THE INNER SCAR. The Mysticism of Georges Bataille. (Faux Titre 189) (Faux Titre)

Since his death in 1962, Georges Bataille has acquired the status of one of the most influential thinkers of the age. The fact that this reputation has been established by the likes of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva and Philippe Sollers appears to confirm Bataille as a precursor of the postmodernist condition. Few contemporary accounts of Bataille's thought have however engaged with those aspects of his thinking which are influenced by his interest in mysticism. This is an omission which is all the more striking given that Bataille considered his thought to be not only opposite to all philosophical traditions originating in the Enlightenment but also a form of speculation intricately related to the religious exigencies of the Christian Medieval period. This book presents the first major study in English of how Bataille's 'mystical' practices and texts interact with the outer worlds of politics, social relations and externalised discourse which Bataille sets up as the antipodes of his 'inner experience.' From this starting point, Andrew Hussey argues that the inner experience of limits in Bataille's work, the movement which he terms 'transgression', is, unlike the textual drams cherished by his postmodernist admirers, a non-metaphorical, even visceral event. Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Acknowledgements Table of Contents Introduction: Le taureau affronté: Georges Bataille and the problem of mysticism 1. ‘The Pathless Path’: Christian influences on the language and process of inner experience 2. ‘Je situe mes efforts à la suite, à côté du surréalisme’: Atheological theory and methods of meditation 3. Bataille and Blanchot: The dialogue behind inner experience 4. ‘Poèmes pas courageux’: The poetry of inner experience 5. ‘Le combat intérieur’: war as inner experience: inner experience as war 6. An erotics of God: Divine absence and eroticism Conclusion: La pensée comme une tauromachie Bibliography Index Drawing on texts the French thinker wrote between 1938 and 1947, Hussey addresses the question and challenge of Bataille's relation to mysticism, examining the relation between his account of an inner experience of lost identity, and how he parallels it to traditional forms of religious mysticism. Subjects are not indexed. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR Andrew Hussey. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 169-196) And Index.