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Georges Bataille : a Critical Introduction / Benjamin Noys

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Georges Bataille : a Critical Introduction / Benjamin Noys Georges Bataille A Critical Introduction Benjamin Noys Pluto P Press LONDON • STERLING, VIRGINIA First published 2000 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 22883 Quicksilver Drive, Sterling, VA 20166–2012, USA Copyright © Benjamin Noys 2000 The right of Benjamin Noys to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7453 1592 5 hbk Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Noys, Benjamin, 1969– Georges Bataille : a critical introduction / Benjamin Noys. p. cm. — (Modern European thinkers) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0–7453–1592–5 1. Bataille, Georges, 1897–1962—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. II. Series. PQ2603.A695 Z795 2000 848'.91209—dc21 00–024889 Disclaimer: Some images in the original version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Production Services, Chadlington, OX7 3LN Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton Printed in the EC by TJ International, Padstow Contents Abbreviations viii Introduction 1 1. The Subversive Image 18 2. Inner Experience 38 3. Sovereignty 60 4. The Tears of Eros 82 5. The Accursed Share 103 Conclusion 125 Notes and References 142 Bibiliography 153 Index 161 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Geoffrey Bennington for his patient supervision of the DPhil from which this book has developed and for his continuing encouragement of my work. I would also like to thank the British Academy for the three-year award which made that DPhil possible and the staff of the Graduate Research Centre in the Humanities at the University of Sussex for their help. I want to thank all the staff at Pluto Press for their belief and support for this book, particularly Keith Reader and Anne Beech. I am grateful to James Tink and Ben Rumble for reading drafts of this work and their feedback, to Matt Fletcher for all his help, and to my family, Diane, Charles, Alison and Danny. Above all I would like to thank Jane Gillett, to whom this book is dedicated and without whom it would have been impossible. vii Abbreviations Refer to the major works by Bataille and to The Critical Reader. Accursed Share Vol. 1 (AS1) Accursed Share Vols 2 and 3 (AS2/3) The Bataille Reader (BR) Bataille: A Critical Reader (CR) The College of Sociology (CS) Eroticism (E) Encyclopaedia Acephalica (EA) Guilty (G) The Impossible (I) Inner Experience (IE) L’Abbé C. (AC) Literature and Evil (LE) On Nietzsche (ON) Story of the Eye (SE) The Tears of Eros (TE) Theory of Religion (TR) The Trial of Gilles de Rais (TG) Visions of Excess (VE) viii Introduction All profound life is heavy with the impossible. Georges Bataille (IE, 58; BR, 88) Georges Bataille (1897–1962) is still probably best known as a writer of erotic fiction and as a precursor of poststructuralism, but what do we really know about Bataille? During his lifetime he was a somewhat obscure figure, not widely read but closely supported by a few important friends: Michel Leiris, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Lacan and Pierre Klossowski, among others. He lived a contradictory life, both the calm life of the professional librarian and the dissolute life of a libertine. After his death he began to gain popularity and the readers that he had so desired, but he still remained obscure. Now Bataille has an ambiguous fame as the writer of excess; disturbing, shocking, perhaps even mad. In an age that so admires excess Bataille has become more and more accepted, even lauded as the prophet of transgression.1 The literary works that he published under pseudonyms in order to avoid prosecution for obscenity are now ‘modern classics’ that have been assimilated into the Western canon,2 and the intensity of his other unclassifiable writings are reduced to interesting footnotes to the intellectual history of poststructuralism.3 The problem with this assimilation and appropriation of Bataille is that it is a profound failure to read Bataille. As we will see Bataille did not seek admirers and he regarded apologists for his work with suspicion. The promotion of Bataille as a counterculture icon cannot accept that he is still, as his friend Michel Leiris described him, ‘the impossible one’ (in CR, 167). Bataille recognised early in his intellectual career that he would remain isolated but, ‘This isolation, as far as I am concerned, is moreover in part voluntary, since I would agree to come out of it only on certain hard-to-meet conditions’ (VE, 91; BR, 147). Although Bataille has become more popular since his death he has not left this state of isolation because most readers of Bataille have not confronted the hard-to-meet conditions that he imposes. To draw him out