Bøger af Georges Bataille

Since 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.

Linking the underlying sexual basis of religion to death, this title offers an array of insights into incest, prostitution, marriage, murder, sadism, sacrifice and violence, as well as includes comments on Freud, Sade and Saint Theresa.

The Accursed Share provides an excellent introduction to Bataille the philosopher.

In these three works of erotic prose Georges Bataille fuses sex and spirituality in a highly personal and philosophical vision of the self. My Mother is a frank and intense depiction of a young man's sexual initiation and corruption by his mother, where the profane becomes sacred, and intense experience is shown as the only way to transcend the boundaries of society and morality. Madame Edwarda is the story of a prostitute who calls herself God, and The Dead Man, published in 1964 after Bataille's death, is a startling short tale of cruelty and desire. This volume also contains Bataille's own introductions to his texts as well as essays by Yukio Mishima and Ken Hollings.

Bataille s first novel, published under the pseudonym Lord Auch , is still his most notorious work. In this explicit pornographic fantasy, the young male narrator and his lovers Simone and Marcelle embark on a sexual quest involving sadism, torture, orgies, madness and defilement, culminating in a final act of transgression. Shocking and sacreligious, Story of the Eye is the fullest expression of Bataille s obsession with the closeness of sex, violence and death. Yet it is also hallucinogenic in its power, and is one of the erotic classics of the twentieth century.

An introduction for English-language readers to Georges Bataille's postwar philosophical and critical writings. In the aftermath of World War II, French thinker and writer Georges Bataille forged a singular path through the moral and political impasses of his age. In 1946, animated by "a need to live events in an increasingly conscious way," and to reject any compartmentalization of intellectual life, Bataille founded the journal Critique. Continuing the publication of his postwar writings, this second book in a three-volume collection of Bataille's work collects his essays and reviews from the years 1949 to 1951. In this period of intellectual isolation and intense reflection, Bataille developed and refined his genealogy of morality through a sustained reflection on the fate of the sacred in the modern world. He offered a critique of the limits of existing morality, especially in its denial of excess, while sketching the lineaments of a new hyper-morality. Bataille's wide-ranging reflections are true to the intellectual mission of Critique, which he founded as a space open to the broadest considerations of the present. As well as discussing significant figures like Samuel Beckett, André Gide, and René Char, Bataille also offers fascinating reflections on American politics, Nazism, existentialism, materialism, and play. The connecting thread in these diverse essays remains Bataille's concern with the extremes of human experience and the possibilities of transcending the limits of societies founded on utility and restraint. His writings remain a provocative incitement to rethink the boundaries we impose on expression and existence.

One of the most provocative and controversial writers of his time, these essays comprise George Bataille’s most incisive study of surrealism

Death and Sensuality: A Study of Eroticism and the Taboo is a philosophical exploration of the relationship between sex and death, written by the French author Georges Bataille. In this book, Bataille argues that eroticism is intimately tied to taboo and transgression, and that the experience of pleasure is often linked to the fear of death. He explores the ways in which eroticism can be both liberating and destructive, and how it can challenge traditional moral and social norms. Bataille draws on a range of sources, from anthropology and psychoanalysis to literature and art, to offer a provocative and insightful analysis of the human experience of desire and mortality. This book is a seminal work in the field of erotic philosophy and remains a challenging and thought-provoking read for anyone interested in the intersections of sex, death, and taboo.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

