Georges Bataille: Phenomenology and Phantasmatology

This book investigates what Bataille, in The Pineal Eye, calls mythological representation: the mythological anthropology with which this unusual thinker wished to outflank and undo scientific (and philosophical) anthropology. Gasché probes that anthropology by situating Bataille's thought with respect to the quatrumvirate of Schelling, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud. He begins by showing what Bataille's understanding of the mythological owes to Schelling. Drawing on Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud, he then explores the notion of image that constitutes the sort of representation that Bataille's innovative approach entails. Gasché concludes that Bataille's mythological anthropology takes on Hegel's phenomenology in a systematic fashion. By reading it backwards, he not only dismantles its architecture, he also ties each level to the preceding one, replacing the idealities of philosophy with the phantasmatic representations of what he dubs low materialism. Phenomenology, Gasché argues, thus paves the way for a new science of phantasms.

Author: Rodolphe Gasché
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 10/24/2012
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780804776073

About the Author
Rodolphe Gasché is Distinguished Professor and Eugenio Donato Professor of Comparative Literature at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Stanford recently published his Europe, or The Infinite Task (2009).

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