Bataille and the Birth of the Subject

Out of the Laughter of the Socius

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3774673
AutoresNidesh Lawtoo (0000-0003-0083-3208, University of Lausanne)
Ano2011
Volume16
Fascículo2
Páginas73-88
Data de publicação2011-06-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAngelaki (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0969-725X • E-ISSN: 1469-2899
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0969725x.2011.591587
OpenAlexW1531939896
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas10
Referências citadas11

After the recuperation of Bataille as a major precursor of the poststructuralist death of the subject by influential theorists such as Foucault, Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy, recent developments in Bataille studies have begun to place mimetic, contagious affects at the center of the problematic of “sovereign communication” (Borch-Jacobsen, Ffrench). In this article, I extend this emerging line of inquiry by considering the role of laughter in Bataille’s theory of the communicative subject. My claim is that far from relying on what a “metaphysics of the subject,” Bataille’s ticklish form of communication is predicated on the so-far unnoticed, yet explicit debt to Pierre Janet’s “psychology of the socius.” I argue that Bataille’s take on laughter remains important for us today because it provides us with a non-metaphysical starting point to rethink the process of subject formation in intersubjective, relational term. For both Bataille and recent developments in mimetic theory, laughter precedes being, insofar as it is through laughter that the subject comes into being

Art · Epistemology · Freudian slip · Laughter · Literature · Metaphysics · Postmodernism · Psychoanalysis · Subject (documents · Subjectivity · Transcendence (philosophy · French Literature and Critical Theory · French Literature and Criticism · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Psychology · Philosophy