A searing personal record of spiritual and communal crisis, wherein the death of god announces the beginning of friendship.

His is a journey marked by the questioning of experience itself, until what is reached is sovereign laughter, non-knowledge, and a Presence in no way distinct from Absence, where "The mind moves in a strange world where anguish and ecstasy ...

" Clearly introduced and comprehensively annotated by the editors, this book provides the best single-volume coverage of Bataille's work available.

I live — if I choose to see things this way- — among a curious race that sees earth, its chance events and the vast interconnectedness of animals, mammals, ...

This volume collects the most intimate writings of one of the foremost French thinkers of the twentieth century on the central topic of his oeuvre.

Georges Bataille's work is an essential reference in any discussion of modernity and postmodernity. An important influence on Foucault, Derrida and post-structuralism, Bataille is a thinker of key significance. This volume makes a selection from the entire body of his academic work, showing how his thinking on sacrifice, eroticism, taboo and transgression, and the nature of identity inform his social theory. Bataille - Essential Writings contains much previously untranslated material, including the complete texts of seven essays, and long extracts from (...) many others. It is the most comprehensive selection of Bataille's work to date, edited by an acknowledged authority. Bataille - Essential Writings will be the standard introductory text to this profound and difficult thinker. (shrink)

Together, these texts also comprise perhaps the most incisive study yet made of surrealism, insisting on its importance as a cultural and social phenomenon with ...