Georges Bataille: Religion without Religion

Instructor: Emmalea Russo (PhD Researcher)

DESCRIPTION

This seminar will focus on the work of the 20th century French philosopher, poet, critic, librarian, and novelist Georges Bataille, whose work emphasizes the importance of eroticism, mystical experience, poetry, and other forms of expenditure. This seminar will provide an overview of how this hard-to-classify thinker conceived of the sacred, the sun, expenditure, and direct experience through close readings of Inner Experience, Theory of Religion, and various essays from Visions of Excess. We'll aim to situate these texts within the larger context of Bataille's philosophy with an eye on how we might engage with these ideas in the now.

Saturday’s in September (3, 10, 17, 24). at 11am New York Time

Class 1: The Sun, The Sacred, and Excess

Read: "Rotten Sun"; "Solar Anus"; "Formless"; "Sacrificial Mutilation and the Severed Ear of Vincent Van Gogh"; "The Notion of Expenditure" in Visions of Excess

Class 2: Inner Experience and Torment

Read: Parts 1 and 2, Inner Experience

Class 3: Poetry and Ecstasy

Read: Parts 3-5, Inner Experience

Class 4: A Search for Lost Intimacy

Read: Bataille's Theory of Religion

Required Texts:

Georges Bataille, Theory of Religion
Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess, and Georges Bataille, Inner Experience

Recommended/optional texts:

Amy Hollywood, Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference, and the Demands of HistoryDenis Hollier, Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges BatailleAlexander Irwin, Saints of the Impossible: Bataille, Weil, and The Politics of the Sacred

Intended Learning Outcomes:

The seminar will introduce the student to the the key concepts and ideas that emerge from the philosophical and religious insights from the work of George Bataille.