Beyond vengeance: Religion and political liberation in Bataille, Girard and Rousseau

Beyond Vengeance offers a close and comparative reading of the work of Georges Bataille and Rene Girard and then brings them into productive relation with the political theory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The mutual incompatibility of Bataille and Girard as theorists of religion (respectively emphasizing transgression and prohibition) is employed as a theoretical basis on which to consider Rousseau's political theory anew, as a precursor to the work of modern philosophers like T.W. Adorno or Herbert Marcuse. Rousseau's ideas about nature, history and memory are explored as an early expression of what Adorno would call 'negative dialectics,' and in this way as a properly political consummation of Bataille and Girard's theories.;Keywords. Prohibition, Transgression, Violence, Rationality, Nature, History.