Ecce Monstrum: Georges Bataille and the Sacrifice of Form

Review

In this superb study of Bataille, Jeremy Biles navigates between Bataille's fascination with the horrible and the monstrous on the one hand, and his insistence on the possibility of the sacred in the modern world on the other. With erudition and level-headed admiration, Biles shows how Bataille's work is a meditation, willfully combining horror and ecstasy, joy in the face of death, and sacrifice as a necessary antidote to form. Biles reads Bataille on four principle thinkers: Hegel, Nietzsche, Simone Weil, and André Breton.The reader emerges from this study understanding, not only the importance to modernity of Bataille himself, but also the extent to which Bataille's project provides a certain modernist trajectory the ramifications of which are increasingly clear today.---―Francoise Meltzer, University of ChicagoAll in all, among recent studies on Bataille, Biles's book is the one that perhaps approaches best Bataille's thought while proposing new interpretations of his work. ― ―H-Net ReviewsBiles demonstrates an excellent grasp of the critical commentary on, and the cultural context of Georges Bataille. The stakes of Bataille's work in the areas of intellectual history, literary history, and modern, and postmodern, art are clearly explored. Wonderfully informative and stimulating.---―Allan Stoekl, Pennsylvania State UniversityOne is struck by Biles's erudition: not only has he read, with patience and great sensitivity, the entirety of Bataille's writings along with his principal commentators, but he writes insightfully also about the works of the many figures (Hegel, Nietzsche, Simone Weil, André Breton) in relation to whom he situates Bataille.---―Peter Tracey Connor, Barnard College

---―Francoise Meltzer,

In this superb study of Bataille, Jeremy Biles navigates between Bataille's fascination with the horrible and the monstrous on the one hand, and his insistence on the possibility of the sacred in the modern world on the other. With erudition and level-headed admiration, Biles shows how Bataille's work is a meditation, willfully combining horror and ecstasy, joy in the face of death, and sacrifice as a necessary antidote to form. Biles reads Bataille on four principle thinkers: Hegel, Nietzsche, Simone Weil, and André Breton.The reader emerges from this study understanding, not only the importance to modernity of Bataille himself, but also the extent to which Bataille's project provides a certain modernist trajectory the ramifications of which are increasingly clear today.---―Francoise Meltzer, University of ChicagoAll in all, among recent studies on Bataille, Biles's book is the one that perhaps approaches best Bataille's thought while proposing new interpretations of his work. ― ―H-Net ReviewsBiles demonstrates an excellent grasp of the critical commentary on, and the cultural context of Georges Bataille. The stakes of Bataille's work in the areas of intellectual history, literary history, and modern, and postmodern, art are clearly explored. Wonderfully informative and stimulating.---―Allan Stoekl, Pennsylvania State UniversityOne is struck by Biles's erudition: not only has he read, with patience and great sensitivity, the entirety of Bataille's writings along with his principal commentators, but he writes insightfully also about the works of the many figures (Hegel, Nietzsche, Simone Weil, André Breton) in relation to whom he situates Bataille.---―Peter Tracey Connor, Barnard College