Christianity Would Not Want a World from which Violence was Excluded': God, Bataille and Derrida on the Sovereign Logic of Religious Child Killing

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Nick Mansfield

Abstract

This article explores Georges Bataille's attempts to locate Gilles de Rais (1404–1440)—military figurehead, national hero, serial child-killer, archetype of Bluebeard—in a cultural, historical and political imaginary, and in a religious inscape. Bataille does this in his essay 'The Tragedy of Gilles de Rais', where de Rais finds his place as a remnant of the collapsing world of the feudal seigneur, a world he had outlived, with its military reforms and complex ecclesiastical politics.


Article Details

Section
Secular Discomforts: Religion and Cultural Studies (Peer Reviewed)
Author Biography

Nick Mansfield, Macquarie University

Nick Mansfield is Dean, Higher Degree Research and Professor of Critical and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University in Sydney. His most recent books include Theorizing War: From Hobbes to Badiou (2008) and The God Who Deconstructs Himself: Subjectivity and Sovereignty Between Freud, Bataille and Derrida (2010). He is one of the general editors of the journal Derrida Today (Edinburgh UP). This article is part of a book-length project on sovereignty and violence.