SOURCE: Hussey, Andrew. “‘Le taureau affronté’: Georges Bataille and the Problem of Mysticism.” In The Inner Scar: The Mysticism of Georges Bataille, pp. 1-36. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000.

In the following essay, Hussey discusses Bataille's interpretation of mysticism and subsequent critical reaction to it.

Bataille, abattage d'un humain bétail

—Michel Leiris, Glossaire: j'y serre mes gloses

Since his death in 1962, Georges Bataille has acquired the status of one of the most influential thinkers of the age. It is an irony, however, that this status has been achieved despite the fact that, in his lifetime, Bataille's writings were known only to a relatively small number of people and that, in the years which immediately followed his death, much of his work remained either unpublished or, for other reasons, inaccessible. However, Bataille's current prestige is such that since the publication of the twelve volumes of his Œuvres Complètes, in the...