Visions of Excess

Visions of Excess

Selected Writings 1927-1939

Georges Bataille
Edited, with an introduction, and translated by Allan Stoekl

$22.50 Paper
ISBN: 0-8166-1283-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-1283-3

Since the publication of Visions of Excess in 1985, there has been an explosion of interest in the work of Georges Bataille. The French surrealist continues to be important for his groundbreaking focus on the visceral, the erotic, and the relation of society to the primeval. This collection of prewar writings remains the volume in which Batailles’s positions are most clearly, forcefully, and obsessively put forward.

This book challenges the notion of a “closed economy” predicated on utility, production, and rational consumption, and develops an alternative theory that takes into account the human tendency to lose, destroy, and waste. This collection is indispensible for an understanding of the future as well as the past of current critical theory.

"Georges Bataille is one of the most original and unsettling of those thinkers who, in the wake of Sade and Nietzsche, have confronted the possibility of thought in a world that has lost its myth of transcendence." —Peter Brooks, New York Times Book Review

A medievalist librarian by training, Georges Bataille (1897-1962) was active in the French intellectual scene from the 1920s through the 1950s. He founded the journal Critique and was a member of the Acéphale group and the Collège de sociologie. Among his works available in English are The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge (2001), Tears of Eros (1989), and Erotism (1990).

Allan Stoekl is professor of French and comparative literature at Penn State University. His interests include twentieth-century French intellectual history, contemporary literary theory, theories of energy, and the history of energy production and use. He is the author of Bataille’s Peak: Energy, Religion, and Postsustainability.

272 pages | 1985
Theory and History of Literature Series, volume 14

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Visions of Excess *Selected Writings 1927-1939* Georges Bataille Edited, with an introduction, and translated by Allan Stoekl		$22.50 Paper ISBN: 0-8166-1283-8 ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-1283-3
Since the publication of Visions of Excess in 1985, there has been an explosion of interest in the work of Georges Bataille. The French surrealist continues to be important for his groundbreaking focus on the visceral, the erotic, and the relation of society to the primeval. This collection of prewar writings remains the volume in which Batailles’s positions are most clearly, forcefully, and obsessively put forward. This book challenges the notion of a “closed economy” predicated on utility, production, and rational consumption, and develops an alternative theory that takes into account the human tendency to lose, destroy, and waste. This collection is indispensible for an understanding of the future as well as the past of current critical theory. "Georges Bataille is one of the most original and unsettling of those thinkers who, in the wake of Sade and Nietzsche, have confronted the possibility of thought in a world that has lost its myth of transcendence." —Peter Brooks, New York Times Book Review A medievalist librarian by training, Georges Bataille (1897-1962) was active in the French intellectual scene from the 1920s through the 1950s. He founded the journal Critique and was a member of the Acéphale group and the Collège de sociologie. Among his works available in English are The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge (2001), Tears of Eros (1989), and Erotism (1990). Allan Stoekl is professor of French and comparative literature at Penn State University. His interests include twentieth-century French intellectual history, contemporary literary theory, theories of energy, and the history of energy production and use. He is the author of Bataille’s Peak: Energy, Religion, and Postsustainability. 272 pages \| 1985 Theory and History of Literature Series, volume 14