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This article examines the theme of guilt in narratives of the German Occupation of France. Guilt entails the knowing transgression of a taboo, whether social, legal or psychical. The argument develops a definition of guilt from George Bataille’s Le Coupable (1944) and proposes a reading of the evolution of Occupation guilt through the trope of narrative confession. The three narratives examined, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Corbeau (1943), Henri Razcymow’s Un cri sans voix (1985) and Philippe Grimbert’s Un secret (2004), differently explore the confession of Occupation guilt and span the 70-year period of cultural production. The study of these narratives reveals that the representation of guilt has changed over time, and provides evidence of the evolving nature of Occupation guilt in French cultural history. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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 (hètérologie) 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the French anthropological context of the work of Jean Baudrillard. It says that the religious anthropological though of Èmile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss and Georges Bataille is considered. It also says that context is vital to the understanding of Baudrillard's work. The analysis is given to Mauss's work on the seasonal variations of the Eskimo and the prayers of the Witchetty Grub clan. Under the analysis, two core ideas emerge: the decline of the religious and thereby the social, and the decline of alternation in social life. Meanwhile, Durkheim and Bataille clarify these ideas with the notion that the social bond is in decline and that there is a loss of intimacy.