SOURCE: de Kessel, Marc. “A Sovereign's Anatomy: The Antique in Bataille's Modernity and its Impact on His Political Thought.” In Cogito and the Unconscious, edited by Slavoj Žižek, pp. 199-24. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998.

In the following essay, de Kessel explores Bataille's concept of sovereignty and its ramifications for geopolitical issues.

“Man shall not live by bread alone.” Few in our rich and fickle tradition have ever rejected this evangelical proposition outright, and neither has Georges Bataille,¹ who adopted it, but in his own way. Although man may live by more than bread alone, for Bataille there is nothing besides bread to live by. In his view, man coincides with the bread he eats, with the work he makes a living from, and with the economy that sustains him. But then, says Bataille, this bready, working, and economic man can also live by nothing; he...