Abstract
In his contribution, the author explores the importance of the work of the French historian-philosopher Georges Bataille (1897–1962) for a criminology of war that is prepared to think through the more visceral dimensions of the human condition. Beginning with a closer reading of Bataille’s writings on the earliest depictions of war and violence in paleolithic cave art, this contribution outlines the dimension in the human condition whereby the potential for deadly violence, and the desire for its direct experience and indirect consumption, seem to be an unavoidable given. The historical depiction of the experience of war and atrocity has, ever since this bloody dawn of humanity, been employed as a powerful tool by which to chronicle those tragically configured by those events.
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Notes
- 1.
Philip Roth: The Novel is a Dying Animal: youtube.com/watch?v=N7mjsNLNzbc (retrieved on 24 May 2018).
- 2.
For the picture, see http://100photos.time.com/photos/andres-serrano-piss-christ (visited on 18 August 2018).
- 3.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuck_Off_(art_exhibition) (retrieved on 18 August 2018).
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Van Calster, P. (2019). Georges Bataille’s Paleolithic Cave Art and the Human Condition. In: Lippens, R., Murray, E. (eds) Representing the Experience of War and Atrocity. Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13925-4_2
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