Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy

Volume 10, Issue 1, Fall 2005

Jason Kemp Winfree
Pages 175-195

The Expiation of Authority
Toward a Genealogy of Community

This paper examines Bataille’s role in the formation of the question of community, as developed by Nancy and Blanchot. The paper aims to situate the problematic status of Bataille’s influence—as both formative but ultimately insufficient—in his relation to Nietzsche and what Bataille understands as the experience of an irrecoverable loss. What it would mean to share such loss, what is at stake in bringing that experience to articulation, and what happens to those who endeavor to do so constitute the recalcitrant elements in Bataille’s thought, which solicit but cannot sustain a renewal of the question of community.