The Calgary Philosophy Meetup

“It’s a hard world for little things…” Set in a small West Virginia community during the Great Depression, the only film the great actor Charles Laughton ever directed is truly a stand-alone masterwork. A surrealistic horror film with qualities of a Grimm fairy tale, The Night of the Hunter stars a sublimely sinister Robert Mitchum as a traveling preacher whose nefarious motives for marrying a fragile widow, played by Shelley Winters, are uncovered by her terrified young children. Graced by images of haunting visual poetry and a sneaky sense of humor, this ethereal, expressionistic American classic — also featuring the contributions of actress Lillian Gish and writer James Agee — is cinema’s most eccentric rendering of the battle between good and evil.

"With his only film, Laughton set out to film fear, and he succeeded.” (Sight and Sound)

"A stunning piece of work... Every frame of this film is brilliantly contrived." (The Guardian)

"Perverse, yet remarkably life-affirming, Night of the Hunter may be the best film ever made about spiritual perseverance." (Slant)

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Bataille ends the book Inner Experience by contrasting Nietzsche's ontology of the unknown with Proustian poetics of memory. Only Nietzsche, he argues, has penetrated to the total sacrifice (the death of God) that defines the modern era.

We'll read Part 4, section VI and the brief Part 5. All readings in the Google drive linked below 👇

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This is an on-going reading group focusing on the works of French writer Georges Bataille.

The specific reading for this week is posted at the event webpage below, which is updated regularly:

https://sites.google.com/view/existentialism-and-its-critics/

You can find all Bataille texts in the Google folder linked at the BOTTOM of this description (also the Zoom link) -- scroll all the way down 👇

Please take the time to read and reflect on the reading prior to the meeting. Everyone is welcome to attend, but speaking priority will be given to people who have read the text.

Topics to be discussed:

• Bataille's aesthetics: the rift with Surrealism
• Blue of Noon
• Erotics and the 'logic' of transgression
• Bataille and/vs Deleuze
• Foucault's "A Preface to Transgression"
• Hegel, the negative and general economy
• Derrida's "From Restricted to General Economy"

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ABOUT THIS GROUP
Bataille stands out as an eclectic, fascinating and controversial figure in the world of French letters. A contemporary of Sartre and Lacan, he combined ideas from diverse disciplines to create a unique position that he labeled 'base materialism' and which could equally be called 'ecstatic materialism'. Keeping outside the academic mainstream (he worked as a librarian), Bataille writes at the intersection of multiple disciplines including philosophy, psychoanalysis, sociology, mythology, and mystical theology. His works develop a libidinal economy, offer a critique of fascism and embrace marginal experiences in the style of the French poets. He is a formative precursor to the post-structuralist philosophers of the '60s -- and may well be more relevant in our time than ever.

We'll start with Bataille's early writings on Nietzsche and make our way through his important concepts over a number of weeks. We'll aim to understand Bataille's thought on its own terms as well as to place him in the context of the German thinkers that preceded him and the French philosophers who followed his lead. In view of Bataille's early relationship with Surrealism, the referenced artworks will spotlight this movement.

Note: Bataille's texts, while philosophically important, discuss difficult themes such as mortality, the unconscious, eroticism, primeval social practices, etc. Keep this in mind as you approach him, especially if this is your first experience with French philosophy.

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GROUP RULES

• Please spend 1-2 hours per week reading and preparing for the discussion.
• Keep your comments concise and relevant to the text.
• Please limit each comment to a maximum of 2-3 minutes. You're welcome to speak as many times as you wish.
• Virtual meeting courtesy: let's not interrupt each other and keep mics muted when not speaking.
• We'll focus the discussion with key passages and discussion questions. Be sure to bring your favorite passages, questions, comments, criticisms, etc.

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