Synopses & Reviews
Bataille is the first book of its kind--a lucid guide to reading literary and cultural texts in the light of George Bataille's work. It explores the significance of Bataillean notions such as heterology, transgression, and eroticism through detailed readings of Shakespeare and early modern literature, Gothic and postmodernist fiction, and popular movies. Bataillean concepts are situated in relation to the ideas of Lacan, Derrida, Kristeva, Baudrillard, and Deleuze, and the the significance for both contemporary and futural modes of cultural analysis is explored.
Review
"Answers the question every student of the twenty first century should be asking: why Bataille--now?" --Gregory Ulmer, University of Florida
Synopsis
Bataille is the first book of its kind to offer lucid, diverse and relevant examples of ways of reading literary and cultural texts in the light of Bataille's work. The chapters explore the significance of Bataillean notions like heterology, general economy, transgression and eroticism through detailed readings of Shakespeare and early modern literature, Gothic and postmodernist fiction and popular movies. Bataillean concepts are situated in relation to the ideas of renowned critical and cultural theorists like Lacan, Derrida, Kristeva, Baudrillard and Deleuze, among others. Here the influence of Bataille is outlined in intellectual and historical terms, and the significance of his work can be seen for both contemporary and futural modes of cultural analysis.
Synopsis
One of the most profound thinkers of the twentieth century, Georges Bataille has only recently come to prominence in the Anglophone academy, partly through the influence of post-structuralism. Once seen as no more than a philosopher of eroticism and a writer of avant-garde pornography, Bataille is emerging as an absolutely central figure to discussions of culture, economy, subjectivity and difference.
Batailleis the first volume of its kind to offer lucid, diverse and relevant examples of the ways of reading literary and cultural texts in the light of Bataille's work. The essays explore the significance of Bataillean notions like heterology, general economy, transgression and eroticism, through detailed readings of Shakespearean, Elizabethan and Jacobean literature; in analyses of Gothic and postmodern fiction; and in critiques of popular culture, rock music and Hollywood movies. In order to make Bataillean notions more comprehensible to contemporary readers, his concepts are situated in relation to the ideas of renowned critical and cultural theorists like Baudrillard, Deleuze, Derrida, Kristeva, Lacan, as well as Hegel, Freud, Nietzsche and Marx. Here the influence of Bataille is outlined in intellectual and historical terms and the significance of his work can be seen for both contemporary and futural modes of cultural analysis.
About the Author
Fred Botting is Professor of English, University of Keele.
Scott Wilson is Director of the Institute for Cultural Research, Lancaster University.
Table of Contents
Literature * W(h)ither Theory (?) * Writing, Heterology, Inner Experience * Sovereign Abjection *
Economy * Between Lacan and Derrida * From Caesar to Acéphale * Pow Pow Pow *
Culture * Signs of Evil * Whore-text * The Psychological Structure of Utopia * Bibliography of works cited * Bibliography of Bataille in English * Annotated bibliography of critical works * Index
Literature * W(h)ither Theory (?) * Writing, Heterology, Inner Experience * Sovereign Abjection * Economy * Between Lacan and Derrida * From Caesar to Acéphale * Pow Pow Pow * Culture * Signs of Evil * Whore-text * The Psychological Structure of Utopia * Bibliography of works cited * Bibliography of Bataille in English * Annotated bibliography of critical works * Index