Heterology and the Postmodern: Bataille, Baudrillard, and Lyotard

by Julian Pefanis

In Heterology and the Postmodern, Julian Pefanis presents a new view of the history of poststructuralism (heterology) and the origins of postmodernism by analyzing three important French theorists, Georges Bataille, Jean Baudrillard, and Jean-François Lyotard.
Beginning with the introduction of Hegel in French postmodernist thought—largely but not exclusively through the thought of Georges Bataille—Pefanis argues that the core problematics of postmodern aesthetics—history, exchange, representation, and writing—are related to Bataille’s reconceptualization of the Hegelian framework. Pefanis explores how Bataille was influenced by Hegel, Marcel Mauss, Freud, and Nietzsche, and traces the effects of this influence on the analyses and critiques of later postmodernists, most notably Lyotard and Baudrillard. Finally, employing these postmodernists along with Freud and Jacques Lacan, Pefanis discusses discourse on postmodernism and its relation to Freud’s concept of the death drive.
This intellectual history makes valuable contributions to the debates over what the “postmodern” may mean for intellectual and political activity.

180 pages, Paperback

First published December 20, 1990

Reviews

[Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly straight forward...purely academic text but definitely helpful insofar as it puts all of these philosophers into their historical and philosophical context.

[Michael A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5 Heterology is Pefanis's word for "post-structuralism" here, presumably because he thinks Bataille is sort of the gunpowder trail that led to it (Bataille inducting 'heterology' or the science of the completely other), something Habermas agrees with (though of course negatively, the Francophobe liberal that he is! tsk tsk). I didn't really grasp an overarching thesis, they were "micro-narrations" which I thought was pretty interesting in their own right. Every chapter was interesting, and chapters 3, 4, and 5 primarily deal with Bataille, Baudrillard, and Lyotard respectively. Though the 3 figures play their role in the micro-narrative, Bataille takes the foreground, or as he is more accustomed to, the shadowy presence that lurks behind the thought of pretty much every thinker discussed at length (including Lacan - the last chapter was heavy on psychoanalysis that I didn't quite get. But "This is the revenge of the mirror people" is one of the coolest ending sentences in an academic text I've read in a while so...it was cool).

There's also a lot of discussion about political economy/Marxism and Psychoanalysis and (pretty much) Baudrillard and Lyotard's critiques/responses to them.