Off with his head!

Abstract

This essay explores the multiple significations of the term Acéphale within the work of Georges Bataille. Developing a reading of Bataille’s philosophy from the position of the Acephalic character, the text argues that Bataille’s well-known wish to perform a human sacrifice was intended to create the Acephalic figure itself. In perverting the reading of Bataille’s gesture, the text aims to elucidate other ways in which the Acéphale journals engage with Bataille’s thought. Central to this problem is the illustrated series of images by André Masson that run throughout the Acéphale journals: these images develop a narrativised account of Acéphale’s existence in the celestial world. Claiming that these images function as a form of interrupted myth, Bataille’s work is explored in relation to the problems of myth and community that sit at the heart of Jean-Luc Nancy’s reading of Bataille.