Reflections on Georges Battaille & Visions of Excess

The book suggested for reading by Dr Holmes, my tutor a little earlier this last week; Visions of Excess, (Selected Writings, 1927-1939 of Georges Bataille), (1986 Second Print), Edited and Translated by Allan Stoekl,  University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, provided an excellent backdrop of essays for me to review regarding the thoughts by this lesser known French philosopher of the 20th Century.

To complement the above book, I also found "Georges Bataille" (1994) by Micheal Richardson, Routledge Press, London, that gives some further insight to try to interpret Bataille.

What is clear from reading the introduction of the second book is that George Bataille had a very difficult childhood. His school in Reims, France was also the learning ground for the poet Paul for and other surrealists such as Roger Gilbert-Lecompte, Rene Daumal and Roger Caillois. It is possible that under this tutelage during the 1900s and its acceleration towards the First World War, Bataille chose to become a Catholic, despite his own parents being nonreligious.
Around 1916, he was called up to serve in the war, but because of ill-health, he was quickly released from the army. Around this period of the war years he later wrote;
"I belong to a turbulent generation, born to literary life in the terminal of surrealism. In the years after the Great War, there was a feeling which was about to overflow. Literature was stifling within its limitations and seemed pregnant with revolution." (Preface to Literature and Evil, by Georges Bataille).
The Great War provided a highly charged and extremely bitter memory for many of the poor young men who had to fight an awful and almost paralysing physical battle, whilst at the same time attempting to cope with the dreadful emotional effects that they must've witnessed, many of whom had not even reached the age of 21. Surrealism, therefore, provided an escape to some degree, and also provided an outlet for many of those artistic individuals trying to make sense of the world, whilst what they had witnessed during the previous years made no sense at all. This is true for those who took the routes of expression through literature, painting, performance and other new forms of art. In Richardson's words "it was impossible not to hate a society and the culture responsible for such carnage" (Richardson, 1994).
In the case of Georges Bataille, it seems that in 1917, he had set his mind on a religious future as a monk or in the priesthood of the Catholic Church. However after only three years, whilst staying in the Isle of Wight he fell in love with a woman, which caused him to question his faith.
He nevertheless pursued a scholastic study of languages, spending much time in Spain, where in 1922 he witnessed the gruesome death of Manuelo Granero, during a bullfight in Madrid, whose head was split open by a bull. This must have been incredibly shocking and potentially left an indelible mark on his psyche.
The turmoil that Bataille must have felt, coupled with his religious sentiments, confusion in the view of the world and life itself in his own mind, it must have been a receptive vessel to the writings of Frederick Wilhelm Nietzsche, and the philosophical dilemma that he also wrestled with.  This was supported by the additional study of Dostoevsky, Kirkegaard and Pascal.
From this context, Bataille went on to write extensively about the philosophical concepts and emerging artistic and cultural intellectual circles that he found himself within.

According to Richardson, Bataille believed that "existence was essentially paradoxical", which is often reflected in his work, and as such makes it difficult at times to fully comprehend. As Bataille was also to a large extent self-taught, the many detailed readings and studies that he made, do not always, at first sight, seem to fit together easily. Richardson (1994). Bataille's main focus of his philosophical thinking lies in that of excess and transgression, juxtaposed with the concepts of "being" which draws upon the notions of Nietzsche, whilst witnessing the Great War (World War I) and later the Second World War, together with the absolute extremes of human behaviour. This was further supported with a deep enquiry into anthropology together with sociology and cultural study.

Conclusions;

1) a further study of Georges Bataille is no doubt essential to provide a strong grounding of alternative understanding towards ontology and phenomenology within a social construct of society, as well as the abstraction of these concepts within the individual.
2) our individual perception of the world, within the everyday, (the quotidian), and our social experiences of life, are highly influenced by the specific environment in which we live. I am reminded of an earlier quotation I found from Bogdan and Biklen, that suggests that our reality, and our belief in that reality, is totally informed and created from that social environment in which we live; reality, therefore, is a social construct. (Paraphrased), Bogdan & Biklen (2004).

References;

• Bogdan, R. C & Biklen, S. K. (2003). Qualitative Research for Education: An introduction to Theories and Methods (4th ed.).  New York:  Pearson Education Group.
• Richardson, M. (1994), "Georges Bataille".  London: Routledge Press.
• Stoekl, A. (1986): Visions of Excess, (Selected Writings, 1927-1939 of Georges Bataille), (1986 Second Print), Edited and Translated by Allan Stoekl,   Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.