Ecce monstrum: Georges Bataille and the sacrifice of form

This dissertation examines the conjunction of monstrosity and the sacred in the writings of Georges Bataille (1897--1962). I argue that Bataille evokes monstrosity in order to elicit in himself and his readers an experience of simultaneous horror and joy, which he characterizes as the "religious sensibility." Taking up his theory of sacrifice, I show that Bataille seeks to sacrifice form---the form of the individual self---by evoking experiences at "the level of death." This sacrificial endeavor is carried out through a monstrous mode of reading, writing, and artistic production. I specify, explain, and build upon his methods, proposing that monstrosity is, for Bataille, a means of displaying the dangerous and morbid, or "left-handed," aspect of the sacred.;Opening with a discussion of Bataille's notion of the self, particularly as it relates to Hegel's master/slave dialectic and the formation of subjectivity, I demonstrate that Bataille substitutes sacrificial identification and mis-recognition for the Hegelian paradigm of power and the fight for recognition. Through an analysis of Bataille's readings of Nietzsche, his antagonistic relationship to surrealism, his interpretation of Simone Weil, and the art of Hans Bellmer, I examine various aspects of the religious sensibility. I suggest that Bataille's writings are best understood as a sustained "method of meditation" in which he explores the possibilities for enacting and provoking the ruination of form for which sacrifice is the model. He seeks, finally, the means for displaying and arousing the intolerable contradiction that sacred monstrosity embodies: divine ecstasy and extreme horror.