| This dissertation deals with the problems of unity and chaos in the works of Georges Bataille and offers a new interpretation of his conception of language and social institutions and politics.;This dissertation attempts to establish that Georges Bataille has been misread and that the questions of order and disorder, or unity and chaos, have been underestimated in his works.;Although Bataille has been generally regarded as a theoretician of taboo, we first attempt to show that his views on taboo have been glorified and largely misinterpreted. A second chapter concentrates on the meaning of order and unity found in Bataille's anthropology. This will appear as a cross between Hegelian philosophy and the French ethnology of the thirties. The concept of order involves historical, economic and religious implications. In the following chapter, we study another trend in Bataille's writings that denies to the contrary, the very possibility of order; his conception of disorder and chaos then provides us with contradictory historical, religious and philosophical consequences. This unknown aspect of his thought allows us to link Bataille with a more modern school of thought that focuses on the birth of order through disorder. Our fourth chapter attempts to interpret Bataille's political options in terms of an exaggerated attention he pays to the opposition between order and disorder. This reading helps us to understand many of the political ambiguities in Bataille's analyses of fascism and communism. |
