in common is that they're both French writers. Proust more resembles Joyce stylistically and Freud philosophically, while Bataille more resembles de Sade stylistically and Nietzsche philosophically.

[Anonymous No.20007972]

I don't like him probably because I hate sex and all of his works I've encountered so far were on eroticism, he seems like a hedonist who assigns too much meaning to the mammalian mating instinct

[Anonymous No.20008030]

>>20007433
>Quarter baphomet display
What did he mean by this?

[Anonymous No.20008122]

>>20008030
He meant he wants to stick his finger up a catboy's ass

[Anonymous No.20008488]

Besides St. Teresa of Avila, does anyone know which mystics in particular influenced Bataille?

[Anonymous No.20008591]

>>20007433
ok larper

[Anonymous No.20008739]

>>20005270
Both Bataille and Klossowski are hacks

Only Blanchot left a significant mark on postwar thinkers and writers (Derrida, Deleuze, Levinas, Foucault, Sollers)

[Anonymous No.20008775]

>>20008739
>(Derrida, Deleuze, Levinas, Foucault, Sollers)
Foucault commented on Klossowki's living currency: "I should have written you after my first reading of The Living Currency; it was already breath-taking and I should have responded. After reading it a few more times, I know it is the best book of our times."

Derrida also dedicates a great amount of his writing to Bataille - a lot of the fundamental negativity which becomes deconstruction starts with Bataille.

Deleuze (&G)'s Anti-Oedipus starts with a descussion of Bataille.

[Anonymous No.20008827]

>>20004919
>>20005040
retarded and larpy

[Anonymous No.20008829]

>>20005038
>>'ate fascism because it's even worse
Bataille would have became a fascist under slightly different conditions.
>like me a world without leaders
The weak should fear the strong.

[Anonymous No.20008852]

>>20007917
Strange comparison indeed. Though Bataille does write about in Inner Experience, On Nietzsche, and I think Lit. and Evil

[Anonymous No.20008855]

>>20008852
*about him (Proust)

[Anonymous No.20008856]

>>20008829
>Bataille would have became a fascist under slightly different conditions.
Bataille had the perfect conditions to become a fascist but didn't - he takes the spiritual need at the bottom of fascism quite serious though.

[Anonymous No.20008868]

>>20008856
>Bataille had the perfect conditions to become a fascist
He was a Frenchman.

[Anonymous No.20008869]

>>20004919
he got cucked by Lacan, i'm not joking

[Anonymous No.20008874]

>>20008869
Lacan used his whole life raising Bataille's child and his wife and child kept the Bataille name.

[Anonymous No.20008880]

>>20008488
Angela of Foligno, St. John of the Cross, Dionysius the Areopagite, Eckhart, and Loyola’s Spiritual Excercises. He had also read Böhme.

[Anonymous No.20008883]

>>20008869
Bataille and Sylvia were still legally married when she got in a relationship with Lacan, but the were already separated for years (when they were together, Bataille had multiple different mistresses and often visited prostitutes and orgies).

[Anonymous No.20008903]

>>20005040
>>20004919
Are you morons capable of reading books without making LARP memes about them

[Anonymous No.20008928]

>>20008883
im sure that's what he liked to tell himself at night

[Anonymous No.20009022]

>>20006071
>>16 is pedophile
>Ameritard detected

[Anonymous No.20009467]

>>20008928
It's true + he obviously cared about Laure more.

[Anonymous No.20009693]

>>20008883
Disgusting perverts

The Nazis should have put him to death

[Anonymous No.20010078]

>>20009693
unironically: have sex

[Anonymous No.20010132]

>>20005038
>Dionysian communism
He was probably on the way to being a fascist

[Anonymous No.20010184]

>>20010078
Bataille would enjoy being put to death

Win-win for everyone

[Anonymous No.20010425]

>>20007433
He’s not a Dawkins style atheist you fucking retard.

[Anonymous No.20010556]

>>20010132
his early activity in the popular front had the fascist aspect of violence for violence's sake but as his work matured he became less and less fascist and more and more Dionysian

[Anonymous No.20010918]

bump

[Anonymous No.20011892]

>>20010425
Not him, but no he's even worse than that, he's someone who didn't have enough willpower and conviction in his faith to live morally, and so used the cultural "death of god" to excuse his desire to have orgies with underage french prostitutes.
>dude i'm totally flirting with the void, everything is permitted man, maybe ill be eternally damned for my sins but lmao who cares that's like, such a seductive idea man, corruption n shiet
Bataille was the worst kind of person - a weakling smart enough to dress up his lowliness as an intellectual fashion

[Anonymous No.20011925]

>>20004919
>>20004942
All these faggots are just puffed up, weaker Sades, and everyone who prefers them is a pseud

[Anonymous No.20012417]

>>20011892
Cope

[Anonymous No.20012433]

>>20004919

The irony of this man's philosophy and political project is that when you have a society which is just a body without a head you get contemporary America. Especially zoomers. It fucking sucks

[Anonymous No.20012575]

>>20011892
>maybe ill be eternally damned for my sins
He dropped out of seminary; I don't think he believed what you believe.

[Anonymous No.20013675]

>>20011892
>slips 'underage' into it
unfounded and American

[Anonymous No.20013685]

>>20013675
See >>20009022

[Anonymous No.20014418]

bümpermench

[Anonymous No.20015054]

base bump

[Anonymous No.20015246]

>>20012433
Then you've read him wrong, there's a head and that's the capitalist, the president, the military commander etc.

Really, read the lyrics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcS_sjbJNDI

[Anonymous No.20015446]

>>20012433
>>20015246
>In all liberal insurrections, the proletariat has provided the decisive contribution, not only in number and violence, but also in termsof human value and meaning. Its violent revolutionary impulse, generated by accumulated rage, has on each of these occasions been used by bourgeois and liberal leaders, who have exploited insurrection to seize power. But the power founded on liberal insurrections has always disappointed those masses to which such insurrections owed their very existence. The possibility of this second insurrection provides the proletariat's chance, the only one possible. The authority against which it rebels is itself founded on opposition to the principle of authority (generally in a first insurrection) and is therefore relatively defenseless. The second phase of a bourgeois revolution thus offers the proletariat an opportunity which cannot recur once the bourgeois democratic regime has been stabilized. All examples of proletarian struggle conducted in its own name and with some chance of success have occurred precisely within these conditions; without them not even the vaguest attempt at the overthrow of power can be cited.
>No democratic, stabilized regime has been overthrown by a classical revolution. No uprising has ever even called into question the existence of such a regime. … Under autocracy, it is authority which grows intolerable. In democracy, it is the absence of authority. Faced with a generally critical situation, bourgeois parliamentary authority seems incapable of imposing measures of public safety, incapable of opposing authority to the disorder of the capitalist system and the maneuvers of those who represent the special interests of capital's custodians. Political opposition develops simultaneously on both the Left and the Right, forming two increasingly powerful currents, between which the existence of a power unable to command a base, no longer in a position to form a stable parliamentary majority, declines with each passing day.
>… Bourgeois society is an organization with no true power, which has always relied on a precarious balance, and which now, as its balance weakens, is expiring in powerlessness. It must be fought not as authority, but rather as absence of authority. To attack a capitalist government is to attack a blind, heartless, inhuman, truly unspeakable leadership, which strides helplessly, stupidly toward the abyss. Against this garbage we must use direct imperative violence, direct construction of the basic force of an uncompromising authority. The crisis of bourgeois democratic regimes leads neither to the putsch nor to popular uprising; it regularly results in the development of organic movements, movements of recomposition to which important politicians are forced to give way.
("Toward Real Revolution," 1936)