Abstracts Philosophy, Religion, and Theology

Benjamin or Bataille: transgression, redemption, and the origins of postmodern thought

by Michael Ray Weingrad

My dissertation explores the association of Walter Benjamin and Georges Bataille, two thinkers who have become central to the canon of postmodern thought. The fact that they knew each other during the 1930s, that Benjamin attended meetings of Bataille's College of Sociology and even gave his manuscripts into Bataille's safekeeping before he fled Paris in 1940, has prompted some to suggest an intellectual affinity, a confluence which would bring the currents of French post-structuralism and Frankfurt School Critical Theory together in a kind of unified field theory of postmodernism.My study shows that this is not the case. Rather than any confluence we find a deep intellectual antagonism in the record of their association. Their encounters constitute a clash between irreconcilable modes of thinking – between the transgressive elements of French culture that determine the theories of Bataille, and the transformations of German-Jewish Enlightenment thought that shape Benjamin's work. Throughout, my study emphasizes the rootedness of these intellectual and political differences in divergent religious sensibilities, cultural backgrounds, and theological beliefs.In chapter one I provide a chronological overview of the interactions between Benjamin and Bataille, as revealed in their correspondence and the recollections of their colleagues. This chapter shows the sharp skepticism with which the Frankfurt School figures looked upon Bataille's circle. Chapter two adds an important dimension to this intellectual history, by tracing Bataille and Benjamin's different relationships to the Russian-Jewish philosopher, Lev Shestov. In chapter three I begin the work of bringing to light the theological background to this intellectual history, examining the place of antinomian messianism in their thought. Critiquing Jeffrey Mehlman's attempt to link Bataille and Benjamin through the phenomenon of Sabbatianism, I offer an alternative genealogy for Bataille's antinomianism, tracing his transgressive religiosity (and politics) to the "Parisian Messianism" of the French Decadents. Chapter four details Bataille and Benjamin's very different approaches to the subject of myth, while chapter five explores the nature and consequences of their divergent conceptions of the sacred. Finally, in chapter six I contrast the centrality of transgression in Bataille's thought with the importance of redemption for Benjamin.