Abstract

An attempt to think through Bataille and not about Bataille. Or, more properly, the attempt to use Bataille’s thought as a kind of tool box, “What I collect here is nothing meaningful, just some wedges and files, a few hammers, and perhaps an occasional explosive charge,” for the purpose of a “jailbreak” from rationality, history, etc. The collection of aphorisms, poems, diary passages and short paragraphs of fiction is thus meant to be a type of literary limit experience. There are several striking sentences and a Bataillean style is assumed throughout, albeit with varying degrees of success, for although the author has a certain flair for aphorism, the verse is more poetaster than Poe. But, Greene’s Bataille is the Bataille of the fictional and “free writing” works and not the sustained theoretical or philosophical works which are the other part of Bataille’s oeuvre.