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Literature and Evil

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Georges Battaille throws down a challange to Jean-Paul Sartre, who held that "literature is inncocent". Bataille, in his examination of such figures as Emily Bronte, Sade, Baudelaire, Genet, Kafka and Michelet, and the component of "evil" in their works, argues that literature is, in fact, "guilty" and that, moreover, it must acknowledge itself as such. In his reading of these literary figures, Bataille proceeds to analyse literature's complicity with evil and how this enables it reach a fuller level of communication. Drawing on Freud, he "eroticises" literary creativity and contends that the notion of "Art for art's sake", which emerges as a reaction to a fragmented and reified social world dominated by utilitarianism and commodity fetishism, is actually a subterfuge, literature masquerading as innocent under the mantle of "pure art", in order to rechannel the forces that are dammed up owing to the repressions imposed by culture. Though elliptical and opaque, this book is a challenging and fascinating study, which has a potential for laying the foundations for a philosophy of composition that underwrites the aesthetic of evil and explores its relation to the overarching forces of institutional and administrative surveillance.

In this short (and at times very difficult) collection of essays, Bataille challenges Sartre's view that "literature is innocent". A selective survey of key writers - including Bronte, Genet and Sade - shows that literature is a necessary antidote to the overarching Superego and Capitalism's emphasis on the Reality Principle. In this way, Bataille shows that literture is in fact evil, in that it is anti-utilitiarian and thus embedded in the childish Pleasure Principle. While Bataille seems to alternate between ascribing the driving force of literature to both the Life Drive (Eros) and the Death Drive (Thanatos), he does succeed in showing how Freud - although he never explicitely invokes the name - can be used for a new method of reading literature.

A fascinating and extremely difficult collection of essays from philosopher-anthropologist-novelist-librarian Georges Bataille, whose work on literature brings us closer to literarity in terms of Freudian repression. Bataille covers a number of great writers in this collection (Bronte, Genet, Baudelaire, Sade), and attempts to unveil their complicity with evil and eros. For Bataille, writing is eros in the damned sense. He inherits the Platonic legacy which has condemned poetry as that which is always at a double removal from truth. Literature is not an innocent counter-gesture to the decay of civilization, it is itself embedded in thanatos. While Bataille's own prose here is extremely cryptic, and he often subordinates the author's to his own vision, this remains a peculiar and important text.

If you're into postmodernism and literary theory, you can't go wrong by reading this book. And what makes this book a cut above most books in po-mo literary theory is that it's got an accessibe layer that any fool can understand. There's also an esoteric underbelly that only people who've read Nietzsche closely will get. But the only time the esoteric underbelly becomes important is in the chapter on Genet.

Bataille claims Genet did not know how to give, because he liked to betray people. And since he did not know how to give, he wasn't truly evil because he sacrifices nothing. By which Bataille means that he doesn't know how to take. There's no collusion with doing a 100% gratuitous act, like committing suicide. (Let's face it: the suicide is the most selfish person around. The subway system in my city is frequently held up by them, preventing all sorts of people from going to work on time. All because their life is depressing.) Bataille's entire oeuvre is a celebration of paradoxes and the idea of give = take is not so far from his idea in Inner Experience of the subjectobject.

Apparently contemporary postmodern theory finds itself in crisis. Any outside observer could tell you why: the thinkers are opaque. The reason they are opaque is because they like to give. What Bataille knew is that in order to give, you also have to take. Hence his exoteric, loquacious facade and his esoteric, unutterable interior. If you are an American postmodernist, you ignore this advice at your peril.

In this book Bataille seems to tell how evil is in literature and in life.How near is the eroticism and the death. Brilliant.