The acephalic community: Bataillean sovereignty, the question of relation, and the passage to the subject.

The present essay reconsiders Georges Bataille's politics of the impossible in light of Jean-Luc Nancy's and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's collaborative work conducted at the Centre for Philosophical Research on the Political. In particular, my submission critically assesses Nancy's and Lacoue-Labarthe...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:Continental Philosophy Review Vol. 52; no. 1; pp. 75 - 91
Main Author: Gordienko, Andrey
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature Mar2019
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
fields @attributes:
  recordID: 1
pdfLink:
plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=135780555&site=ehost-live
header:
  @attributes:
    shortDbName: hlh
    uiTerm: 135780555
    longDbName: Humanities International Complete
    uiTag: AN
  controlInfo:
    bkinfo:
    jinfo:
      jid:
        13872842
        OEF
      jtl: Continental Philosophy Review
      issn: 13872842
      maglogo: N
    pubinfo:
      dt: Mar2019
      vid: 52
      iid: 1
      pid: 237
      pub: Springer Nature
    artinfo:
      ui:
        135780555
        10.1007/s11007-017-9414-8
      ppf: 75
      ppct: 16
      formats:
        fmt:
          – @attributes:
              type: T
          – @attributes:
              type: P
              size: 424KB
      tig:
        atl: The acephalic community: Bataillean sovereignty, the question of relation, and the passage to the subject.
      aug:
        au: Gordienko, Andrey
        affil: UCLA Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media, Los Angeles, CA, USA
      su:
        Bataille, Georges, 1897-1962
        Nancy, Jean-Luc, 1940-2021
        Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe
        Philosophy
        Metaphysics
      sug:
        subj:
          Bataille, Georges, 1897-1962
          Nancy, Jean-Luc, 1940-2021
          Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe
          Philosophy
          Metaphysics
      keyword:
        Community
        Georges Bataille
        Jean-Luc Nancy
        Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
        Sovereignty
        Theory of the subject
      ab: The present essay reconsiders Georges Bataille's politics of the impossible in light of Jean-Luc Nancy's and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's collaborative work conducted at the Centre for Philosophical Research on the Political. In particular, my submission critically assesses Nancy's and Lacoue-Labarthe's concerted effort to displace the problematic of the subject to make room for a new ground of the political derived from Bataillean conception of community. While Bataille's philosophy proved to be decisive to Nancy's and Lacoue-Labarthe's exploratory research at the Centre, it also constituted a source of profound ambivalence insofar as Bataillean thinking of relation necessarily leads back to the question of the subject. The paper argues that Nancy's admitted failure to develop the unprecedented Bataillean politics is rooted in persistence of the subject in Bataille's philosophy. At the same time, it maintains that what Nancy perceived as a failure must be grasped as success since Bataillean determination of the political necessitates not so much an eradication of the problematic of the subject, as its re-elaboration. If, as Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe suggest, construction of the subject throughout the development of Western metaphysics has determined philosophical thinking of political community, then Bataillean sovereignty (with its presupposition of the acephalic subject freed from subjection to symbolic authority) allows for a new and non-identitarian conception of community not bound to the destiny of the state.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
    refInfo:
    copyright:
      @attributes:
        flag: Y
      custom: Continental Philosophy Review is a copyright of Springer, 2019. All Rights Reserved.
      item: Continental Philosophy Review
      holder: Springer Nature
      dt:
        @attributes:
          year: 2019
    holdings:
      @attributes:
        islocal: N