Georges Bataille: Phenomenology and Phantasmatology, Gasche Rodolphe

This book investigates what Bataille, in The Pineal Eye, calls mythological representation: the mythological anthropology with which this unusual thinker wished to outflank and undo scientific (and philosophical) anthropology. Gasch? probes that anthropology by situating Batailles thought with respect to the quatrumvirate of Schelling, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud. He begins by showing what Batailles understanding of the mythological owes to Schelling. Drawing on Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud, he then explores the notion of image that constitutes the sort of representation that Batailles innovative approach entails. Gasch? concludes that Batailles mythological anthropology takes on Hegels phenomenology in a systematic fashion. By reading it backwards, he not only dismantles its architecture, he also ties each level to the preceding one, replacing the idealities of philosophy with the phantasmatic representations of what he dubs low materialism. Phenomenology, Gasch? argues, thus paves the way for a new science of phantasms.