Georges Bataille

Georges Bataille (September 16, 1897 – July 9, 1962) was a French writer, anthropologist and philosopher, though he avoided the latter term himself.

Key concepts

• eroticism
• the accursed share
• the potlatch (borrowed from Marcel Mauss's discussion of the kula and the gift economy)
• absolute negativity
• acephality
• the sacred
• the solar anus
• heterogeneous matter (deviant social elements)
• homogeneity's need for deviance
• transgression