Georges Bataille: Blue of Noon (1957–) [FR, EN, ES]

“Set against the backdrop of Europe’s slide into fascism, this twentieth-century erotic classic takes the reader on a dark journey through the psyche of the pre-war French intelligentsia, torn between identification with the victims of history and the glamour of its victors. One of Bataille’s overtly political works, it explores the ambiguity of sex as a subversive force, bringing violence, power and death together in a terrifying unity. Written in 1935.”

Publisher Pauvert, Paris, 1957
215 pages

English edition
Translated by Harry Matthews
Publisher Marion Boyars, London, 1979
This edition Paladin Books, 1988
ISBN 0586086242
155 pages

Review: Kirkus (1979).
Commentary: David Fieni (2003).

WorldCat (EN)
Wikipedia (EN)

Le bleu du ciel (French, 1957/1971)
Blue of Noon (English, trans. Harry Matthews, 1979, HTML, PDF)
El azul del cielo (Spanish, n.d.)

Volker Pantenburg: Farocki/Godard: Film as Theory (2006/2015)

“There is a tension between the requirements of theoretical abstraction and the capacities of the film medium, where everything that we see on screen is concrete: A train arriving at a station, a tree, bodies, faces. Since the complex theories of montage in Soviet cinema, however, there have continuously been attempts to express theoretical issues by combining shots, thus creating a visual form of thinking.

This book brings together two major filmmakers-French New Wave master Jean-Luc Godard and German avant-gardist Harun Farocki to explore the fundamental tension between theoretical abstraction and the capacities of film itself, a medium where everything seen onscreen is necessarily concrete. Volker Pantenburg shows how these two filmmakers explored the potential of combined shots and montage to create ‘film as theory’.”

First published as Film als Theorie. Bildforschung bei Harun Farocki und Jean-Luc Godard, transcript, Bielefeld, 2006.

Translated by Michael Turnbull
Publisher Amsterdam University Press, 2015
Film Culture in Transition series
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 License
ISBN 9789089648914
285 pages

Reviews: Dietmar Kammerer (taz.de, 2006, DE), Toni Hildebrandt (Senses of Cinema, 2015), Alex Fletcher (Review31, 2015), Chiara Marchini (Medienwissenschaft, 2016).

Publisher
OAPEN
WorldCat

PDF

Étienne Souriau: The Different Modes of Existence (1943–) [FR, DE, EN]

“Exploring the aesthetic depths of the various modes of existence by one of France’s most heralded but forgotten thinkers of existential pluralism.

What relation is there between the existence of a work of art and that of a living being? Between the existence of an atom and that of a value like solidarity? These questions become our own each time a reality is established—whether it is a piece of music, someone we love, or a fictional character—and begins to take on an importance in our lives. Like William James or Gilles Deleuze, Souriau methodically defends the thesis of an existential pluralism. There are indeed different manners of existing and even different degrees or intensities of existence: from pure phenomena to objectivized things, by way of the virtual and the surexistent, to which works of art and the intellect, and even the very fact of morality, bear witness. Existence is polyphonic and, as a result, the world is considerably enriched and enlarged. Beyond all that exists in the ordinary sense of the term, it is necessary to allow for all sorts of virtual and ephemeral states, transitional realms, and barely begun realities, still in the making, all of which constitute so many “inter-worlds.””

Publisher Alcan, Paris, 1943

New edition
Introduction by Isabelle Stengers and Bruno Latour
Publisher PUF, Paris, 2009
220 pages

English edition
Translated by Erik Beranek and Tim Howles
Introduction by Isabelle Stengers and Bruno Latour
Publisher Univocal, Minneapolis, MN, 2015
ISBN 9781937561505
240 pages
via wX

Reviews: Raymond A. Sangiolo (Études phil 1945 FR), Frédéric Keck (Le Monde 2009 FR).

Publisher (new ed., FR)
Publisher (DE)
Publisher (EN)

Les différents modes d’existence (French, 1943/2009, 11 MB, added on 2021-3-9)
Die verschiedenen Modi der Existenz (German, trans. Thomas Wäckerle, 2015, PDF)
The Different Modes of Existence (English, trans. Erik Beranek and Tim Howles, 2015, updated on 2021-3-9)