The Absence of Myth

Writings on Surrealism

Georges Bataille, Michael Richardson

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781844675609
• eBook ISBN:
  9781789602654
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Aesthetics in Philosophy

For Bataille, the absence of myth had itself become the myth of the modern age. In a world that had lost the secret of its cohesion, Bataille saw surrealism as both a symptom and a beginning of an attempt to address this loss. His writings on this theme are the result of a profound reflection in the wake of World War Two.

The Absence of Myth is the most incisive study yet made of surrealism, insisting on its importance as a cultural and social phenomenon with far-reaching consequences. Clarifying Bataille's links with the surrealist movement, and throwing revealing light on his complex and greatly misunderstood relationship with Andr? Breton, The Absence of Myth shows Bataille to be a much more radical figure than his postmodernist devotees would have us believe: a man who continually tried to extend Marxist social theory; a pessimistic thinker, but one as far removed from nihilism as can be.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• The Castrated Lion
• Notes on the Publication of ‘Un Cadavre’
• Surrealism from Day to Day
• The Absence of Myth
• On the Subject of Slumbers
• The Surrealist Revolution
• Surrealism
• Surrealism and How It Differs from Existentialism
• Surrealism in 1947
• The Surrealist Religion
• Initial Postulate
• Take It or Leave It
• The Problems of Surrealism
• The Moral Meaning of Sociology
• War and the Philosophy of the Sacred
• Poetry and the Temptation of the End of the World
• Henri Pastoureau: La blessure de l’homme
• René Char and the Force of Poetry
• Max Ernst, Philosopher!
• From the Stone Age to Jacques Prévert
• André Breton: Ode to Charles Fourier
• The Age of Revolt
• André Masson
• Surrealism and God
• Happiness, Eroticism and Literature
• Notes
• Index