L'effet-Bataille : de la litterature d'excès à l'écriture: un texte-lecture

Abstract

The aim of this book is to analyze Georges Bataille’s work in the light of French theoretical texts of the second half of the 20th century. The key idea that frames my discussion is based on the assumption that the openness of Bataille’s thought falls outside of the framework of historico-literary exegesis. As a result, a faithful reading of Bataille’s thought must betray it in a certain sense. This assumption comes from the conviction that reading Bataille is only possible through “post-Bataille,” which rejects any attempt to make a totalizing reading of his oeuvre and opts for the openness of his text, always already scattered in another texts. I argue that Bataille’s text is only attainable as a trace that we can redraw across other texts which develop (from) his écriture. Thus, my reading aims to explore traces of Bataille’s thought through the texts of his contemporaries (such as Maurice Blanchot), the critical works of French poststructuralism (Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva) and the French literary avant-garde (Philippe Sollers and Tel Quel), as well as French contemporary philosophy (Jean-Luc Nancy). The methodology that this text follows is based on Roland Barthes’ reading strategy which consists in “reading with one’s head raised.” It has to be emphasized that such a strategy makes it impossible to limit the reading to a narrow research corpus (Bataille’s work), stressing unfinished nature of any reading / writing which is supposed to keep going through other texts. This methodology rejects the notion of influence, a shibboleth of the historico-literary discourse, focusing on the notion of effect or, to be more precise, on “Bataille effect.” This one is supposed to be a paraphrase of “Butterfly effect,” a meteorogical phenomenon discovered by Edward Lorenz, which laid foundations for the theory of chaos in physics. The main ambition of this dissertation is to show how far Bataille’s thought inscribes itself in critical experience of literature which underlies some of the crucial theoretical French texts for the contemporary human sciences. Showing the affinity between them and Bataille’s thought aims to overcome the thematic approach that most of literary French speaking critics keep developing with regard to Bataille’s oeuvre. As opposed to them, my work is based on textual approach largely inspired by theoretical works of French poststructuralism. It has to be stressed that these works, curiously enough, are unwaveringly passed over in silence in French literary analyses.