CCA News

Stuart Kendall: Guilty: Le Coupable

Posted on Monday, July 25, 2011, by Lindsey Westbrook

Guilty: Le Coupable
State University of New York Press, 2011
Hardcover/paperback, 254 pages, $85/$29.95

Written by Georges Bataille and translated for the first time into English by Critical Studies faculty Stuart Kendall, Guilty: Le Coupable is a personal record of spiritual and communal crisis, wherein the death of god announces the beginning of friendship. To many Western critics, Bataille is one of the most arresting and influential writers of this century. The text is presented as series of reflections and meditations. Tellingly begun in September 1939, the author's philosophical inquiries are heightened by the war and its introduction of profound uncertainty: "I started this book as the result of an upheaval that ended up challenging everything and freed me from undertakings I was stuck in."