Convulsive Form: Benjamin, Bataille and the Innervated Body

Raymond Patrick Ffrench

Convulsive Form: Benjamin, Bataille and the Innervated Body

French

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review

Abstract

Starting from Giorgio Agamben's proposition, in 'Notes on Gesture', that the 20th-century is beset by a 'crisis of gesture' this chapter explores the convulsive or 'innervated body' in the work of Walter Benjamin and Georges Bataille. Taking a less melancholy approach than Agamben, I ask what can the convulsive body do and what forms can it produce. Both Benjamin and Bataille invest the convulsive body with a power susceptible to provoke affective 'discharge' and thus with a kind of political agency. Their approaches differ, however, over the nature of this politics; while Benjamin accentuates the potential of play and its gesturality, especially in his writing in cinema, Bataille pursues convulsion on the terrain of ritual and sacrifice, particularly in the novel Le Bleu du ciel. For both, however, the dangerous continuity between the convulsion and an authoritarian politics is at stake.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	What Forms Can Do
Subtitle of host publication	The Work of Form in 20th- and 21st-Century French Literature and Thought
Editors	Shirley Jordan, Patrick Crowley
Place of Publication	Liverpool
Publisher	Liverpool University Press
Chapter	18
Pages	295-310
Number of pages	15
ISBN (Electronic)	9781789624755
ISBN (Print)	978-1-789-62065-8
Publication status	Published - 14 Apr 2020

Publication series

Name	Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures
Publisher	Liverpool University Press
Number	69

Keywords

Walter Benjamin
Georges Bataille
Innervation
Convulsion
Cinema
Mickey Mouse

Cite this

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Convulsive Form : Benjamin, Bataille and the Innervated Body. / Ffrench, Raymond Patrick.

What Forms Can Do: The Work of Form in 20th- and 21st-Century French Literature and Thought. ed. / Shirley Jordan; Patrick Crowley. Liverpool : Liverpool University Press, 2020. p. 295-310 (Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures; No. 69).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review

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Convulsive Form: Benjamin, Bataille and the Innervated Body

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Keywords

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