Inner Experience (SUNY series, Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory) - Hardcover

Bataille, Georges

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0887066348 ISBN 13: 9780887066344

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 1988

Synopsis

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 coexist."

About this title

Review

"English readers will now be able to appreciate what many consider Bataille's finest work, undoubtedly one of the outstanding texts of modern French writing, just as they will be able to fill a major gap in the history of post-structuralist thought. Whereas Bataille may be the acknowledged forefather of such figures as Barthes, Foucault, and Derrida, this centrality is often not appreciated by American admirers of the latter." -- Michele Richman, University of Pennsylvania

"I consider the publication in English of Inner Experience to be of great importance and long overdue. It is only recently that many have come to recognize Bataille's profound influence on a number of the most important contemporary French thinkers such as Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, and Kristeva--an influence much more important than that of existentialists such as Sartre or Camus." -- Allan Stoekl, Yale University

"We receive these hazy illusions like a narcotic necessary to bear life. But what happens to us when, disintoxicated, we learn what we are? Lost among babblers in a night in which we can only hate the appearance of light which comes from babbling. The self-acknowledged suffering of the disintoxicated is the subject of this book. -- Georges Bataille, from the Preface

About the Author

Georges Bataille (1897–1962), a medievalist librarian by training, founded the College of Sociology and the secret society Acéphale. He was equally famous for his contributions to French literature, art criticism, anthropology, philosophy, and theology. Bane of theologians, existentialists, and surrealists during his lifetime, he became an essential reference for the poststructuralist generation of French intellectuals, including Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida.
Stuart Kendall is a writer, editor, and translator working at the intersections of modern and contemporary art and design, critical theory, poetics, and theology. He is the author of the critical biography Georges Bataille and the editor and translator of four other books by Bataille, including Guilty, also published by SUNY Press.

Edition details

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0887066348
• ISBN 13: 9780887066344
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 244