Georges Bataille's Bio
All the deets on your favorite critic's personal life.
Basic Information
| Name | Georges Bataille |
| Tagline | "Literature is not innocent." |
| Nickname | Lord Auch, The Scary Librarian, Bad Boy Bataille |
| Sex | Male |
| Home town | I was born in 1897 in Billom, France, to a syphilitic father and a mother who was very unsuccessfully suicidal. TMI, you say? Mais non: if you understand how life began for me, it may help you understand my thinking. We moved to Reims when I was fourteen to get away from my abusive dad. I converted to Catholicism there, entered the seminary for a time, and worked to support my mother. Yep, things got very weird very early in my life. |
Work & Education
| Occupation | Basically, I've been a librarian my whole life. All right, get it over with—make your jokes out loud so we can move on. I know I'm strange, and I'm okay with that. For the better part of 20 years, I worked at the National Library in Paris and started a couple of literary and philosophical journals. Sounds boring on the surface, but so much quiet time spent in dark corners reading gave me time to think some wild and woolly thoughts—and to write them all down. |
| Education | I went to high school in Reims and then briefly entered the seminary. I served in the French Army for a year—not fun. After that, the religious thing just didn't make sense, so I enrolled in the École des Chartes in Paris and studied the philosophy of currency (weird, I know) and medieval poetry. Continue with the jokes. I'm used to it.I went to Spain for a year (very fun) on a Hispanic Studies fellowship, then I came home to France to live life in the library basement among books and ideas and maybe a few prostitutes, not to mention some weird surrealists and the odd street person or two, or three, or, well... actually, I hung out with more weirdos than I can count. |
Beliefs
| Political views | I'm a Marxist. That's a big bad term, I know, but it helps keep things simple. I think wealth needs some kind of control, and Marx's ideas worked for me. I was particularly interested in Russia, and I wanted to know why Joseph Stalin was able to come to power and do the messed up things that he did. Some people think I'm a Stalin apologist, but really I'm just an explainer of Stalin.The tsars were so cruel, and they screwed up Russian society so badly that I believe Stalin had to be equally ruthless to get the collective labor of the Russian people under control in order to get Russia up to speed with the Industrial Revolution. Otherwise, the whole country would have fallen apart. I'm an ends-justify-the-means kind of guy. I'm probably not making a very good impression so far, am I? Hold on, though: I do have some cool ideas you might like. |
| Religious views | I was deeply religious and very Catholic when I was a young man. But then, you know, Mom was trying to commit suicide on a monthly basis, war engulfed the world, and my domineering father became paralyzed from advanced syphilis in his brain. These rather unpleasant occurrences contributed to me dumping the whole religion thing. I think God is a brute, actually.Still not making a good impression, huh? Hang on—I did have a bunch of cool buddies, and they might help improve my image. |
Activities & Interests
| Likes | Monsters Whatever the Devil likes Inappropriate jokes at inappropriate times Laughter Childishness William Blake Heaven and Hell Friedrich Nietzsche Psychoanalysis Pablo Picasso |
| Dislikes | Being reasonable or moral Insanity Surrealists who don't like depictions of excrement (André Breton) Communists who turn into fascists Rich people who save their money Moral sexuality Choosing Heaven or Hell |
| Interests | Surrealism Pablo Picasso's art Psychoanalysis Occultism |
| Groups | The P&P (Poop and Pee) Surrealists The Headless Discourse-men The Literary Transgressors The Up-All-Night Club Automatic Writers for the Ethical Treatment of Degenerates Anything You Can Do, We Can Do Grosser The Sacrificial Lambs of Literature Acéphale (The Headless) |