“Le plus beau récit de notre temps”: Bataille's Ethics of the Literary and the Erotic

Abstract

Contrary to a prevalent caricature of his work as misogynistic, femininity can be found in Georges Bataille's work as difference that interrupts the self-presence of the subject. His approach to “virility” reveals an understanding of desire that unsettles rather than reinforces masculinity. Attending to Maurice Blanchot's surprising description of Madame Edwarda as “le plus beau récit de notre temps,” Bataille's story can be read as exceeding its inspiration in the thought of G. W. F. Hegel and Martin Heidegger, opening the possibility of an attention to the literary and to femininity that is necessary to his account of alterity. This awareness of the specificity of literary expression suggests a reformulation of the ethical; the literary formally implies ethics rather than merely illustrating specific dilemmas. An extended comparison with Pierre Klossowski's reading of the Marquis de Sade reveals a divergence in the writing of the feminine body that allows an ethicized eroticism, eliminating the alibi of purity.