Bataille and Communication: From Heterogeneity to Continuity

Abstract

There is a diachronic dimension to the system represented by Georges Bataille's discursive writings. Manifest as a changing theoretical perspective accompanying a stable thematic context, or as the displaced context of a characteristic critical gesture, this diachronic dimension is integral to the architecture of Bataille's system. The system is structured by an array of terms which are posited, often in aphoristic formulations, and subsequently discarded, reposited, or retained and repeated. The term depense is an instance of the latter category. The play of these terms, in their totality, is not arbitrary. It is the result of a complex interaction of gestures and contexts, and it describes, over three decades, a trajectory and a momentum. The system of the mature Bataille, with its multiplicity of terms, conditions, and articulations, has a discursive density which is, in large part, the result of this series of displacements. Its beginnings may be perceived in the momentum of a critical gesture which, as early as the essays of Critique Sociale, Documents and Acephale, tends to impose upon a mixture of heterogeneous vocabularies a radical ontological force. The trajectory which leads from the early Bataille to the author of Part maudite is defined by the development of a specialized, personal vocabulary whose context is purely ontological, and whose relation to contemporary scientific and philosophical discourses is necessarily problematic. The purpose of this essay is to describe one index of Bataille's progressive displacement of terms in an ontological direction. This index is the replacement of the system homogeneity/ heterogeneity, as elaborated in La Structure psychologique du