SOURCE: Besnier, Jean-Michel. “Bataille, the Emotive Intellectual.”¹ In Bataille: Writing the Sacred, edited by Carolyn Bailey Gill, pp. 12-25. New York: Routledge, 1995.

In the following essay, Besnier defends Bataille against his critics who find him to be inferior as an intellectual.

The question of the intellectual comes back at regular intervals. I don't know if it is a French speciality, but ever since the Dreyfus affair at the beginning of the century, we on the continent have continually involved and compromised our thinkers in current political debates. Some, like Michel Serres, are beginning to show impatience and to demand a right of incompetence in political matters. I tend to think that is so much the better in some cases, but basically I prefer the attitude of someone like Maurice Blanchot, who dreams instead of keeping for himself ‘the right of the unexpected word’, that is to say, the...