Acéphale
1937
First Published
4.30
Average Rating
120
Number of Pages
In 1936, at the height of the anti-fascist struggle, French Surrealist Georges Bataille and his closest friends took leave of the revolutionary milieu to form a fanatically religious secret society under the symbol of the acéphale – a headless figure clutching a fiery heart and a sacrificial knife. Their conspiracy was to achieve headlessness at every level: the headless society, the human being freed from reason, the defeat of the three-headed monster of Fascism-Christianity-Socialism, the ecstatic rupture of the Dionsyian frenzy, and the literal beheading of Bataille himself. This is their journal, fully (re)translated and compiled in English for the first time.
Avg Rating
4.30
Number of Ratings
106
5 STARS
51%
4 STARS
33%
3 STARS
11%
2 STARS
5%
1 STARS
0%
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Author
Georges Bataille
Author · 41 books
French essayist, philosophical theorist, and novelist, often called the "metaphysician of evil." Bataille was interested in sex, death, degradation, and the power and potential of the obscene. He rejected traditional literature and considered that the ultimate aim of all intellectual, artistic, or religious activity should be the annihilation of the rational individual in a violent, transcendental act of communion. Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and Philippe Sollers have all written enthusiastically about his work.
