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Carnival, sacred and sovereign: The intellectual intersection of Bakhtin and Bataille

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Date Issued:
2005
Summary:
The common intellectual ground shared by Mikhail Bakhtin and Georges Bataille routinely suffers from a dearth of consideration. Yet Bakhtin's celebrated "carnival" writings are invested in undeniably Bataillean interests---death, excess, transgression, heterogeneity. Both Bakhtin and Bataille inherited the Wagnerian Nietzsche's nostalgia for effusive communal ritual, collapsing the boundaries between bodies and the boundary between life and death (this is "transgression," eroticism , according to Bataille; too often transgression is spoken of in terms of stealing a pornographic magazine). Thus bodies in Bakhtin and Bataille are "open," mainly in comic and inglorious ways, and death is the cynosure of festival. Death for Bakhtin and Bataille is not negative; it is "sacred" (Bataille's term), serving as communal cement and a celebration of life. Not, however, life in the sense of 401k's and insurance. Rather, life as exuberance and generosity ("sovereignty" according to Bataille).
Title: Carnival, sacred and sovereign: The intellectual intersection of Bakhtin and Bataille.
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Name(s): Lemole, Jared E.
Florida Atlantic University, Degree grantor
Buckton, Oliver, Thesis advisor
Type of Resource: text
Genre: Electronic Thesis Or Dissertation
Issuance: monographic
Date Issued: 2005
Publisher: Florida Atlantic University
Place of Publication: Boca Raton, Fla.
Physical Form: application/pdf
Extent: 58 p.
Language(s): English
Summary: The common intellectual ground shared by Mikhail Bakhtin and Georges Bataille routinely suffers from a dearth of consideration. Yet Bakhtin's celebrated "carnival" writings are invested in undeniably Bataillean interests---death, excess, transgression, heterogeneity. Both Bakhtin and Bataille inherited the Wagnerian Nietzsche's nostalgia for effusive communal ritual, collapsing the boundaries between bodies and the boundary between life and death (this is "transgression," eroticism , according to Bataille; too often transgression is spoken of in terms of stealing a pornographic magazine). Thus bodies in Bakhtin and Bataille are "open," mainly in comic and inglorious ways, and death is the cynosure of festival. Death for Bakhtin and Bataille is not negative; it is "sacred" (Bataille's term), serving as communal cement and a celebration of life. Not, however, life in the sense of 401k's and insurance. Rather, life as exuberance and generosity ("sovereignty" according to Bataille).
Identifier: 9780542137716 (isbn), 13261 (digitool), FADT13261 (IID), fau:10115 (fedora)
Collection: FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection
Note(s): Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2005.
Subject(s): Critical theory
Bataille, Georges,--1897-1962--Criticism and interpretation
Bakhtin, MM--(Mikhail Mikhaĭlovich),--1895-1975--Criticism and interpretation
Discourse analysis
Held by: Florida Atlantic University Libraries
Persistent Link to This Record: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/13261
Sublocation: Digital Library
Use and Reproduction: Copyright © is held by the author, with permission granted to Florida Atlantic University to digitize, archive and distribute this item for non-profit research and educational purposes. Any reuse of this item in excess of fair use or other copyright exemptions requires permission of the copyright holder.
Use and Reproduction: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Host Institution: FAU
Is Part of Series: Florida Atlantic University Digital Library Collections.