Georges Bataille : the sacred and society

177 Pages·2016·0.824 MB·English

by  Bataille, Georges, Pawlett, William

GEORGES BATAILLE
I n this comprehensive and engaging study Georges Bataille’s central
ideas – the sacred, community and eroticism – are explored in detail.
Bataille’s project to understand social bonds and energies at their most
fundamental level and to re-energise society by challenging individu-
alism is argued to be of continuing relevance to sociological thought.
Bataille’s infamous C ollège de Sociologie is placed in the intellectual
context of Durkheimian and Maussian sociology. Social effervescence,
gift exchange, and the dual, ambivalent and volatile nature of the sacred
emerge as the central threads of Bataille’s thought, ideas which challenge
both capitalist hegemony and the reductive notion of society as exclusively
normative and repressive. The study concludes by applying Bataille’s ideas
to contemporary issues, including de-secularisation and the rise of reli-
gious fundamentalism, the vicarious experience of transgressive violence,
and fi nally, resistance to the violence of globalisation. The study seeks to
reposition Bataille as a key fi gure in sociological theory.
William Pawlett is a senior lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at
the University of Wolverhampton. His main areas of research are social,
cultural and media theory; continental philosophy; and the application of
these to the issues of sexuality and consumerism, and to violence, hatred
and ‘otherness’. He is a member of The Media, Communications and
Cultural Studies Association, The British Sociological Association and a
global network of scholars contributing to The International Journal of
Baudrillard Studies.
KEY SOCIOLOGISTS
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MICHEL FOUCAULT Anders Blok and Torben Elgaard Jensen
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GEORGES BATAILLE: THE SACRED
PIERRE BOURDIEU AND SOCIETY
Richard Jenkins William Pawlett
GEORGES BATAILLE
The sacred and society
WILLIAM PAWLETT
First published 2016
by Routledge
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© 2016 William Pawlett
The right of William Pawlett to be identifi ed as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pawlett, William.
Georges Bataille / by William Pawlett.
pages cm
1. Bataille, Georges, 1897–1962. 2. Authors, French—
20th century. 3. Holy, The—History—20th century. 4. Social
history 20th century. 5. Sociology—France—History—
20th century. I. Title.
PQ2603.A695Z833 2015
848ʹ.91209—dc23
2015005924
ISBN: 978-0-415-64548-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-07858-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents

Preface vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction x
Chapter 1
Animality 1
Chapter 2
The sacred and the foundations of society 20
Chapter 3
Politics and community 41
Chapter 4
Eroticism 63
Chapter 5
General economy and sovereignty 83
vi Contents
Chapter 6
Mysticism and inner experience 107
Chapter 7
Bataille and the future of society 128
Notes 139
Bibliography 145
Index 151
Preface
I live a few minutes’ walk from a twelfth-century Abbey, in a town close
to the border between England and Wales. The Abbey, though magnifi -
cent, has no grounds of its own and is fl anked by a supermarket car park
and a battered Victorian pub. Just behind the pub there is a sex shop and
a massage parlour. At fi rst this conjunction of buildings seemed incon-
gruous to me, perhaps something that might, at least, have disturbed the
town council’s tourism offi ce. Medieval Abbey, Victorian pub, modern
sex shop/massage parlour – yet, aren’t these three institutions intimately
connected, different manifestations of an underlying unity? Three paths
leading out of the pain of individual existence towards something else,
something greater, something other: an experience that silences the ego,
stifl es the identity, that offers a release and even a form of transcendence.
In the psycho-geography of this area, religion, drunkenness and sex stand
together, all opposed to the sheer vileness of a supermarket car park that
threatens to engulf them all.
By early evening kids are cramming themselves into the pub at the
same time as the aged leave the evening service and, perhaps, the furtive
slip out of the back door of the massage parlour. But are they not a com-
munity of sorts? Sharing the same need, a need not for something but
for ‘nothing’, for an experience of the senses taken through and beyond
material stimulation to a point where the senses become spiritual organs,
viii Preface
where physiological materialism explodes into spiritual transcendence,
where the living death of working life is annihilated by the life of the
spirit facing mortality.
B ut isn’t the Abbey built on a lie? A lie that has lost its ability to
deceive and so become a sham, a husk, a museum; a lie that was once
propped up by sovereigns and tyrants, inquisitions and witch-hunts, and
which now languishes in irrelevance? But then which of these institu-
tions is the most dishonest? A drinking house built on some fantasy of
working-class male solidarity selling a narcotic which diminishes both
body and mind? Or pornography and sexual services: the domain of the
joyless, scripted, hyper-capitalist elimination of sensuality? And if only
lies are available, which lie is to be preferred?
Acknowledgements
I’d like to express my thanks to a number of people who, directly or
indirectly, helped me to complete this book. They are: Mick Dillon,
Scott Lash, Mike Gane, David Clarke, Gerry Coulter, Edia Connole and
Meena Dhanda.