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The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric Art and Culture By Georges Bataille ( Zone Books )
Release Date: 2005-07-01
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Product Description
The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric Art and Culture collects essays and lectures by Georges Bataille spanning 30 years of research in anthropology, comparative religion, aesthetics, and philosophy. These were neither idle nor idyllic years; the discovery of Lascaux in 1940 coincides with the bloodiest war in history—with new machines of death, Auschwitz, and Hiroshima. Bataille's reflections on the possible origins of humanity coincide with the intensified threat of its possible extinction.
For Bataille, prehistory is universal history; it is the history of a human community prior to its fall into separation, into nations and races. The art of prehistory offers the earliest traces of nascent yet fully human consciousness—of consciousness not yet fully separated from natural flora and fauna, or from the energetic forces of the universe. A play of identities, the art of prehistory is the art of a consciousness struggling against itself, of a human spirit struggling against brute animal physicality. Prehistory is the cradle of humanity, the birth of tragedy.
Bataille reaches beyond disciplinary specializations to imagine a moment when thought was universal. Bataille's work provides a model for interdisciplinary inquiry in our own day, a universal imagination and thought for our own potential community. The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric Art and Culture speaks to philosophers and historians of thought, to anthropologists interested in the history of their discipline and in new methodologies, to theologians and religious comparatists interested in the origins and nature of man's encounter with the sacred, and to art historians and aestheticians grappling with the place of prehistory in the canons of art.
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A Man Like Us
For me, Bataille's Skira book "The Birth of Art" is his most beautiful book. For that reason, this volume is most welcome. Translator Stuart Kendall has written an excellent introduction. There are, I think, roughly two kinds of readers of Bataille: those who love the Eye and don't have much time for his philosophy, and those who focus on the latter, tending to read his artistic works through an academic lense. In some of his works the 'two Batailles' come together, works like "Guilty" and "Inner Experience", but mostly "The Birth of Art". Some of the magic of that book can be found in the Cradle of Humanity essays. Bataille's writing, at its best, becomes an adventure that parallels the sense of wonder one experiences when contemplating ancient art. We are fascinated by that ancient artist. Bataille understands that our search for him is equivalent to the search for ourselves.
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