The Toronto Philosophy Meetup

King Vidor’s ode to the everyman is one of the crowning achievements of silent cinema. The film centers upon John Sims, who from an early age imagines that he’s destined for great things. As a young man he journeys to New York to make his name, but over time he must come to terms with a relentlessly ordinary existence. One sees in the film a supreme example of Vidor’s ability to punctuate a naturalistic, documentary-like style (including astonishing location work on the busy streets of New York) with sequences of searing visual expressiveness — his approach in this movie would prove highly influential on later directors, in particular the Italian neorealists and, later, the French New Wave.

"Vidor's dynamic direction brings expressionist style to the American Dream in The Crowd, a powerfully humanist picture about the struggle for self-actualization." (Rotten Tomatoes)

"Make films about the people, they said, but The Crowd had already been made, so why remake it?" (Jean-Luc Godard)

"A drab actionless story of ungodly length and apparently telling nothing." (Variety)

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If Bataille's thought has a "method" or "logic", it is what he calls heterology -- the logos of the other. We take up this topic this week with two texts:

"The Use Value of D. A. F. de Sade", p. 91 in the collection Visions of Excess
"Definition of heterology", available as a PDF

You can find all texts in the Google folder linked at the BOTTOM of this description (also the Zoom link) -- scroll all the way down 👇

We're starting Bataille's novel Blue of Noon (also in the Google Drive). We'll read it individually over several weeks, then dedicate a meeting to it (date TBA).

Please take the time to read and reflect on the reading prior to the meeting. Everyone is welcome to attend, but speaking priority will be given to people who have read the text.

Tentative schedule
Apr 12: Bataille's ontology: The labyrinth and the death of the self
Apr 19: Bataille's 'logic': On heterology
Apr 26: Bataille's ethics of excess: Chance, myth and the erotic

Future topics:

• Bataille's aesthetics: the rift with Surrealism
• Blue of Noon
• Personal sovereignty and inner experience
• Erotics and the 'logic' of transgression
• Bataille and/vs Deleuze
• Foucault's "A Preface to Transgression"
• Hegel, the negative and general economy
• Derrida's "From Restricted to General Economy"

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ABOUT THIS GROUP
This is a reading group of several texts of Georges Bataille with a focus on his philosophy of life. Bataille stands out as an eclectic, fascinating and controversial figure in the world of French letters. A contemporary of Sartre and Lacan, he combined ideas from diverse disciplines to create a unique position that he labeled 'base materialism' and which could equally be called 'ecstatic materialism'. Keeping outside the academic mainstream (he worked as a librarian), Bataille writes at the intersection of multiple disciplines including philosophy, psychoanalysis, sociology, mythology, and mystical theology. His works develop a libidinal economy, offer a critique of fascism and embrace marginal experiences in the style of the French poets. He is a formative precursor to the post-structuralist philosophers of the '60s -- and may well be more relevant in our time than ever.

We'll start with Bataille's early writings on Nietzsche and make our way through his important concepts over a number of weeks. We'll aim to understand Bataille's thought on its own terms as well as to place him in the context of the German thinkers that preceded him and the French philosophers who followed his lead. In view of Bataille's early relationship with Surrealism, the referenced artworks will spotlight this movement.

Note: Bataille's texts, while philosophically important, discuss difficult themes such as mortality, the unconscious, eroticism, primeval social practices, etc. Keep this in mind as you approach him, especially if this is your first experience with French philosophy.

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GROUP RULES

• Please spend 1-2 hours per week reading and preparing for the discussion.
• Keep your comments concise and relevant to the text.
• Please limit each comment to a maximum of 2-3 minutes. You're welcome to speak as many times as you wish.
• Virtual meeting courtesy: let's not interrupt each other and keep mics muted when not speaking.
• We'll focus the discussion with key passages and discussion questions. Be sure to bring your favorite passages, questions, comments, criticisms, etc.

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A FEW NOTES ON THIS WEEK'S TEXT

TBA

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