Den forbandede del er Georges Batailles politiske økonomiske teori, hvori han indvarsler en kopernikansk vending: en omvending af, hvordan vi tænker økonomi, vores materielle grundlag, livets overflod og den energi, vi har til rådighed. En begrænset økonomisk tænkning tager afsæt i knaphed og mangel, i produktion, rationalitet og nytte, uden blik for den uomsættelige rest, der er en del af enhver produktion. Den forbandede del er netop den uproduktive rest, der ikke kan omsættes rationelt eller nyttigt, men som må ødsles bort, på strålende vis, ellers katastrofalt. Udgangspunktet for Batailles generelle økonomi er med andre ord livets overflod, hvis kilde er solens ødsle udskænkning af energi. Spørgsmålet er så, hvordan vi udløser vores rigdomme, den overskydende forbandede del af energien, om det sker gennem festivaler, gavegivning, erotik, rus, kunst eller sågar ødelæggelseskrige.Det er første gang, at bogens første del foreligger i dansk oversættelse.Den forbandede del (et uddrag) og Himmelske legemer er en del af bogserien AFTRYK, der samler korte og vedkommende filosofiske tekster med væsentlig virkningshistorie. Jon Auring Grimm har skrevet introduktionen til teksten, der gør den relevant for studerende såvel som andre læsere med interesse for soløkonomi, kosmisk filosofi og det unyttige.

"The first English translation of key texts by Georges Bataille pertaining to The Accursed Share that also map out his transition from "dissident surrealist" to systematic thinker"--

Outlines a mystical theology and experience of the sacred founded on the absence of god.

A poetic, philosophical, and political account of Nietzsche's importance to Bataille, and of Bataille's experience in Nazi-occupied France.

A searing personal record of spiritual and communal crisis, wherein the death of god announces the beginning of friendship.

In 1928, Georges Bataille published this first novel under a pseudonym, a legendary shocker that uncovers the dark side of the erotic by means of forbidden obsessive fantasies of excess and sexual extremes. A classic of pornographic literature, Story of the Eye finds the parallels in Sade and Nietzsche and in the investigations of contemporary psychology; it also forecasts Bataille's own theories of ecstasy, death and transgression which he developed in later work.

Taboo and sacrifice, transgression and language, death and sensuality--Georges Bataille pursues these themes with an original, often startling perspective. He challenges any single discourse on the erotic. The scope of his inquiry ranges from Emily Bronte to Sade, from St. Therese to Claude Levi-Strauss and Dr. Kinsey; and the subjects he covers include prostitution, mythical ecstasy, cruelty, and organized war. Investigating desire prior to and extending beyond the realm of sexuality, he argues that eroticism is "a psychological quest not alien to death.

"First published in English translation by Seagull Books, 2023"-- t.p. verso.

‘Nietzsche. Memorandum’ (1945) er Georges Batailles indflydelsesrige udvalg af Friedrich Nietzsches aforismer og optegnelser. Udvalget ledsages af Batailles egne anvisninger til en særlig tolkning af Nietzsche, der skulle vriste den tyske tænker fri fra nazisternes politiske misbrug og søsteren Elizabeths redigering. Bogens modsvar – en ny anti-politisk sammensætning af Nietzsche – fik dermed stor betydning for, at man i efterkrigstiden igen læste Nietzsche som en afgørende, eksistentiel tænker. ‘Nietzsche. Memorandum’ er ikke kun en bog tilegnet Nietzsches minde, men også en præsentation af Batailles egen tænkning. Den franske litterat og filosof, der i eftertiden har haft stor indflydelse på bl.a. Foucault, Derrida og post-strukturalismen generelt, fremkalder med Nietzsches hjælp de typiske træk ved en bestemt tilværelsesform: det frie, ekstatiske og suveræne liv.‘Nietzsche. Memorandum’ er samtidig en appel og en opfordring til stillingtagen hos læseren. “Tiden er kommet til at være FOR eller IMOD.” Bataille søger i sin samtale med Nietzsche at få sig selv og sin læser i tale. I Nietzsche. Memorandum sættes alt dermed på spil, “ved grænsen til døden og intethed”.Bogen er forsynet med en grundig indledning Peter K. Westergaard.“Den, der skriver i blod og tankesprog, vil ikke læses, men læres udenad.”

Having spent the early thirties in far-left groups opposing Fascism, in 1937 Georges Bataille abandoned this approach so as to transfer the struggle onto the mythological plane, founding two groups with this aim in mind. The College of Sociology gave lectures attended by major figures from the Parisian intelligentsia - intended to reveal the hidden undercurrents within a society that appeared to be bordering on collapse. The texts in this book comprise lectures given to the College; essays from the Acephale journal and a large cache of the internal papers of the secret society of Acephale.

