Georges Bataille: The “Excrement-Philosopher”. A Conversation with Benjamin Noys (In Person and Online. 15th October 2024)

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In 1929, after expelling Georges Bataille from the Surrealist movement, André Breton denounced him as an “excrement-philosopher.” As Benjamin Noys notes, “Bataille would have probably considered it a compliment!” Bataille, too intense for the Surrealists, was a writer of eroticism and a precursor to post-structuralism.

Today, he is celebrated as a prophet of transgression. Influenced by the Marquis de Sade, Nietzsche, Hegel, and Surrealism, Bataille’s writings delve into themes of freedom, excess, transgression, death, the subversive image, community, inter-experience, violence, sovereignty, eroticism, and the general economy.

In his 2000 introduction to Georges Bataille, Benjamin Noys resists recent attempts to reclaim Bataille as a prophet of excess. Noys argues that “to reject Bataille is to fail to read him, but to become an apologist for Bataille, to celebrate him, is also to fail to read him.”

In this event, we will explore this profoundly paradoxical thinker through Noys’ Georges Bataille: A Critical Introduction and his more recent co-edited work, Georges Bataille: Critical Essays, Vol. 1: 1944-1948.

Benjamin Noys is a Professor of Critical Theory at the University of Chichester. In addition to his works on Bataille, he is the author of Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Continental Theory (Edinburgh University Press, 2010), Malign Velocities (Zer0 Books, 2014), The Matter of Language: Abstraction and Poetry (Seagull Books, 2023) and Envisioning the Good Life: The Limits of Contemporary Vitalism (Edinburgh University Press, 2025).

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Session Lead: Bradley Tuck

In Person: Southern Belle, 3, Waterloo Street, Hove
The venue is not wheelchair accessible

Click to join: On Zoom

Meeting ID: 826 9639 7944

Passcode: 739377

Time: 7:00 pm Doors. Start 7:30pm-10:00pm

Book: On Eventbrite

If for some reason you can’t make it and you already bought a ticket, please release it so others can come to the event. You can also email us at explodingappendix@gmail.com for any inquiries.

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