Georges Bataille’s Laughter: A Poetics of glissement

This article traces back the origins of Georges Bataille’s philosophy to Henri Bergson’s Le Rire. It seeks to demonstrate that Bataille purposely shaped his philosophy into a ‘reader-unfriendly’ paradoxical writing in an effort to recreate the experience — described in Bergson’s book — of a child unsuccessfully trying to retain a wave. Bataille made his philosophy ( hétérologie) just like Bergson’s laughter: something impossible to grasp, slipping through our fingers like a wave in a child’s hand. To counteract the idea of sovereign truth, Bataille chose a world of glissement where he leads and misleads us, enticing us to fully commit to his words but letting us down the very moment we think we have him.