The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge

By Georges Bataille

Book Overview

A deft reconstruction of what Georges Bataille envisioned as a continuation of his work La Somme Atheologique, this volume brings together the writings of one of the foremost French thinkers of the twentieth century on the central topic of his oeuvre. These essays, aphorisms, notes, and lectures on nonknowledge, sovereignty, and sacrifice clarify and extend Bataille's radical theology, his philosophy of history, and his ecstatic method of meditation. As laid out in Bataille's notebooks, editor Stuart Kendall assembles the fragments that Bataille anticipated collecting for his summa. Kendall's introduction offers a clear picture of the author's overall project, its historical and biographical context, and the place of these works within it. The "system" that emerges is "atheology," understood as a study of the effects of nonknowledge. At the other side of realism, Bataille pushes language to its silent end. And yet, writing toward the ruin of language, in search of words that slip from their meanings, Bataille uses language -- and the discourses of theology, philosophy, and literature -- against itself to return us to ourselves, endlessly. The system against systems is in fact systematic, using systems and depending on discourses to achieve its own ends -- the end of systematic thought. Book jacket.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0816635048
• ISBN13: 9780816635047
• Release Date: September 2001
• Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.9" x 9.0"