Headless (review)

The Headless review

The first number is dated June 24th, 1936 and comprises only eight pages. The cover is illustrated of a drawing of André Masson which covers 80% of the page. This drawing is inspired openly by the famous drawing of Léonard de Vinci entitled Homme of Vitruve , but this one is decapitated and its sex is occulted by a death's-head. Under the title one finds the mentions Religion. Sociology. Philosophy followed to the following line of the expression crowned conspiracy .

Ambition of Battle

The first article is signed of Battle and is entitled the crowned conspiracy and starts with these sentences:

“It is times to give up the world of civilized and its light. It is too late to hold with be reasonable and educated - what led to a life without attraction. Secretly or not, it is necessary to become very different or to cease being. ”

One finds in this preliminary statement an explicit advertisement of the program of the review and a message esoteric (“secretly or not… ”) which is addressed to the members of the secret society that Bataille will set up during the six months which will separate this first number from the second.

Battle clarifies a little further the title Acéphale in its article: “The human life is exceeded to be used of head and reason with the universe. Insofar as it becomes this head and this reason, insofar as it becomes necessary to the universe, it accepts a serfdom. ” It is this refusal of the serfdom which Bataille will try to develop in the following numbers through its vision of philosophy nietzschéenne, its fight against Fascism, sets of themes, constants at his place of died and the monk.

Battle and Nietzsche

To appreciate the transgressive value of the reference to Nietzsche by Bataille should be pointed out the historical context: we are in full prewar period, the Fascisme seems to triumph and Nietzsche is asserted by this rising ideology like their herald. Obviously the German philosopher does not have good press in France. It is in this context that the second number starts with a great article entitled Nietzsche and the fascists where Bataille starts by attacking Elisabeth Foerster violently, the sister of the philosopher by calling it Elisabeth Judas-Foerster . It recalls a declaration of Nietzsche to it (written in capitals): “Not to attend anybody who is implied in this shameless stove setting of the races. ”

The same number contains a new translation of Nietzsche on Héraclite, an article of Jean Wahl entitled Nietzsche and the death of God who is a comment on a text of Karl Jaspers in connection with Nietzsche.

The other numbers are also centered on the German philosopher. The last number, prepared but not published was entitled the madness of Nietzsche and comprised on the first wholesale page characters the following declaration:

“on January 3rd 1889, fifty years ago, Nietzsche succumbed to the madness: on the piazza Carlo-Alberto, to Turin, it was thrown while sanglotant with the neck of a beaten horse, then it collapsed; he believed, when he awoke, being DIONYSOS or the CRUCIFIÉ. ”

Death and the monk

Death is another discussion thread of the review. As of the first Bataille number evokes it while speaking about Andre Masson who, says it, evoked with him its clean dead. Battle recalls that “the truth of the man is death” but death it is also the “death of God” what, written Jean Wahl commenting on Nietzsche, condemns the man to “the immense gift which is perfect loneliness. ”

Also the monk, according to Battle, a devotion did not return anything to any divinity. This “crowned conspiracy” to which Bataille invites us it is “the judgment of all that is recognized today. ” (n°1 of Headless )

Collaborators of the review

Apart from Bataille which signs the majority of the texts, without counting the not signed short notes which are probably its hand, one raises the names of:

Roger Caillois (n°3/4)
Pierre Klossowski (n°1,2, 3/4)
Andre Masson (drawings in all the numbers)
Jules Monnerot (n° 3/4)
Jean Rollin (n°2)
Jean Wahl (n°2)

The secret society

The history of the secret society Acéphale is much less easy to describe than that of the review because its members, who had sworn silence have, as a whole, held their word.

However in February 1937, after a talk of Roger Caillois to the coffee of the Large Véfour on the principles which must direct the formation of a group, Georges Bataille lute a text entitled what I have to say where he declares:

“It is only if they fight until death or if they are taken by a violent and contagious physical emotion that human beings leave this confused deformity their interests which makes an accumulation of inert waste together of it. ”

Genealogy of the project

Battle which makes several times reference to Marcel Mauss in various texts probably took as a starting point sound Manuel of ethnography where the ethnographer had studied the secret societies African while showing:

the collective character of these companies which it even described as “a total social phenomenon” because their existence is public but their operation and in particular their language are secret;
“regular” character of these companies which are not companies of plot as in Occident but rather of the “companies of initiates”;
the “gradual” dimension of these companies where advance is obtained following extases;
the “cosmic” tonality of these companies whose life is rythmée by the flow of the seasons.

Secret meetings

It is on this model inspired of Mauss that Bataille will organize night meetings in full forest, in a clearing comprising a struck down Chêne. The meetings follow the rate/rhythm of the seasons and its members are held to adopt some Rituel S like refusing to tighten the hand of the anti-semites and to celebrate the decapitation of Louis XVI, insofar as this event precedes “crowd without chief” whom “the acephality aims”.

The members of the company are invited to the meditation. Texts of Nietzsche, Freud, Sade and Mauss are read at the joined together assembly.

A company of the sacrifice

Stated a such fast way the principles of this companies appear if not delirious at least passably exaltés. Battle probably touched at this time the ultimate point of its attempt at living the principles of a community which would allow to reach a different subjectivity. A community where the relations with the other would take on a dynamics different from the official social organization. It was a question of trying to differently live the relation of the inside and the outside, the concepts of subject or object. In a word, it was a question of founding “the community of those which do not have community”.

For that this community was a time tried by the idea of the ultimate Sacrifice. So much so that, Bataille took afterwards distances with this idea, the idea of a human Sacrifice (voluntary) was even considered. But the members finally moved back, fault, seems it, to have been able to find a sacrificator rather than a victim.

Lessons of Headless

One would be wrong not to retain that the “comic” dimension of this episode as qualified it later Bataille itself. Apart from the members of the secret society Acéphale this experiment had repercussions with the long run in the reflection of several contemporaries of Battle: Michel Leiris as Jacques Lacan which did not take part in the company of was informed and one can find the echo on their premises of it. Others still like Maurice Blanchot, Gilles Deleuze or Michel Foucault refer there in a way more or less buckled in their work.

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