Understanding Bataille

Bataille’s various forms of expression, ranging from the hallucinatory fictional narrative to the fragment and the theoretical essay, have always exerted a mostly subterranean influence on literature, philosophy, the humanities and the arts. The variation of his interests and the issues they raise are animated by a profound unity, and testify to a keen sense of the problems that plague our common humanity. 

Following a path marked out by a few entries characteristic of non-systematic thinking, this book invites us to gain a better understanding of what Bataille calls “sovereignty”, which is both a thought and life experience that is salutary for us here and now.

 

Olivier Koettlitz has been teaching general and applied philosophy for many years at the École supérieure des arts appliqués et du textile (ESAAT) in Roubaix.

Nathalie Grall, a graduate of the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris and winner of the Prix Grav’x in 1989, will be the guest of honor at the 55th “Pointe et burin” exhibition of original etchings at the Taylor Foundation in Paris in 2013.