Bataille in Context
“... it is not necessity but its contrary, “luxury”, that presents living matter and mankind with their fundamental problems.” - Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: Volume 1 (Pg. 12)
If we do not take scarcity as a primary condition of human and natural existence we become capable of reevaluating important political problems that determine our existence. In the Accursed Share Volume 1, Bataille explores historical and anthropological examples of how various cultures and communities deal with problems of excess which shaped their culture, political system, and economy. The reading group will aim to parse out the anthropology and philosophy of excess as seen through mysticism and rituals in relation to community. Questions include: Who and where is our community? How do we communicate with our community? How does a community interact with other groups through politics and economics? How do we live with others yet live sovereignly ourselves? How does myth shape community, economy?
The reading group will meet bi-weekly until the first weekend of September. The sessions will cover various topics that Bataille’s work engages with, leading up to the start of a new reading group more formally hosted by the Acid Horizon Crew for Bataille’s The Accursed Share. The readings will consist of Bataile’s own essays, adjacent thinkers' works that either engage with Bataille directly or indirectly (thematically), and anthropological essays. Topics and themes include excess and luxury, scarcity and utility, transgression and taboo, limit-experiences, eroticism, community and communication, sovereignty, religion, and many more. Each session will aim to unearth the contemporary, historical, and philosophical context for each of the major concepts.
Readings are gathered from various works of Bataille’s that are relevant to the session’s theme. The anthropological papers were sourced from members of the discord, from previous seminars Noah had taken with the Membres School on Kinship and Money, and from general research into milieus that Bataille spent time writing on. Each session’s selections will hopefully enunciate Bataille’s thought or provoke tensions with examples that will force us to rethink our understanding of history. ALL READINGS ARE IN THE RESPECTIVE FOLDERS FOR EACH SESSION / TOPIC - some of the recurring papers are just placed in the main folder.
Stuart Kendall - The Horror of Liberty (Obsessions of Bataille) ~15 pages
Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939 Author(s): Georges Bataille, Allan Stoek Series: Theory & History of Literature Publisher: University of Minnesota Press, Year: 1985 ISBN: 0816612803,9780816612802 The Sacred Conspiracy, 178-181
Kinship and Family: An Anthropological Reader. 2004. Robert Parkin & Linda Stone, Blackwell Publishing. Inheritance, Property and Marriage in Africa and Eurasia, Jack Goody, 8 pages
Kinship and Family: An Anthropological Reader. 2004. Robert Parkin & Linda Stone, Blackwell Publishing. Unilateral Descent Groups, Robert H. Lowie ~17 pgs
Extra: Earle, T. (2017). "Property in prehistory". In Comparative Property Law. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. doi: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781785369162.00008 ~20 pages.
Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939 Author(s): Georges Bataille, Allan Stoek Series: Theory & History of Literature Publisher: University of Minnesota Press, Year: 1985 ISBN: 0816612803,9780816612802 - Base Materialism and Gnosticism , page 45- 53,
Negative ecstasies : Georges Bataille and the study of religion / edited by Jeremy Biles and
Kent L. Brintnall. Georges Bataille and the Religion of Capitalism JEANJOSEPH GOUX - 106-122
Watts J, Greenhill SJ,Atkinson QD, Currie TE, Bulbulia J, Gray RD.2015 Broad supernatural punishment but not moralizing high gods precede the evolution of political complexity in Austronesia.Proc. R. Soc. B282: 20142556.http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.2556 ~ 5 pages
Extra: Daniel Colucciello Barber, Prophetic Reiteration: Laruelle, Non-Relationality, and the Field of Religion (~9 pages) Chapter 4 of the book.
Extra: Negative ecstasies : Georges Bataille and the study of religion / edited by Jeremy Biles and Kent L. Brintnall. Bataille, Teilhard de Chardin, and the Death of God - Allan Stoekl. Pages 202-216
The absence of myth : writings on surrealism / Georges Bataille ; edited, translated, and introduced by Michael Richardson.Bataille, Georges, 1897-1962.; Richardson, Michael,-- 1953- London ; New York : Verso; ©1994 the absence of myth essay , 48/49
Bataille, Georges, 1897-1962 The cradle of humanity: prehistoric art and culture/ by Georges Bataille : edited and introduced by Stuart Kendall Chapter 4 and 5 - 57-86.
Prehistoric sorcerers and postmodern furries: Anthropological point of view
B Ptova - International Journal of Sociology and Anthropology, 2013 ~ 5 pages
Erotism: Death and Sensuality Author(s): Georges Bataille, Mary Dalwood Publisher: City Lights Publishers, Year: 1986 ISBN: 0872861902,9780872861909 Chapter 7 and 8, 81-93,
Watts, J., Sheehan, O., Atkinson, Q. et al. Ritual human sacrifice promoted and sustained the evolution of stratified societies. Nature 532, 228–231 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature17159 ~ 5 pages
Valeri V. 1985 Kingship and sacrifice: ritual and society in ancient Hawaii. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Chapter 5 - pages ~130-170 and Part 3 the sacrifice of the Hawaiian king, Chapter 7 - the Makahiki Festival. Pages 200-227
Extra: Girard, Violence and the Sacred (just get through as much as you can, its 300+ pages total - a contrast to Bataille in terms of sacrifice)
Erotism: Death and Sensuality Author(s): Georges Bataille, Mary Dalwood Publisher: City Lights Publishers, Year: 1986 ISBN: 0872861902,9780872861909 Introduction and Chapter 1 Pages 11-40, Chapter 5, 63-70, Chapter 10, 109-117
Kinship and Family: An Anthropological Reader. 2004. Robert Parkin & Linda Stone, Blackwell Publishing. Kinship and Evolved Psychological Dispositions: The Mother’s Brother Controversy Revisited - Maurice Bloch and Dan Sperber 2002 by The WennerGren Foundation for Anthropological Research (The focus is in the latter third of the paper, on ritualized transgression) ~16 pages
The Sacred orgies of Witchcraft - Arthur Evans, Witchcraft and the Gay Counter culture - chapter 5 and 6. ~25 pages (this whole book is really interesting - easy to read as well. Read as much of it as you have time for after finishing the other readings)
Optional: Kinship, Ecology and History. 2019. Chapter 2: Mode of Reproduction and Prohibition of Incest, ~30
Kropotkin was no crackpot. Natural History, vol. 97, no. 7, 1988, 12-21;
https://www.marxists.org/subject/science/essays/kropotkin.htm
The Devaluation of the Kapauku-Cowrie as a Factor of Social Disintegration, Author(s): L. F. B. Dubbeldam 1964 American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 66, No. 4, Part 2: New Guinea: The Central Highlands (Aug., 1964), pp. 293-303
Charlie Blake’s Entropy of Flowers from Acephale & the Autobiographical Philosophy in the 21st Century (PORNOTHEOLOGY)
John Appleby’s Spiral Architects - nietzsche, bataille, the labyrinth (rituals amd myth? The SACRED )
Kinship in Ancient Athens - Humphreys - Chapter 12, Festivals, Associations, Dedications
Notes on additions to the syllabus:
We may need a section just on nietzsche.
We Need a few more examples of kinship + festival + excess in history
We need more forward looking work (pragmatics of building kinship? How to get assets?)
Need a section or incorporation of Bataille’s “the sacred”