Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939Since the publication of Visions of Excess in 1985, there has been an explosion of interest in the work of Georges Bataille. The French surrealist continues to be important for his groundbreaking focus on the visceral, the erotic, and the relation of society to the primeval. This collection of prewar writings remains the volume in which Batailles’s positions are most clearly, forcefully, and obsessively put forward.This book challenges the notion of a “closed economy” predicated on utility, production, and rational consumption, and develops an alternative theory that takes into account the human tendency to lose, destroy, and waste. This collection is indispensible for an understanding of the future as well as the past of current critical theory.Georges Bataille (1897-1962), a librarian by profession, was founder of the French review Critique. He is the author of several books, including Story of the Eye, The Accused Share, Erotism, and The Absence of Myth. |
Contents
Dream | 3 |
The Language of Flowers | 10 |
Eye | 17 |
The Lugubrious Game | 24 |
Formless | 31 |
Base Materialism and Gnosticism | 45 |
The Deviations of Nature | 53 |
Mouth | 59 |
Sacrifices | 130 |
The Psychological Structure of Fascism | 137 |
Popular Front in the Street | 161 |
The Labyrinth | 171 |
The Sacred Conspiracy | 178 |
Propositions | 197 |
The Obelisk | 213 |
The Sorcerers Apprentice | 223 |
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Common terms and phrases
Acéphale action activity agitation André Breton André Masson animals Anti-Dühring appears Bataille Bataille's become blood bourgeois Breton character Collège Collège de Sociologie College of Sociology conception constitutes Croix de Feu demands destiny dialectic domination dreams earth elements elevation empty Engels everything existence expenditure expression extent fact fascism flowers force fundamental Georges Bataille Gnosticism Gogh Hegel Hegelian heterogeneous heterology homogeneous human ideal imperative intellectual joy before death Leiris less limits living Marxist meaning moral movement myth nature necessary negation nevertheless Nietzsche Nietzsche's Nietzschean Numantia object obsession oneself opposed opposition organization Paris philosophical Pineal Eye political Popular Front possible potlatch precisely principle production profound psychological reality recognize religious represent representation Reprinted in OC result revolution revolutionary sacred sacrifice Sade screams seems simple social society structure surrealists things tion translation universe Vincent Van Gogh violent words