This book is a testimony to the vast influence that Bataille had within French thought. There are many things about this particular volume that one could take fault with, but from my perspective this book has three levels of relevance:

First of all, it shows to what extent Bataille was able to captivate. You find within these pages significant men of letters of widely varying aesthetics from a late surrealist Bréton, an early existential Sartre, to even early Oulipo with Queneau. A simple charlatan does not draw the attention of such luminaries. Much like Artaud, Bataille is the unfinished man of French letters. Unlike Artaud, he does not receive much attention (though Artaud’s output and later documented breakdown are to a large extent the cause of this). This book also sheds light upon all of the movements at the time by having testimony that much of French avant-garde (of all flavors) was driven by the resurgence of: Hegel, Sade, and Heidegger.

The second level of this book would of course be the unfinished system that directed Bataille’s writings. This would be its greatest shortcoming as well as its most interesting aspect. Bataille, as a learned man who denounces much philosophy, toes the line of many areas of complex metaphysics, morality, and psychology. Within the first two pages his thought struck me hard of Heidegger and within the next three explicitly denounced him. He adheres, as Sartre points out, to a negative Hegelianism (which Bataille has no problem advocating though not necessarily with the qualitative adjective). This becomes a hard line to follow though given his enthusiasm for Nietzschean materialism. It is a delightfully shocking exploration of his to watch unfold, and many of the incongruities of his writing come from this peculiar juxtaposition of philosophy. One would almost expect, given his ultimate aim towards incorporating a materialist ecstasy derived from a double bind epistemology that he would have gone straight for Schopenhauer. Surprisingly though no reference is ever made. Given Bataille’s staunch rejection of many of both Hegel and Nietzsche’s thought, it is no wonder that he was not able to find a completion to his system. This is not a debunking though of his project. He does find within the boundaries of what he was working towards an as of yet unspoken void between thought and action, all while remaining in the domain of the material; a movement devoid of metaphysical/mystical transcendence, constrained by material limits – bound between finite experiences that break the epistemological dialectical gridlock that is the content of his work: accessing the impossible within the possible, acting (which for Bataille is always a process of thought) in the realm of the unknown through breaching (not surpassing) the limits of the knowable.

Last but not least, this unfinished system works as a codex for a very enigmatic writer. Be it his fictions, poetry, criticisms, or essays, it is easy to find oneself in a funhouse of mirrors reading any of Bataille’s books. This here is the answer, or at least a dim flashlight, to bring with you when exploring each of Bataille’s works. That in and of itself makes this an invaluable piece to any of his fans. Even when he writes of things seemingly of unrelated significance, this book allows one to approach it from an angle that illuminates the topic and allows for a new way to approach the work that changes everything about it.
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