Documents and the Critical Dictionary:

Encyclopaedia Acephalica Homepage

Encyclopaedia Acephalica

Comprising the

Critical Dictionary

&

Related Texts

(Edited by Georges Bataille)

Introduction Contributors Entries (Alphabetical) Entries (By Author) Related Texts Web Design Related Links Message Board Search

http://website.lineone.net/~d.a.perkins/12/12/2004 8:56:53

ЖЖ

Introduction

Introduction:

author list entries list home rel docs list The Head of Georges Bataille Preamble Documents and the Critical Dictionary Not Art But Evidence The Related Texts Bataille and the Surrealists Acephal The Figure of The Acephal The Secret Society of Acephale

http://website.lineone.net/~d.a.perkins/iintro.html12/12/2004 8:56:56

ЖЖ

Entries (By Author)

Bataille, Georges Baron, Jacques Dandieu, Arnauld Desnos, Robert Einstein, Carl Griaulle, Marcel Leiris, Michel Reich, Zdenko Anonymous/Quoted Home

http://website.lineone.net/~d.a.perkins/iauthore.html12/12/2004 8:56:57

ЖЖ

Preamble

Preamble:

author list entries list home rel docs list In his

Autobiographical Note

, dating from around 1958, Georges Bataille wrote about himself asfollows: "from 1914 onwards, he is convinced that his concern in this world is with writing and, inparticular, with the formulation of a paradoxical philosophy." This was something of an understatement:paradox is present at every level of Bataille's thought, not least because he was convinced that thought,

by its very nature

, was unable to cast even a dim light upon those essential problems of life that hewished to explore. Despite these reservations he evolved a system (or rather an anti-system) of ideas of immense subtlety and complexity, which developed over many years. His basic notions remainedremarkably consistent, however, since they derived from a small group of interests that were in positionfrom an early point on in his career (evident in his texts in this collection which are among his earliestpublished works), after which he embarked on a large opus of elaboration. Apart from the consistency of his ideas, what is also remarkable in Bataille is his consistency in tone; everything he wrote is vehement,impassioned, and moves forward into disturbing realms of human life with teeth gritted. The texts in thisanthology share these characteristics, also present in many of the texts not written by Bataille: anindication of the powerful influence he exerted upon his contemporaries.Before considering Bataille's basic ideas in relation to the texts here, some historical documentationseems desirable, since both sets of texts arose from particular circumstances and events: principally therise, and then the defeat, of Fascism, and the periods of upheaval that preceded and followed the SecondWorld War and the Nazi occupation of France. This book also gives the first account of the inception of the

Da Costa Encyclopédique

. Until now there has been virtually no information about thecircumstances surrounding its publication, its editors, authors, or intentions (and no doubt this firstaccount contains both errors and omissions). I have confined myself in this introduction to a descriptionof the background to, and aims of, the texts that follow, and to a fairly brief survey of some of Bataille'sideas as they relate to them; biographies of the various participants can be found on pp. 158-163.

http://website.lineone.net/~d.a.perkins/MOPREAMB.html12/12/2004 9:06:11

ЖЖ

Documents and the Critical Dictionary

Documents and the Critical Dictionary:

author list entries list home rel docs list

Documents

was founded in 1929 by Bataille and Pierre d'Espezel, both of whom worked in the Cabinetdes Médailles at the Bibliothèque Nationale [1]. Its editorial committee consisted of two main factionswho formed, almost from the start, a rather uneasy conception about the direction the magazine shouldtake. The first, centred around Bataille, consisted of writers, many of whom were ex-Surrealists or hadbeen associated with Paris Dada and the Grand Jeu groups. The second faction was more academic, aselection of museum curators, professors of psychiatry and art history and, despite the fact that the chief editorial input was Bataille's, this faction included the magazine's financial backer, Georges Wildenstein,proprietor of the celebrated

Gazette des Beaux-Arts

. Each issue was something of a compromise.Luckily a third group was able to mediate between the two sets of protagonists. The appearance of

Documents

coincided with the birth of modern ethnography in France, and the magazine numberedmany of its most important figures on its editorial panel. One of the magazine's founders, Georges-HenriRivière, had taken charge of reorganising the chaotic artefact collections of the Trocadéro museum, andin 1938 founded the most important museum of anthropology in France, the Musée de l'Homme. Heoutlined the framework of its methodology in

Documents

, and Michel Leiris, a friend of Bataille's andhis collaborator both on

Documents

and in later ventures, was to work in the museum for many years.Another member of the editorial board, Paul Rivet, was the founder with Marcel Mauss and others of theInstitute d'Ethnologie, which laid down the ground-rules for field-work which became the basis for allfuture ethnographic research. Marcel Griaule, a contributor to the

Critical Dictionary

, was to becomeone of its most celebrated practitioners. Between 1931 and 1933, Griaule led the Dakar-Djiboutiexpedition, the largest ethnographic expedition undertaken to date, with Leiris as its official secretary.D'Espezel and his more conservative colleagues were, from the first issue, opposed to the heterocliticelements which disrupted the articles on ancient and modern art and ethnography to which theyimagined the magazine was devoted. An article by Bataille in issue number one –

Le Chevalacadémique

, which drew typically outrageous conclusions from the deformations of horses on ancientcoins – so infuriated D'Espezel that he called for the magazine's suppression. When Carl Einsteinsuggested a compromise, the creation of a separate section in the magazine specifically to contain theseelements, Bataille realised he would be able use it not only as the platform from which to present hismore outré ideas, but also to criticise aspects of the main part of the magazine. Thus the

Dictionary

, amagazine within a magazine, came into being from the second issue onwards, its dictionary format nodoubt being Bataille's idea, and for a while Wildenstein tolerated and even enjoyed it. Soon, however,essays which would have been more at home there began escaping into the main part of the review (the

Related Texts

printed here), and eventually he withdrew his backing; the magazine folded after twoyears and 15 issues, its failure to make a profit being an additional factor. In many ways the Dictionaryis the essence of the whole magazine, its mixture of insight, playfulness, erudition and shock indicatewhat the magazine could have been had Bataille not been constrained by his collaborators.

http://website.lineone.net/~d.a.perkins/MODOCUME.html (1 of 2)12/12/2004 9:06:12

ЖЖ