Hailed by Martin Heidegger as "one of Frances best minds," Georges Bataille has become increasingly recognized and respected in the realm of academic and popular intellectual thought. Although Bataille died in 1962, interest in his life and writings have never been as strong as they are today--Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, and Kristeva have all acknowledged their debt to him. In his book, On Nietzsche, as translated by Bruce Boone, Bataille comes as close as he would ever come to formulating his own unique system of philosophy. One could say that reading Nietzsche was something of a revelation to Bataille, and profoundly affected his life. In 1915, in a crisis of guilt after leaving his blind father in the hands of the Germans, Bataille converted to Catholicism. It was Nietzsches work that lead him to abandon traditional religion for an idiosyncratic form of godless mysticism. In this volume, Bataille becomes, and goes beyond, Nietzsche, assuming Nietzsches thought where he left off--with Gods death. At the heart of this work is Batailles exploration of how one can have a spiritual life outside religion. On Nietzsche is essentially a journal that brilliantly mixes observations with ruminations in fragments, aphorisms, poems, myths, quotations, and images against the background of World War II and the German occupation. Bataille has a unique way of moving breezily from abstraction to confession, and from theology to eroticism. He skillfully weaves together his own internal experience of anguish with the war and destruction raging outside with arguments against fascist interpretations of Nietzsche and praise for the philosopher as a prophet foretelling "the crude German fate." With anintroduction, "Furiously Nietzschean," by Sylvere Lotringer, an Appendix in which Bataille defends himself against Sartre, and an Index, this v

'Literature is not innocent,' stated Georges Bataille in this extraordinary 1957 collection of essays, arguing that only by acknowledging its complicity with the knowledge of evil can literature communicate fully and intensely. These literary profiles of eight authors and their work, including Emily Bront 's Wuthering Heights, Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal and the writings of Sade, Kafka and Sartre, explore subjects such as violence, eroticism, childhood, myth and transgression, in a work of rich allusion and powerful argument.

Set against the backdrop of Europe's slide into Fascism, Blue of Noon is a blackly compelling account of depravity and violence. As its narrator lurches despairingly from city to city in a surreal sexual and mental nightmare of squalor, sadism and drunken encounters, his internal collapse mirrors the fighting and marching on the streets outside. Exploring the dark forces beneath the surface of civilization, this is a novel torn between identifying with history's victims and being seduced by the monstrous glamour of its terrible victors, and is one of the twentieth century's great nihilist works.

Charles is a modern libertine, dedicated to vice and depravity, while Robert is a priest so devout that he is nicknamed l'Abbe. When the sexually wild Eponine intrudes upon their suffocating relationship, anguish, delirium, and death ensue.

In a philosophical erotic narrative, an essay on poetry and in poems, Georges Bataille pursues his guiding concept, the impossible. The narrator engages in a journey, one reminiscent of the Grail quest; failing, he experiences truth. He describes a movement toward a disappearing object, the same elusive object that moved Theresa of Avila and Catherine of Siena to ecstasy."Humanity is faced with a double perspective: in one direction, violent pleasure, horror and death-precisely the perspective of poetry-and in the opposite direction, that of science or the real world of utility. Only the useful, the real, have a serious character. We are never within our rights in preferring seduction to it: truth has rights over us. Indeed it has every right. And yet we can, and indeed we must respond to something which, not being God, is stronger than every right, that impossible to which we accede only by forgetting the truth of all these rights."-Georges BatailleGeorges Bataille (1897-1962) was a French intellectual and literary icon who wrote essays, novels and poems exploring philosophical and sociological subjects such as eroticism and surrealism. City Lights published more of Bataille's works including Erotism, The Tears of Eros and Story of the Eye.

A radically interdisciplinary inquiry into the origins of human consciousness, community, and potential.

Features essays that are the result of reflection in the wake of World War II. These essays comprise a study of surrealism, insisting on its importance as a cultural and social phenomenon with far-reaching consequences. They explain Bataille's links with the surrealist movement, and describe his complex relationship with Andre Breton.