Georges Bataille: An Intellectual Biography [Hardcover]

Michel Surya (Author), Krzysztof Fijalkowski (Translator), Michael Richardson (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1859848222 | ISBN-13: 978-1859848227 | Publication Date: September 2, 2002

Translated by Krzysztof Filjalkowski and Michael Richardson Winner of the 1987 Prix Goncourt for Biography Georges Bataille (1897-1962), philosopher, writer and founder of the influential literary review Critique, had an enormous impact on the thinking of Foucault, Derrida and Baudrillard, and his ideas have been the subjets of recent debates in a wide range of disciplines. In this acclaimed intellectual biography Michel Surya enters into a complicity with Bataille's oeuvre to provide a detailed exposition of its themes as they developed against the backdrop of his life. The essence of Bataille's life and work were defined by transience and effacement, reflecting a will both to contest the impermanence of things and to confront death. His troubled childhood, his relationships with surrealism and his paradoxical position at the heart of twentieth-century French thought are enriched here with testimonies from Bataille's closest acquaintances, making this a vivid and detailed study. Revealing the contexts in which he worked, and the ways in which his work and ideas took shape, Surya sheds essential light on a figure Foucault described as ""one of the most important writers of the century.""

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[A work] of passion, erudition, intelligence and suffering. This impressive biography rises to the level of Bataille's work and his fascination with death." Le Monde "Michel Surya's book seems to me to be the beste introduction to the work and personality of Georges Bataille." Le Novel Observateur

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 608 pages
• Publisher: Verso (September 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1859848222
• ISBN-13: 978-1859848227
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,269,339 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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45 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Impossible Thought of Georges Bataille, March 9, 2003

By 

Richard Gringeri (Miami Beach, FL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Georges Bataille: An Intellectual Biography (Hardcover)

This translation of Surya's 1992 biography of the notoriously contradictory French writer contains nearly 500 pages of text supported by 86 pages of notes. It is the first full-length biography in either English or French. Bataille is decidedly an acquired taste, so this book may well persuade you to admire this neo-Sadean thinker who spent his sixty-five years (1897-1962) as an archivist at the Bibliothèque Nationale and then as director of the Orléans Municipal Library. Surya weaves together Bataille's scatophilic and necrophilic obsessions and debauched private life with his literary themes in a way that is not sensationalist or prurient. The author does full justice to his subject's provocative claims concerning the role of consumption in capitalist civilization; the negative features of so-called inner experience; the alleged links between eroticism and death; and the supposed impossibility of community. Indirectly, Surya shows how Bataille's persistent preoccupation with the "informe" (formless) not only illuminates some of the most cutting-edge academic work in art history and literary criticism today, but also eerily foreshadows recent scientific theories of catastrophe, chaos and cosmic evolution. Hasty readers have long inferred a fascist moment in writings like "The Psychological Structure of Fascism" (1933), the first psychoanalytical analysis of its subject, according to Surya (177). To counter this widespread tendency, Surya is particularly good at displaying the development of Bataille's "impossible" thought against the background of French left-wing political activity and thus successfully distances Bataille from any easy embrace of French (or German) fascism.
Surya's book is not easy to read, however, if you're expecting the straightforward prose of Deirdre Bair's biographies of Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir and Anaïs Nin. Surya's style is that of a sophisticated literary theorist rather than a factual historian. This book is a must if you're already familiar with Bataille's work and wanted to situate it in his life and times. But for a first look, I would turn to Fred Botting and Scott Wilson's introductions to their "The Bataille Reader" (1997) and "Bataille: A Critical Reader" (1997).