of it, to introduce Bataille, requires that we try to understand these conditions. Firstly, it will be a matter of finding out what hard-to-meet conditions Bataille imposes on us, his readers. Once this has been 1 2 GEORGES BATAILLE done it will then be possible to approach the relation between Bataille’s life and work, after we have seen how Bataille demands to be read. For Bataille the life and work of a writer could not be held apart, and his own writings demonstrate how events in his life constantly impinge on his work and open it to new forces. It is these openings between Bataille’s life and work that will lead to the readings of Bataille in the chapters that follow. Finally, in this introduction I want to consider how Bataille leads us into ‘the labyrinth of thought’ (AS2/3, 370). The labyrinth is Bataille’s image of thought, and it is a labyrinth from which we cannot escape. By leading us into the labyrinth Bataille demonstrates why it is impossible to appropriate his work and why he still remains a vital figure in modern European thought. The hard-to-meet conditions that Bataille imposes on us are made most explicit in ‘The Use-Value of D.A.F. de Sade (An Open Letter to My Current Comrades)’, which was probably written between 1929 and 1930 but was unpublished at the time. Even here the conditions are not set out directly but through the question of how we should read the scandalous and pornographic writings of the Marquis de Sade. Bataille identified with Sade (1740–1814), the aristocratic libertine who supported the French revolution. Sade was both imprisoned in the Bastille by the ancien régime and in a lunatic asylum after the revolution, as his works were disturbing to monarchists and to republicans alike.4 Bataille is concerned with the nature of the scandal of Sade’s works and how they can still remain a scandal for us. Moreover, on many points Bataille’s ‘physics and metaphysics are not essentially different from those of the Marquis de Sade’.5 It is not surprising then that Bataille should link his own fate to that of Sade. So, although Bataille’s essay is ostensibly about Sade, and in particular ‘the brilliance and suffocation that the Marquis de Sade tried so indecently to provoke’ (VE, 93; BR, 149), it is also a reflection on the same effects in Bataille. When Bataille writes about Sade he is never writing only about Sade but also about himself. He is concerned with two dominant reactions to Sade: the violent rejection of Sade’s works and the admiration of Sade’s works. The first reaction is probably more prevalent and more familiar, so familiar that Simone de Beauvoir could write an article entitled ‘Must we Burn Sade?’ in 1951.6 However, Sade has also had his admirers and this was particularly true of when Bataille was writing. The surrealists had rediscovered Sade, along with Lautréamont, as a proto-surrealist. For Bataille it was Sade’s ‘most open apologists’ (VE, 92; BR, 148) which concerned him more because, as he commented in his later work Eroticism (1957), ‘Those people who used to rate de Sade as a scoundrel responded better to his intentions than his admirers do in our own day: de INTRODUCTION 3 Sade provokes indignation and protest, otherwise the paradox of pleasure would be nothing but a poetic fancy’ (E, 180). Those who reject Sade respond better to his intentions than his admirers do, because his admirers find, or make, Sade acceptable. They turn the paradox of pleasure, where pleasure for Sade always turns on pain, into a ‘poetic fancy’. Rather than Sade having an impact on how we think about the world his admirers make him into part of a ‘thoroughly literary enterprise’ (VE, 93; BR, 149). There is little doubt that Bataille had the surrealists in mind when he wrote that ‘The behaviour of Sade’s admirers resembles that of primitive subjects in relation to their king, whom they adore and loathe, and whom they cover with honours and narrowly confine’ (VE, 92; BR, 148). When the surrealists transformed Sade into a literary precursor they were not only establishing their avant-garde credentials by appropriating him, they were also making his work available as a work of literature. Sade could eventually become a part of the literary canon, and his scandalous works could be imprisoned within the library and the bookshop. Bataille has also faced similar gestures of rejection and appro- priation, which is no doubt why he considered so much to be at stake in the reading of Sade. During his lifetime Bataille was first rejected by the surrealists, being expelled from the group in 1929, and then later rejected by existentialism, when Jean-Paul Sartre described him as a case needing psychoanalysis.7 He had alienated himself from the two dominant radical movements of French and European intellectual life at the time, condemning himself to a marginal existence.
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