The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric Art and Culture [Hardcover]

Georges Bataille (Author), Stuart Kendall (Editor, Translator, Introduction), Michelle Kendall (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1890951552 | ISBN-13: 978-1890951559 | Publication Date: June 24, 2005

A radically interdisciplinary inquiry into the origins of human consciousness, community, and potential.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Fans of the filthy modernist masterpiece The Story of The Eye may be surprised when they encounter Bataille (1897-1962) in an almost academic mode-but, if so, they are forgetting that Bataille was the founder of the journal Critique, that he was a librarian specializing in Medievalism at Paris's Bibliothèque Nationale and that all that transformed primitivism had to come from somewhere. This book may not have much value as archeology or even as criticism, but it's terrific as a kind of poetics of prehistory. On animals: "we get along with one another in order to eliminate death, to rid it from our horizon, to create an end in the world in which it would be as if the animal's agony and death were nonexistent." Drawing on the cave paintings of Lascaux, the Lespugue Venus and many other works, Bataille articulates a world that is simultaneously ours and unrecoverable, where those who kill their prey ask it "to forgive them for killing it, and sometimes they cry for it, in a touching mixture of distracted sincerity and simple playacting."
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Review

The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric Art and Culture collects essays and lectures by Georges Bataille spanning 30 years of research in anthropology, comparative religion, aesthetics, and philosophy. These were neither idle nor idyllic years; the discovery of Lascaux in 1940 coincides with the bloodiest war in history -- with new machines of death, Auschwitz, and Hiroshima. Bataille's reflections on the possible origins of humanity coincide with the intensified threat of its possible extinction.For Bataille, prehistory is universal history; it is the history of a human community prior to its fall into separation, into nations and races. The art of prehistory offers the earliest traces of nascent yet fully human consciousness -- of consciousness not yet fully separated from natural flora and fauna, or from the energetic forces of the universe. A play of identities, the art of prehistory is the art of a consciousness struggling against itself, of a human spirit struggling against brute animal physicality. Prehistory is the cradle of humanity, the birth of tragedy.Bataille reaches beyond disciplinary specializations to imagine a moment when thought was universal. Bataille's work provides a model for interdisciplinary inquiry in our own day, a universal imagination and thought for our own potential community. The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric Art and Culture speaks to philosophers and historians of thought, to anthropologists interested in the history of their discipline and in new methodologies, to theologians and religious comparatists interested in the origins and nature of man's encounter with the sacred, and to art historians and aestheticians grappling with the place of prehistory in the canons of art.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 210 pages
• Publisher: Zone (June 24, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1890951552
• ISBN-13: 978-1890951559
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #592,418 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #77 in Books > Arts & Photography > Schools, Periods & Styles > Prehistoric & Primitive

More About the Author

Georges Bataille was born in Billom, France, in 1897. He was a librarian by profession. Also a philosopher, novelist, and critic he was founder of the College of Sociology. Bataille died in 1962.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Man Like Us, May 10, 2008

By 

Mark Kerstetter - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric Art and Culture (Hardcover)

For me, Bataille's Skira book "The Birth of Art" is his most beautiful book. For that reason, this volume is most welcome. Translator Stuart Kendall has written an excellent introduction. There are, I think, roughly two kinds of readers of Bataille: those who love the Eye and don't have much time for his philosophy, and those who focus on the latter, tending to read his artistic works through an academic lense. In some of his works the 'two Batailles' come together, works like "Guilty" and "Inner Experience", but mostly "The Birth of Art". Some of the magic of that book can be found in the Cradle of Humanity essays. Bataille's writing, at its best, becomes an adventure that parallels the sense of wonder one experiences when contemplating ancient art. We are fascinated by that ancient artist. Bataille understands that our search for him is equivalent to the search for ourselves.