After Bataille
Sacrifice, Exposure, Community

Patrick ffrench

Cover of After Bataille

Legenda (General Series)

Legenda

24 August 2007  •  216pp

ISBN: 978-1-904350-85-9 (hardback)  •  RRP £80, $110, €95

ISBN: 978-1-315097-52-7 (Taylor & Francis ebook)

ModernFrenchPhilosophy

Author of the 'obscene' narrative Story of the Eye and of works of heretical philosophy such as Inner Experience, Georges Bataille (1897-1962) is one of the most powerful and secretly influential French thinkers of the last century. His work is driven by a compulsion to communicate an experience which exceeds the limits of communicative exchange, and also constitutes a sustained focus on the nature of this demand. After Bataille takes this sense of compulsion as its motive and traces it across different figures in Bataille's thought, from an obsession with the thematics and the event of sacrifice, through the exposure of being and of the subject, to the necessary relation to others in friendship and in community. In each of these instances After Bataille is distinctive in staging a series of encounters between Bataille, his contemporaries, and critics and theorists who extend or engage with his legacy. It thus offers a vital account of the place of Bataille in contemporary thought.

Patrick ffrench is Professor of French at King's College London, where he teaches modern French literature and thought.

Reviews:

  • ‘In pursuing Bataille’s legacy ffrench seeks not simply to see where it has got to but makes an invaluable contribution to it.’ — Patrick Crowley, Modern Language Review 105.1, January 2010, 254-55 (full text online)
  • ‘Patrick ffrench’s outstanding study provides multiple, meticulously drawn contexts in which Bataille’s writing and thought emerge in a new light, in terms both of their own development over some three decades and of their relation to other, key intellectual trajectories before, during and after that period... essential reading not only for those interested in Bataille but also for anyone concerned with the intellectual and literary history of twentieth-century France.’ — unsigned, Forum for Modern Language Studies 46.1, January 2010, 112-13

Bibliography entry:

ffrench, Patrick, After Bataille: Sacrifice, Exposure, Community (Legenda, 2007)

First footnote reference: 35 Patrick ffrench, After Bataille: Sacrifice, Exposure, Community (Legenda, 2007), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: 37 ffrench, p. 47.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

Bibliography entry:

ffrench, Patrick. 2007. After Bataille: Sacrifice, Exposure, Community (Legenda)

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (ffrench 2007: 21).

Example footnote reference: 35 ffrench 2007: 21.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

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Permanent link to this title:

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