Saints of the Impossible: Bataille, Weil, and the Politics of the SacredU of Minnesota Press, 2002 - 258 Seiten The transgressive writing of Georges Bataille (1897-1962) and the rigorous ethical philosophy of social activist and Christian mystic Simone Weil (1909-1943) seem to belong to different worlds. Yet in the political ferment of 1930s Paris, Bataille and Weil were intellectual adversaries who exerted a powerful fascination on each other. Saints of the Impossible provides the first in-depth comparison of Bataille's and Weil's thought, showing how an exploration of their relationship reveals new facets of the achievements of two of the twentieth century's leading intellectual figures and raises far-reaching questions about literary practice, politics, and religion. Book jacket. |
Inhalt
| 1 | |
| 41 | |
IF REVOLUTION IS A SICKNESS Politics and Necrophilia in Le Bleu du del | 82 |
EXERCISES IN INUTILITY War Mysticism and Batailles Writing | 124 |
THE SPECTACLE OF SACRIFICE War and Performance in Simone Weil | 169 |
COMMUNICATION SAINTHOOD RESISTANCE | 213 |
NOTES | 227 |
WORKS CITED | 245 |
INDEX | 253 |
Andere Ausgaben - Alle anzeigen
Saints of the Impossible: Bataille, Weil, and the Politics of the Sacred Alexander Irwin Eingeschränkte Leseprobe - 2002 |
Saints of the Impossible: Bataille, Weil, and the Politics of the Sacred Alexander Irwin Keine Leseprobe verfügbar - 2002 |
Saints of the Impossible: Bataille, Weil, and the Politics of the Sacred Alexander Irwin Keine Leseprobe verfügbar |
Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen
Acéphale action affirmed affliction anguish argues attention attitude automutilation Bataille's and Weil's Bataille's mystical Bataille's writing Bataillean battlefield beauty Besnier Bleu du ciel BOC III BOC VII BOC XI body Boris Souvarine chapter Christian claim College of Sociology combat communication concept consciousness constitutes Critique sociale decreation Dirty divine Durkheim ecstasy energy essay existence expenditure fascism figure force forms Free French French frontline nurses Georges Bataille horror human hunger Iliad impossible inner experience intellectual Jean-Luc Nancy Jünger Lazare Lazare's literary lives Marxism means metaphor military moral Nancy Nazism necrophilia necrophilic Nietzsche notion novel oneself oppression person Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe physical Pierre Klossowski poem possible practice precisely rational reality realm religion religious resistance revolution revolutionary Richard Bell sacred sacrifice saint sainthood sense Simone Weil society soul Souvarine spiritual struggle symbolic taille's theory thought tion transformation transgression Troppmann truth unleashing Unsacrificeable victim violence Weilian
Beliebte Passagen
Seite 4 - Before all, it is a system of ideas with which the individuals represent to themselves the society of which they are members, and the obscure but intimate relations which they have with it.
Seite 55 - THE TRUE HERO, THE TRUE SUBJECT, THE CENTER OF THE Iliad IS FORCE. Force employed by man, force that enslaves man, force before which man's flesh shrinks away. In this work, at all times, the human spirit is shown as modified by its relations with force, as swept away, blinded, by the very force it imagined it could handle, as deformed by the weight of the force it submits to.
Seite xix - I also like to think that after the slight shock of separation you will not feel any sorrow about whatever may be in store for me, and that if you should sometimes happen to think of me you will do so as one thinks of a book one read in childhood. I do not want ever to occupy a different place from that in the hearts of those I love, because then I can be sure of never causing them any unhappiness. 'I shall never forget the generosity which made you say and write to me some of those things which...
Seite 56 - The human race is not divided up, in the Iliad, into conquered persons, slaves, suppliants, on the one hand, and conquerors and chiefs on the other. In this poem there is not a single man who does not at one time or another have to bow his neck to force. The...
Seite 67 - ... lamentation. Justice and love, which have hardly any place in this study of extremes and of unjust acts of violence, nevertheless bathe the work in their light without ever becoming noticeable themselves, except as a kind of accent. Nothing precious is scorned, whether or not death is its destiny; everyone's unhappiness is laid bare without dissimulation or disdain; no man is set above or below the condition common to all men; whatever is destroyed is regretted.
Seite 233 - I will not give her up. Sooner shall old age come upon her In our house in Argos, far from her native land, Tending the loom and sharing my bed. It awaits the young wife, the young mother, the prince's bride: And perhaps one day, in Argos, you will weave cloth for another, And the Messeian or Hyperian water you will fetch, Much against your will, yielding to a harsh necessity.
Seite 67 - ... fortune and necessity hold in subjection every human spirit, cannot regard as fellow-creatures nor love as he loves himself those whom chance separated from him by an abyss.
Seite xxiii - Basically, with regard to the sacred in general, the only thing that can be validly asserted is contained in the very definition of the term — that it is opposed to the profane' (1959 ed.: 13). It is an indication of the extent to which the dichotomy has been uncritically adopted that a recent writer on comparative religion who takes the subject of his study to be 'hierophanies...
Seite 62 - Attention" is necessary; and the peculiar difficulty of my attending to someone in such a situation is that it requires me to understand that we are both equal members of a natural order which can at any time bring about such a violation of whoever it may be, including myself. That is, I cannot understand the other's affliction from the point of view of my own privileged position; I have rather to understand myself from the standpoint of the other's affliction, to understand that my privileged position...