Ecce Monstrum

Jeremy Biles

"In the 1930s, Georges Bataille proclaimed a "ferociously religious" sensibility characterized by simultaneous ecstasy and horror. Ecce Monstrum investigates the content and implications of this religious sensibility by examining Bataille's insistent linking of monstrosity and the sacred." "Extending and sometimes challenging major interpretations of Bataille by thinkers like Denis Hollier and Rosalind Krauss, the book reveals how his writings betray the monstrous marks of the affective and intellectual contradictions he seeks to produce in his readers. Charting a new approach to recent debates concerning Bataille's formulation of the informe ("formless"), the author demonstrates that the motif of monstrosity is keyed to Bataille's notion of sacrifice -- an operation that ruptures the integrality of the individual form." "Bataille enacts a "monstrous" mode of reading and writing in...

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