Georges Bataille – Expressing the Impossible

Abstract

The paper discusses Georges Bataille’s endeavor to express “the Impossible” by means of specific language employed first and foremost in his works of literary fiction (L’Histoire de l’oeil (Story of the Eye), Madame Edwarda, Le bleu du ciel (Blue of Noon). This is carried out by first providing a general outline of Bataille’s philosophical thought with due attention drawn to the aporias that open up before all projects of heterology inasmuch as they seek to both approximate and communicate the experiences that elude rational thought and language which traditionally works at its service. What follows is a description and explication of the literary and performative means which Bataille employs in his fiction in order to authenticate his depictions of the “inner experience” and the figure of “the Impossible”. Several of the most prominent theoretical approaches to the specificity of Bataille’s transgresssive écriture are referred to and further contrasted with the philosopher’s consistent dissatisfaction with the limitations that language and rational, sense-oriented thought poses to the task of voicing the essence of the “inner experience”. The article concludes with the argument that even literature cannot free itself from pragmatic utility resulting from the structural limitations of language. What literature can achieve, however, is to point to the Impossible and inexpressible, and endlessly invoke and respond to it. Regarded in this way, Bataille’s revelatory language can be considered in a wider, French poststructuralist context, which emphasises the position of Heidegger as a reference point for Derrida and Blanchot.