1 Eugene John Brennan PhD thesis The Anglo-American Reception of Georges Bataille: Readings in Theory and Popular Culture University of London Institute in Paris 2 I, Eugene John Brennan, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Signed: Eugene Brennan Date: 3 Acknowledgements This thesis was written with the support of the University of London Institute in Paris (ULIP). Thanks to Dr. Anna-Louis Milne and Professor Andrew Hussey for their supervision at different stages of the project. A special thanks to ULIP Librarian Erica Burnham, as well as Claire Miller and the ULIP administrative staff. Thanks to my postgraduate colleagues Russell Williams, Katie Tidmash and Alastair Hemmens for their support and comradery, as well as my colleagues at Université Paris 13. I would also like to thank Karl Whitney. This thesis was written with the invaluable encouragement and support of my family. Thanks to my parents, Eugene and Bernadette Brennan, as well as Aoife and Tony. 4 Thesis abstract The work of Georges Bataille is marked by extreme paradoxes, resistance to systemization, and conscious subversion of authorship. The inherent contradictions and interdisciplinary scope of his work have given rise to many different versions of ‘Bataille’. However one common feature to the many different readings is his status as a marginal figure, whose work is used to challenge existing intellectual orthodoxies. This thesis thus examines the reception of Bataille in the Anglophone world by focusing on how the marginality of his work has been interpreted within a number of key intellectual scenes. The original contribution of this thesis is as the first work to consider the popular reception of Bataille, including a range of original research, in comparative analysis with his academic reception. The popular cultural manifestations of Bataille examined here are not merely considered simplifications of the work’s complexity. They amplify the tensions and contradictions we encounter in many academic readings. This thesis highlights the performativity of Bataille’s work by examining his importance for entirely opposing and conflicting intellectual scenes. It argues against readings which idealize the ‘uncorrupted’ text and similarly argues that Bataille’s work does not ‘belong’ to any one cultural space, while simultaneously arguing for a specific ‘internal conflict’ which lends Bataille’s work its impact. The introduction contextualises Bataille’s initial reception in France. The first chapter traces the initial dissemination of his work in English through popular publishing. The second chapter examines his reception through academic theory and argues that while his thought was partially depoliticized in translation it was re-politicized in different guises. The third chapter examines a historical scene of reception largely opposed to ‘theory’. The fourth chapter examines his place within British music journalism, and develops the tensions between ‘history’ and ‘theory’, and between the political and anti-political, encountered in the preceding academic readings. 5 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................. 8 Chapter Outlines ............................................................................................................................... 13 Critical Context ................................................................................................................................. 18 Editorial Considerations .................................................................................................................... 19 The Reception of Bataille During His Own Lifetime ....................................................................... 21 Base Materialism and Deconstruction .............................................................................................. 24 Increasing Intellectual and Personal Isolation................................................................................... 27 ‘Un nouveau mystique’ ..................................................................................................................... 30 ‘Inconnue’, ‘méconnue’, ‘malentendu’… ......................................................................................... 33 ‘Célébration Posthume’ .................................................................................................................... 35 The Disputed Surrealist Legacy ........................................................................................................ 38 Reading Practices: Against the ‘Nudity’ of the Text ........................................................................ 45 CHAPTER ONE - BETWEEN LIBERTARIANISM AND RESTRAINT: COUNTER- CULTURAL READINGS .................................................................................................................. 49 Early Reviews ................................................................................................................................... 50 The Olympia Press ............................................................................................................................ 57 Censorship and Pornographic Literature in America ........................................................................ 64 The Literary and the Pornographic: Reading Bataille after Sontag .................................................. 67 Cultural Provocation and the Libertarian Context ............................................................................ 73 ‘The Orgiasts’ ................................................................................................................................... 75 Translations ....................................................................................................................................... 79 Bomb Culture:Libidinal Politics and Counter-Cultural Disappointments ........................................ 89 Curtains: A Shift in Counter-Cultural Readings ............................................................................... 96 Close Readings: Death, Mourning and Inner Experience. ................................................................ 97 Further Problematizing the Relationship Between Sexual liberty and Liberty ............................... 104 CHAPTER TWO - INFORME, CONTAMINATION, PURITY: OCTOBER’S RE-READING OF MODERNISM THROUGH BATAILLE ................................................................................. 112 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 112 A ‘Generalized Contamination’ – Derrida’s Bataille...................................................................... 114 Equivocations on the ‘Political’ – Tel Quel and the ‘Logic of Succession’ ................................... 117 Subtle Subversion ........................................................................................................................... 121 Internal Externality ......................................................................................................................... 122 French Theory in America .............................................................................................................. 125 The Beginning of October .............................................................................................................. 127 Rosalind Krauss and the First Readings of Bataille at October ...................................................... 130 Dissemblance and the Dispute with Didi-Huberman ...................................................................... 135 6 Logics of Separation ....................................................................................................................... 138 Contested Modernisms .................................................................................................................... 146 Bataille’s Modernism: ‘Neither form nor content but…’ ............................................................... 149 Modernism as Crisis of Self-Expression ......................................................................................... 153 Chapter Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 157 CHAPTER THREE – ‘UN BATAILLE DIFFÉRENT’: THE HISTORICAL TURN .............. 160 Jean-Luc Nancy, La Communauté désœuvrée and the Origins of the Historical Turn ................... 162 The Historical Turn in Anglo-American Academia........................................................................ 166 ‘Un Bataille différent’ ..................................................................................................................... 169 The Social and Ethical Imperative .................................................................................................. 170 ‘La communauté était un mot alors ignoré du discours de la pensée’: The Impact of Nancy on the Historical turn ................................................................................................................................. 174 The Return of Hegel .......................................................................................................................