Tension, revolt and novelistic creation in Camus and Bataille

• Grant number: 24/02857-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: November 28, 2024
• End date: February 25, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - Ethics
• Principal Investigator: Rita de Cassia Souza Paiva
• Grantee: Rita de Cassia Souza Paiva
• Host Investigator: Anne Simon
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: École Normale Supérieure, France

Abstract

In this investigation, we intend to interrogate how the tension and revolt provoked by an unconformity permeate all subjectivity expressed in some philosophical essays by Albert Camus and Georges Bataille. In their work, a reflection on human longing unfolds through the re-encounter with an ontological coincidence that vibrates in unconscious dimensions and harasses intelligent thought. The willingness for insertion in a totality would reveal solid foundations for the existence and allow for overcoming the feeling of emptiness and the lack that is intrinsic to every subject. Thus, this incompleteness revealed in the experience of absurdity in Camus - opposing that of discontinuity and continuity in Bataille - is a driving source of an experience of revolt against existence supported by the abysses of non-signification and finitude. With it, a laceration comes - the lucid confrontation of the cry for coincidence with the totality leads to the impossible, since such identity - if fulfilled - would correlate with the misconfiguration that defines us. The revolt is therefore outlined as a tense experience that finds itself an impediment. Thus, at first, we propose to question in the chosen texts the human conduct guided by this tension - which will have as its horizon the notion of limit in Camus, and that of sovereign excess in Bataille. In a second moment, we try to outline how this visceral and universal loop relates to the experience of Romanesque creation, which becomes for both a sphere in which revolt finds a sharp expression - although its significance acquires different meanings in each author.