Georges Bataille and Contemporary Thought

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Georges Bataille's influence upon 20th-century philosophy is hard to overstate. His writing has transfixed his readers for decades exerting a powerful influence upon Foucault, Blanchot and Derrida amongst many others. Today, Bataille continues to be an important reference for many of todays leading theorists such as Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, Jean-Luc Nancy and Adrianna Caverero. His work is a unique and enigmatic combination of mystical phenomenology, politics, anthropology and economic theory sometimes adopting the form of literature, sometimes that of ontology. This is the first book to take Batailles ambitious and unfinished Accursed Share project as its thematic guide, with individual contributors isolating themes, concepts or sections from within the three volumes and taking them in different directions. Therefore, as well as providing readings of Bataille's key concepts, such as animality, sovereignty, catastrophe and the sacred, this collection aims to explore new terrain and new theoretical problems.Georges Bataille and Contemporary Thought acts simultaneously as a companion to Bataille's three-volume secular theodicy and as a laboratory for new syntheses within his thought.

Reviews

Georges Bataille has been celebrated more as a prophet of excess than taken seriously as a thinker. This collection corrects this absence by exploring Bataille as a thinker of all that overturns the limits of the restricted economies in which we live. From Neanderthal man to Black Metal, Georges Bataille and Contemporary Thought presents us with a Bataille that by remaining untimely is still vital to understanding our present. -- Benjamin Noys, Professor of Critical Theory, University of Chichester, UK

Author Bio

Will Stronge is Associate Lecturer in theology at University of Chichester and PhD student in politics and philosophy at University of Brighton.