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Bataille's Tacky Touch
- MLN
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 119, Number 4, September 2004 (French Issue)
- pp. 766-780
- 10.1353/mln.2004.0126
- Article
- Additional Information
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Testimony, confession, "reality TV": everywhere, we dream of referential contact. Against the context of this impossible dream, this paper considers the vision of aesthetic communication offered by Georges Bataille, which both demands contact between author and reader, and renders this contact unjustifiable. Bataille's practice as author is analysed along these lines, with particular reference to Histoire de l'il and related discussions by Jean-Luc Nancy and Michel Leiris. The conclusion is drawn that, while such contact can never be guaranteed, nor can it be definitively ruled out. Perhaps, after all, communication cannot altogether be separated from the possibility of contact?