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Bataille - Additional Notes On The War PDF
Bataille - Additional Notes On The War PDF
Bataille - Additional Notes On The War PDF
October, Vol. 36, Georges Bataille: Writings on Laughter, Sacrifice, Nietzsche, Un-Knowing.
(Spring, 1986), pp. 29-31.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0162-2870%28198621%2936%3C29%3AANOTW%3E2.0.CO%3B2-S
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Additional Notes on the War
legendary ostrich, reduced to hiding its head to cut off sight. Setting aside that
facile agitation that enlists the spineless in organizations such as l'Action
Fran~aiseor La Croix de Feu, those with an appetite for effective action, those
hitherto kept aloof by their own interests from the Left's solutions, begin to
realize that neither an exhausted nationalism nor a shattered capitalism offers
any way out.
Every possible solution finds individual supporters, without any precision
of expression or value of attraction which might lead one to foresee its predomi-
nance. No effective will compatible with a truly human freedom and no will to
freedom compatible with effective will has produced an assembling of even em-
bryonic strength. The balance of opposing forces seems to result in a kind of
equilibrium, since no one force is so constituted that it can even tentatively re-
spond to the needs signaled by general anxiety; the situation, tense though it is,
must for a long time remain so. There is as yet no really obvious way out, none
that tempts the mass in its increasingly agitated state.