Pierre Klossowski: The Pantomime Of Spirits (cultural Interactions: Studies In The Relationship Between The Arts)

This book examines the many facets of the work of Pierre Klossowski (1905–2001). Klossowski first established himself as a writer and was known and admired by peers such as Bataille, Blanchot, Gide, Foucault, Deleuze and Lacan. But in 1972 he gave up writing to devote himself to his 'mutism': painting made up of large coloured drawings. In time he became as famous a painter as he had been a writer and theorist. Klossowski now has two separate groups of commentators: those concerned with his writings and those with his painting, with little overlap between the two. Here, this separation is explicitly removed. Klossowski's entire œuvre revolved around the concept of the gaze. Rarely has the gaze been so radically interpreted – as an active, mobile, evanescent object that breaks down the connections between representation and the visible. How is one to see the invisible divinity? This question plagued Klossowski, and he displaced it onto pornographic rituals. The pantomime of spirits is the scene, fixed in silence, where bodies meet – a knotting of desiring body and dogmatic theology. A creator of simulacra , Klossowski attempted to exorcise the 'obsessive constraint of the phantasm ' that subjugated him in all these scenes. Translated from the French by Adrian Price in collaboration with Pamela King. Cover Contents Sarah Wilson Foreword: Klossowski our Contemporary Introduction to the English-language Edition: Why a book about Pierre Klossowski in 2013? A Brief Biography Introduction Klossowski as Reader Sade: Evil, Perversion Nietzsche: The Same, The Stimmung Body, Currency, Utopia Roberte: Exchanging the Unexchangeable The Violence of the Gaze Conclusion: Inhuman Diana Judith Miller Mutation: Interview with Pierre Klossowski A. R. Price Translator's Postface This book examines the many facets of the work of Pierre Klossowski (1905-2001). Admired as a writer, theorist and painter, Klossowski's oeuvre is here explored in its entirety, focusing on the gaze as the unifying concept. This book examines the many facets of the work of Pierre Klossowski (1905-2001). Admired as a writer, theorist and painter, Klossowski’s œuvre is here explored in its entirety, focusing on the gaze as the unifying concept.