Third Side of Humanities meeting #0: Georges Bataille “Practice of Joy in the Face of Death” 10.08.24 18:00

Reading seminar group poster design #9
Third Side of Humanities research seminar meeting #0: Georges Bataille “Practice of Joy in the Face of Death”

10.08.24, 18:00
Free entrance

Myymälä2 is pleased to announce the initial meeting of the “Third Side of Humanities” research seminar. We will engage with marginal, idiosyncratic, unorthodox, obscure, and ostensibly irrational texts and practices that are often overlooked in traditional academic and artistic contexts.

Our meeting will focus on Georges Bataille’s group of texts, “Practice of Joy in the Face of Death” (1939). Bataille, whose work continually subverts the binaries of life and death, reason and madness, invites us into a realm where ecstasy and death converge. It challenges us to reconceptualize the existential parameters of joy and mortality, prompting a profound re-evaluation of the human condition through mystical practices. We will also discuss organizational matters and select texts and/or topics for the next meeting.

The seminar seeks to cultivate a space where the boundaries of the humanities are not only tested but also challenged and expanded. Whether you are a scholar, artist, or aficionado of the arcane, your presence and perspectives are equally welcome. The only requirement is to read the primary text carefully beforehand.
Curated and moderated by Dmytro Bondariev, Myymälä2 intern, independent researcher.

Sources

Primary:
– Georges Bataille, Practice of Joy in the Face of Death, in “The Sacred Conspiracy: The Internal Papers of the Secret Society of Acéphale and Lectures to the College of Sociology”, 2017. pp. 431-441, 451-456
– For a brief introduction and references to the French original, see: Denise Hollier, College of Sociology, 1988. pp. 322-325

Secondary:
– Bataille, Conceiving Death. Paul Hegarty. in “Paragraph” Vol. 23, No. 2 (July 2000), pp. 173-190
– Conclusion: Bataillean Meditations. Jeremy Biles, in “Ecce Monstrum: Georges Bataille and the Sacrifice of Form”, 2007. pp. 163-171

P.S. If you have trouble finding the texts, please email hoekermyb@gmail.com

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