Literature and communication in the works of Georges Bataille and Angela Carter

Abstract

This thesis explores Bataille's notion that 'literature is communication. Communication requires loyalty' (Bataille 1997: ix). I begin my thesis in contestation of Habermas' claim that Bataille invokes an 'other' of reason in his notion of communication. I argue instead that Bataille's notion of communication expresses a sovereign value, and as Derrida concludes, is 'totally other': 'Bataille pulls it out of dialectics. He withdraws it from the horizon of meaning and knowledge'1 (Derrida 1998: 107). As totally other, it finds its path of exit through Hegel's Master-Slave dialectic. In order to look at communication in literature, this thesis sets out to trace the development of such notions as communication, sovereignty, heterogeneity, the sacred, the impossible, inner experience and the informe, all of which refer to a similar operation of challenging and displacing accepted relations in knowing, reading and writing.