Political atheology in Georges Bataille

From the community of death to deconstructed friendship for an affirmative biopolitics

Abstract

For Georges Bataille, there is no political theology that does not nourish fascism insofar as it aims at the closure of the community, its complete self-determination and, thus, its homogenization through a scheme traversed by negativity. Faced with this, the French seeks an open, acephalous or polycephalic community. In short, Bataille tries to envision a different sovereignty, different from the one theorized by the political philosophy of the West. A sovereignty without negativity, pure affirmation without closure and without limits. A sovereignty, in the end, that does not pass through the figure of God. However, it is worth asking: Are we facing a kind of cryptofascism that, rejecting command, hierarchy, closed identity and confronted with otherness, nevertheless persists fascinated by death and sacrifice? To answer this question we will turn not only to Bataille's texts, but also to the reading of them by Jacques Derrida's deconstruction, as well as to Roberto Esposito's recovery of the notion of the impolitical. For our study, inevitably, Hegel and Carl Schmitt will be central to understanding the core of Bataille's theses.