Continuum Impacts - Changing Minds

"Hailed as "one of France's best minds" by Martin Heidegger, Georges Bataille has become one of the most influential thinkers in America. Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, and Kristeva all acknowledge their debt to him." "For the first time translated into English, On Nietzsche is the third and last volume of Bataille's crowning achievement, The Atheological Summa, which includes the books Inner Experience and Guilty. Originally published in France in 1945, On Nietzsche comes as close as Bataille could ever come to formulating a system of his own - an "atheology."" "Nietzsche was a major influence on Bataille's life. In 1915, in a crisis of guilt after leaving his blind father in the hands of the Germans, Bataille converted to Catholicism. It was Nietzsche's work that led him to abandon Catholicism for an idiosyncratic form of godless mysticism. In this volume Bataille becomes, and goes beyond, Nietzsche, assuming Nietzsche's thought where he left off - with God's death. The heart of this book explores how one can have a spiritual life outside religion." "Throughout, Bataille argues against fascist interpretations of Nietzsche. He writes of Nietzsche's falling out with Richard Wagner and his disgust for German anti-Semitism. He lauds Nietzsche as a prophet foretelling "the crude German fate," and in the appendix Bataille defends himself against Sartre." "On Nietzsche is essentially a journal that brilliantly mixes observations with ruminations in fragments, aphorisms, poems, myths, quotations, and images against the background of the war and the German occupation. Bataille has a unique way of moving breezily from abstraction to confession, and from theology to eroticism, skillfully weaving together his own internal experience of anguish with the war and the destruction raging outside. This volume reconfirms Michel Foucault's words: "[Bataille] broke with traditional narrative to tell us what has never been told before.""--Jacket.

"The inspiration for Rainer Werner Fassbinder's epic film and that The Guardian named one of the "Top 100 Books of All Time," Berlin Alexanderplatz is considered one of the most important works of the Weimar Republic and twentieth century literature. Franz Biberkopf, pimp and petty thief, has just finished serving a term in prison for murdering his girlfriend. He's on his own in Weimar Berlin with its lousy economy and frontier morality, but Franz is determined to turn over new leaf, get ahead, make an honest man of himself, and so on and so forth. He hawks papers, chases girls, needs and bleeds money, gets mixed up in spite of himself in various criminal and political schemes, and when he tries to back out of them, it's at the cost of an arm. This is only the beginning of our modern everyman's multiplying misfortunes, but though Franz is more dupe than hustler, in the end, well, persistence is rewarded and things might be said to work out. Just like in a novel. Lucky Franz.Berlin, Alexanderplatz is one of great twentieth-century novels. Taking off from the work of Dos Passos and Joyce, Doblin depicts modern life in all its shocking violence, corruption, splendor, and horror. Michael Hofmann, celebrated for his translations of Joseph Roth and Franz Kafka, has prepared a new version, the first in over 75 years, in which Doblin's sublime and scurrilous masterpiece comes alive in English as never before"-- "Franz Biberkopf, pimp and petty thief, has just finished serving a term in prison for murdering his girlfriend. He's on his own in Weimar Berlin with its lousy economy and frontier morality, but Franz is determined to turn over new leaf, get ahead, make an honest man of himself, and so on and so forth. He hawks papers, chases girls, needs and bleeds money, gets mixed up in various criminal and political schemes in spite of himself, and when he tries to back out of them, it's at the cost of an arm. This is only the beginning of our modern everyman's multiplying misfortunes, but though Franz is more dupe than hustler, in the end, well, persistence is rewarded and things might be said to work out. Just like in a novel. Lucky Franz. Berlin Alexanderplatz is one of great twentieth-century novels. Taking off from the work of John Dos Passos and James Joyce, Alfred D.

"Alain Badiou is already regarded as one of the most original and powerful voices in contemporary European thought. Almost alone among his peers, his work promises a radical renewal of philosophy." "Influenced by Plato, Lucretius, Heidegger, Lacan and Deleuze, Badiou is a critic of both the analytical and the postmodern schools of thought. His work spans the range of philosophy, from ethics, to mathematics to scling and takes no prisoners." "Infinite Thought brings together a representative selection of the range of Alain Badiou's work, illustrating the power and diversity of his thought. The pieces, including the final interview, are chosen for their accessibility to readers new to the work of a philosopher who is doing no less than changing the way we think about the world."--Jacket.