Saints of the Impossible: Bataille, Weil, and the Politics of the Sacred

by Alexander Irwin

The transgressive writing of George Bataille (1897-1962) and the rigorous ethical philosophy of social activist and Christian mystic Simone Weil (1909-1943) seem to belong to different worlds. Yet in the political ferment of 1930s Paris, Bataille and Weil were intellectual adversaries who exerted a powerful fascination on each other. Saints of the Impossible provides the first in-depth comparison of Bataille's and Weil's thought, showing how an exploration of their relationship reveals new facets of the achievements of two of the twentieth century's leading intellectual figures and raises far-reaching questions about literary practice, politics, and religion. Considering the seeming antithesis between Weil's heroic political engagement and Bataille's antipolitical aestheticism, Saints of the Impossible brings out the insufficiently recognized performative dimension of Weil's politics, while revealing the political reach of Bataille's mystical writings. As it opens a new perspective on both Weil and Bataille, the book also points to a new way of understanding the uses and abuses of sacred power and the performative in an era of philosophical disorientation, social chaos, and war. Alexander Irwin is assistant professor of religion at Amherst College and a research associate of the Boston-based Institute for Health and Social Justice.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, History, Theory

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Kenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very Bataille-centric. Not exactly a bad thing, but was a surprise since I came to this hoping to get more focussed discussions of Weil on sacrality. Can't speak to the reading of Bataille, but at times the reading of Weil was questionable. I really liked the angle Irwin too to interpreting Weil based on her Letter to the Circle, and his attempt to draw out the practical implications of sainthood and sacrality in Bataille and Weil. Overall, an impressive study whose major drawbacks are simply to be expected from a study of this length.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Irwin argues that Simone Weil and Georges Bataille have more to say to each other than scholars (of the late 1990s and early 2000s) originally thought. He uses Bataille's novel "Le Bleu du ciel" as a place to get a sense of how Bataille understood his relationship to Weil (arguing that the character Louise Lazare is based on Weil during their brief overlap at the journal La Critique sociale). He identifies that both Weil and Bataille were engaged in projects of self-sacralization--trying to fashion themselves as living embodiments of the sacred--in response to the problems posed by WWII. Of course, they had very different conceptions of what the sacred was: Weil believed in self-sacrifice and action; Bataille proposed a kind of evil (evil as profane; the opposite of sacred, but in that way still a kind of sacred thing) contemplation as a response to the horror of war. Nevertheless both saw these as important political projects that would be more effective in opposing the war than standard approaches had been.

Overall, I found the argument of the book interesting--in particular as it relates to my own thinking on secular models of "sainthood." In this case, two authors are presenting themselves as a kind of saint. This book would be useful to readers of Weil and Bataille; those interested in "the self"; and in sanctity.