It seems improbable, but the most radical cultural iconoclasts of the interwar years—Georges Bataille, Roger Caillois, and Michel Leiris—responded to the rise of fascism by taking refuge in a "sacred sociology." Michèle H. Richman examines this seemingly paradoxical development in this book which traces the overall implications for French social thought of the "ethnographic detour" that began with Durkheim’s interest in Australian aboriginal religion—implications that reach back to the Revolution of 1789 and forward to the student protests of May 1968.

Contradictions Series, volume 14