Georges Bataille, The Limit of the Useful, translated by Cory Knutson and Thomas Elliott – MIT Press, February 2023

Update: now published; there is an interview with the translators at the Acid Horizon podcast.

Forthcoming translation of this early text, generally seen as a draft for the first volume of The Accursed Share. In the Bataille Œuvres this only runs to about 100 pages, but there are extensive editorial notes there, which this description says are also included, along with other material.

The first English-language translation of an essential, early work key to understanding the French philosopher’s later thought.

In the decade prior to the publication ofInner Experience(L’expérience intérieure), the twentieth-century French philosopher Georges Bataille produced a nascent masterwork containing some of his most original and extensive reflections on a range of subjects. With thoughts on ritual sacrifice and military conquest, the nature…