Papers by Jeremy Bell
Pierre Klossowski is not well-known outside of France, and especially not for La monnaie vivante ... more Pierre Klossowski is not well-known outside of France, and especially not for La monnaie vivante or Living Currency (1970). His récits or his philosophical readings of Sade or Nietzsche have garnered the most acclaim. By way of his reading of “living currency” however, he deconstructs contemporary economics, teasing out the intricacies between sensuality, value, and the simulacrum, transgressing the categories between language and economic transaction. Published alongside photographs by Pierre Zucca that ostensibly illustrate Klossowski’s hermetic theses, La monnaie vivante is at once satirical and deathly serious, a synchronous commentary on the Marquis de Sade’s Society of the Friends of Crime and the utopian socialism of Charles Fourier. After a brief overview of Klossowski’s life and career, a reading of La monnaie vivante in depth is developed. By inverting the classical usage of the simulacrum through its analogies with the numeraire or basic standard of value, Klossowski critiques the discursive biases that stand against a pure flux of intensities. In this way he anticipates postmodernism even as he also problematizes it. The destruction of political economy and metaphysics are combined he suggests, and the relativity of one cannot be granted without the other. We here show how Klossowski uses affect and the exorbitant to address the sensuous libidinal currency moving through and alongside its economic counterparts, as well as how these observations still remain underestimated today.
Master's Thesis by Jeremy Bell
In this thesis, I have addressed a question of energy and distribution in the work of Georges Bat... more In this thesis, I have addressed a question of energy and distribution in the work of Georges Bataille, and especially within his work The Accursed Share. In particular, I have highlighted the way in which this energy is distributed economically, and how this stands in relation to the sacred, as a heterogeneous and repulsive force around which both social and psychological structures gravitate. By outlining the internalization and fragmentation of the sacred within contemporary life, I have argued that the sacred is no longer properly distinguishable from what Freud calls “repression.” The Accursed Share, which attempts to enact what Bataille describes as a Copernican transformation in political economy, is his effort to resituate the foundations of political economy in consumption rather than production. In addition to the accursed share of political economy however, the excesses of production that must be expended uselessly and luxuriously, I have argued here that there is also an accursed share that is epistemological or psychological, an irreducible relation with the sovereign or sacred, which we cannot access or address directly, but which we must nonetheless acknowledge and work through.
Dissertation by Jeremy Bell
The dissertation explores the aesthetic anthropology of Georges Bataille and his collaborators in... more The dissertation explores the aesthetic anthropology of Georges Bataille and his collaborators in the Collège de Sociologie, a distinguished group of intellectuals including Roger Caillois, Michel Leiris, Pierre Klossowski, and Walter Benjamin among others. At the dissertation's outset the role, influence, discovery and indeed invention of the Marquis de Sade as the almost mythic prefiguring for so much French aesthetic thought in the period beginning after World War One and up until even the present day is advanced. Before Freud in Vienna, Sade in Paris: the central thematic axis of the following addresses Eros noir, a term for reflecting on the danger and violence of sexuality that Freud theorizes with the “death drive.” The deconstruction of the nude as an object and form in particular in the artwork of Hans Bellmer and the writing and art of Pierre Klossowski comprises the latter two chapters of the dissertation, which provides examples of perversion through the study of simulacra and phantasms. The thwarted pursuit of community in the vacated space of Nietzsche's death of a God is a persistent leitmotif of the following in the account it offers of the thought of Georges Bataille and other members of the Collège de Sociologie. Eros noir, at the fatal cusp between ascendant manifest sex and a latent diminished Christianity, underwrites much of the French intellectual contribution to the symbology of cultural modernism.
Book Reviews by Jeremy Bell
A book review of To Our Friends by The Invisible Committee (2015), translated by Robert Hurley an... more A book review of To Our Friends by The Invisible Committee (2015), translated by Robert Hurley and published by Semiotext(e), for The Sociological Review, 65 (1), p. 151-152.
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Papers by Jeremy Bell
Master's Thesis by Jeremy Bell
Dissertation by Jeremy Bell
Book Reviews by Jeremy Bell