Michel Surya's 'Sainteté de Bataille' Revisits Georges Bataille's Political and Sacred Experiments

Michel Surya's 'Sainteté de Bataille' (L'Éclat, coll. 'Philosophie imaginaire') collects new and previously unpublished texts on Georges Bataille, serving as a companion to Surya's biography 'Georges Bataille, la mort à l'œuvre' (Tel/Gallimard). The book examines Bataille's ambition to found politics on intimate experience and create community from the most personal. Central to this is Bataille's pre-war engagement with groups like Contre-Attaque (1935-1939), which briefly united surrealists against fascism, and the secret society Acéphale, whose members turned against Bataille after war was declared. Surya highlights Bataille's insight into the religious nature of fascism and his attempt to mobilize myth for revolutionary ends, drawing on Georges Sorel (oddly absent from Bataille scholarship). The volume also explores the figure of the 'idiot' as an emblem of Bataille's challenge to rationality, affirming the sovereignty of experience. Francis Marmande's 'Faites les Fêtes' (Lignes) complements this with a Bataillean meditation on the Bayonne festivals, blending jubilation and despair.