Critical Essays – Volume 1, 1944–1948

This first book in a three-volume collection of Georges Bataille’s essays introduces English readers to his philosophical and critical writings.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, 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. Adopting the format of the review essay, he surveyed the post-war cultural landscape while advancing his reflections on excess, non-knowledge, and the general economy. Focusing on literature as a mode of sovereign uselessness, he tackled prominent and divisive figures such as Henry Miller and Albert Camus.
 
In keeping with Critique’s mission to explore the totality of human knowledge, Bataille’s articles did not just focus on the literary but featured important reflections on the science of sexuality, the Chinese Revolution, and historical accounts of drunkenness, among other matters. Throughout, he was attuned to how humanity would deal with the excessive forces of production and destruction it had unleashed, his aim being a way of thinking and living that would inhabit that excess.
 
This is the first of three volumes collecting Bataille’s post-war essays. Beginning with an article on Nietzsche and fascism written shortly after the liberation of Paris and running to the end of 1948, these texts make available for the first time in English the systematic diversity of Bataille’s post-war thought.
 

“"In this erudite volume, scholars Toscano and Noys collect the critical works of French thinker and novelist Georges Bataille (1897-1962), touching on topics including philosophy, literature, religion, geopolitics, art, and psychoanalysis."”

"In this erudite volume, scholars Toscano and Noys collect the critical works of French thinker and novelist Georges Bataille (1897–1962), touching on topics including philosophy, literature, religion, geopolitics, art, and psychoanalysis." Publishers Weekly
"Sixty years after his death, Georges Bataille remains a vexing figure in French literature and philosophy. A creator or member of endless literary and philosophical movements, from the short-lived Acéphale to surrealism, he belonged fully to none of them, not even his own, and his apparent will to destruction often risks carrying over to those who enter into dialogue with him, even today. . . . These essays invite the reader in, in a way that many of Bataille’s works do not; they also give us a glimpse of a thinker working out his position. . ." Times Literary Supplement
"[Bataille's] reflections on fascism and the moralities of violence and mistruth are especially relevant today. This volume and the two to follow promise to be of great value to scholars in the fields of literary history, politics, and the history of ideas. . . . Highly recommended." Choice
"For a long time, nonspecialists or English-only readers have come to know [Bataille] either through early, idiosyncratic texts in which excess and eroticism predominate both thematically and stylistically. . . Or, they have approached Bataille through his postwar monographs, which do not abandon previous themes but pursue them with measured restraint. . . . With the arrival of Critical Essays 1, Bataille’s English readers can see. . . the scope of his influence on France’s artistic and intellectual scenes; his somewhat ambiguous and easily misunderstood political stances in a time of dramatic geopolitical change; his unsteady but ongoing relationship with surrealism and growing antagonism toward existentialism; and perhaps above all, how his intellectual and moral intensity is not only sustained but in some ways elevated
by its refinement in the role of a public-facing critic." Cultural Critique

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) was a French thinker, writer, and critic. Among his most celebrated works are Story of the Eye and Literature and Evil. Alberto Toscano teaches and researches at Goldsmiths at the University of London and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Benjamin Noys is professor of critical theory at the University of Chichester. He is the author of several books, including Georges Bataille: A Critical Introduction. Chris Turner is a translator and writer living in Birmingham, UK. He has translated numerous books from French and German, including, for Seagull Books, titles by Jean-Paul Sartre, Roland Barthes, André Gorz, Yves Bonnefoy, and Pascal Quignard, among others.
 

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