The Dawn of Heterology. The Mythological Writing of Georges Bataille during the 1920s

Abstract

The article explores the origins of Georges Bataille’s heterological thought in his early writings of the 1920s. Three key texts written during this auroral period are analyzed: The Solar Anus, “The Missing America”, and The Pineal Eye. These writings have in common the same mythological motivation—either inventing a myth or its historical record—which will be established in direct opposition to the epistemic and ontological record of science and philosophy. In this way, Bataille will gradually outline a singular anthropological conception and a particular method of
remote inspection of traditional forms. This task led to the development of the heterology of the 1930s. In this sense, the article observes the first steps of Bataille’s reflections, his early interests and the way in which certain ideas germinated in a mythical register will later be shaped into the distinctive features of his thought and work.