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The Dismembered Community

Bataille, Blanchot, Leiris, and the Remains of Laure

Milo Sweedler

This book examines the intersecting communitarian endeavors of Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris, and Colette Peignot, known posthumously as Laure. Through detailed analysis of a series of interlocking texts that the four authors write on, for, and to one another on such topics as love, friendship, and fraternity, it explores these authors' theoretical elaborations of community, their actual communities, and the relation between the two. At the center of this investigation stands the controversial figure of Laure, who functions both during her life and after her premature death as a catalyst for the communities formed around her by a group of men. Not only the first book-length study of the intersecting relationships and theoretical musings of four writers who contested the boundaries between reflection and affection, this book is also the first extended critical investigation in any language of the legacy of one of the most provocative and elusive figures of the twentieth-century French avant-garde.

University Press Copublishing Division / University of Delaware Press

Pages: 214 • Trim: 6½ x 9¾

978-1-61149-112-8 • Hardback • May 2009 • $105.00 • (£81.00) - Currently out of stock. Copies will arrive soon.

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Reference, Literary Criticism / European / French, Literary Criticism / Women Authors, Literary Criticism / Books & Reading, Literary Criticism / General

The Dismembered Community

Bataille, Blanchot, Leiris, and the Remains of Laure

Hardback

Summary

This book examines the intersecting communitarian endeavors of Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris, and Colette Peignot, known posthumously as Laure. Through detailed analysis of a series of interlocking texts that the four authors write on, for, and to one another on such topics as love, friendship, and fraternity, it explores these authors' theoretical elaborations of community, their actual communities, and the relation between the two. At the center of this investigation stands the controversial figure of Laure, who functions both during her life and after her premature death as a catalyst for the communities formed around her by a group of men. Not only the first book-length study of the intersecting relationships and theoretical musings of four writers who contested the boundaries between reflection and affection, this book is also the first extended critical investigation in any language of the legacy of one of the most provocative and elusive figures of the twentieth-century French avant-garde.

Details

University Press Copublishing Division / University of Delaware Press

Pages: 214 • Trim: 6½ x 9¾

978-1-61149-112-8 • Hardback • May 2009 • $105.00 • (£81.00) - Currently out of stock. Copies will arrive soon.

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Reference, Literary Criticism / European / French, Literary Criticism / Women Authors, Literary Criticism / Books & Reading, Literary Criticism / General

Author

Milo Sweedler is an associate professor of French, cultural analysis, and social theory at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Reviews

It is a valuable contribution to studies of their work.
— Oxford Journals

What the book provides is above all a focus for the important and still under-appreciated (or even carefully obliterated) contribution of Colette Peignot to the provocative and influential immersion into the collective sacred by major French intellectuals of the inter-war years.
— Modern Language Review

The Dismembered Community

Bataille, Blanchot, Leiris, and the Remains of Laure

Milo Sweedler

The Dismembered Community

Bataille, Blanchot, Leiris, and the Remains of Laure

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