Sacred Revolutions: Durkheim and the College De Sociologie

by Michele H. Richman

How is it that the most radical cultural iconoclasts of the interwar years-Georges Bataille, Roger Caillois, and Michel Leiris-could have responded to the rise of fascism by taking refuge in a "sacred sociology"? This is the question that Michèle H. Richman poses in a work that examines this seemingly paradoxical development. Her book traces the overall implications for French social thought of the "ethnographic detour" that began with Durkheim's interest in Australian aboriginal religion-implications that reach back to the Revolution of 1789 and forward to the student protests of May 1968. Richman argues that by revising a phenomenon at once as familiar and as exotic as the sacred, these intellectuals forged a point of view relevant to politics, art, and eroticism in the modern period. Assimilating sociology to this revised notion of the sacred, they revitalized a critical discourse based upon anthropological thinking dating back to Montaigne and culminating in Rousseau. Her work thus supplies an important chapter in the history of the human sciences while demonstrating the formation of an innovative critical discourse that straddles literary theory, social thought, and religious and cultural studies. Michele H. Richman is associate professor of French studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

248 pages, Textbook Binding

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. Richman has given the best treatment and analysis to the topics at hand that I have read. Many newer books on the College completely miss the mark on what both Caillois and Bataille were trying to achieve with the College. Read Hollier's collection and his essay on the group in Absent Without Leave in addition to this book.
Where many people have come back to study the College De Sociologie, this book should be required reading before many other more recent articles and books which I have many, many problems with their interpretation of Bataille, Caillois and the College. This book however is wonderful.